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Strengthen Your Confidence as a Tech Lead with Our "Tech Lead Fundamentals - Defining Your Role and Responsibilities" Course.

The role of a Tech Lead can vary greatly across organizations, often leading to confusion about what the position truly involves. Ambiguity around specific responsibilities can result in misunderstandings and misaligned expectations. Even with a job description, there are often additional, unwritten responsibilities and expectations that can create stress, dissatisfaction, and frustration.

Designed for tech leaders transitioning from individual contributors to leadership roles, this course will help you create a system of reference for your responsibilities as a Tech Lead, providing a reliable reference point whenever needed. It will help you overcome self-doubt and the impostor syndrome, and equip you with the confidence to say "no" when necessary while not causing upset.

! My name is Andre Poppa, and I'm delighted to be your tutor on this journey. Throughout this course, we will explore various facets of the tech lead role to ensure you gain a comprehensive understanding and are fully prepared for the responsibilities it entails.

3. Unwritten and Unmeasurable Responsibilities

Looking forward to being your partner and guide through this learning experience!

TLR 1 - Introduction

Welcome to the tech lead fundamentals Course.
My name is Andre Poppa,
and I'm happy to be your tutor
to guide you through the process of
discovering your responsibilities as a technique.
In this course, we are going to explore the tech lead role
by looking at a few areas.
We are going to look at the tech lead role and the common responsibilities.
The idea here is to
understand how the tech lid is in the middle
and also to identify the typical responsibilities of a tech lid.
The second point we are going to look at is coding expectations.
How to balance the hands-on coding with the leadership responsibilities.
The third area
is the unwritten and unmeasurable responsibilities.
There are
also a part of the road that cannot be measured,
and it's also vital to success.
And the fourth part
is, as can get clear,
is to have the conversations that you need to get clear
on your role
to convert the expectations
into agreements.
By the end of this course,
you are going to have a thorough understanding of the tech lead role,
and you will have the knowledge and the actions that you need
to be clear
on your responsibilities.
I'm looking forward to be your partner and to guide you through the course

Hi, Andra Popa here. Thank you for reading my profile 😊
If you want grow professionaly into a successful and fulfilled Tech Leader or are already further along in your career and want to work on your leadership skills, please keep reading.

You may feel overwhelmed and ask yourself these questions.
▶ How can I find a balance between supporting the team and getting my own "to do list“ done?
▶ How can I empower my team so that they are motivated?
▶ How can I be straightforward and grounded in the face of conflict and upset?

I work with people just like you. I help them thrive as a leader so they enjoy their job and their life. How do I do that? By looking at how to effectively manage their time, deal with challenging conversations and building strong team through empowering them.

I understand and hear what you are struggling with. I have experienced it myself. I worked in Tech and dealt with the same challenges. I have overcome so many self-limiting beliefs and want to support others in doing so. I'm all about empowering people to discover their own power and find their own self-expression in leadership.

Are you ready to enjoy your job and thrive as a leader? 
Book a call and let's talk about how I can support you get there. 


Andra Popa

Tech Leadership Coach

The Tech Lead role is not a standardised role and this often leads to confusion, lack of clarity in regards to your responsibilities as a Tech Lead. 

In this course we will delve into several key areas:

The Tech Lead's Role & Common Responsibilities:

 Understanding how a Tech Lead operates in the middle of development teams, stakeholders, and project requirements. Identifying the typical duties you will encounter, from overseeing technical progress to ensuring team cohesion.

 Balancing hands-on coding with leadership responsibilities and determining how much time to dedicate to each.

Unwritten and Unmeasurable Responsibilities:

 Recognizing the subtle, yet crucial, aspects of the role that are not always documented and are vital to success.

 Engaging in conversation to gain clarity on your role and responsibilities, and converting expectations into clear agreements.

By the end of this course, you will have a thorough understanding of what it means to be a Tech Lead and be equipped with the knowledge and the actions required to have clear responsibilities. I look forward to guiding you on this journey and contributing to you becoming a confident and effective Tech Lead.

My name is Andra Popa and I’ve worked for 15 years in Software Development having different roles, from Software Engineer to Tech Lead to Project Manager. This is what I studied, this is what I knew and this is what I was good at.

I’ve always been a big fan of self-development and I’ve participated in many programs to grow in communication, leadership, and teamwork. In one of the programs I had the opportunity to coach other participants and I felt in love with coaching and guiding others. 

In the last 5 years, I’ve been working with Tech Leaders, empowering them to overcome challenges, be courageous and build strong teams. 

I am privileged to contribute to you through this course, combining my experience as a Tech Lead with the knowledge I have gained from working with and mentoring other Tech leaders.

1 - Introduction

TLR 2 - Common ground

Tech Lead is not a standardised role, as, for example, a Scrum Master. The Tech Lead role is defined differently among companies.

What is certain is that you are in the middle, interacting with different teams and stakeholders. For example:

There is also  a common ground for responsibilities/expectations that can be found in most of the companies. They are:

2 - Common ground

TLR 3a - Coding vs OtherStuff 1 - What is needed

As a Tech lead you might end up coding 70% or you might end up coding 10% or ..not at all. As a Tech Lead it is for you to learn to adjust to what is needed in the project/team at that specific moment. 

TLR 3b - Coding vs OtherStuff 2 - How do we get satisfaction

In this part, we explore where you get your satisfaction when you transition from Software Developer to Tech Lead. As developers, we often experience instant gratification when resolving bugs or completing tasks, with our success measured by these tangible accomplishments.

However, success as a Tech Lead is defined differently. It's about ensuring smooth project execution and delivering on time, which often lacks immediate satisfaction. You might end your day wondering what you have accomplished, feeling unproductive despite having crucial conversations, unblocking team members, and facilitating progress.

Understand that these contributions, though intangible, are essential. Resist the urge to do overtime coding just to feel useful. Embrace the reality that your role now focuses on team performance and project success. 

3 - Coding vs OtherStuff

TLR 4 - Unwritten responsibilities

There are unwritten & unmeasurable responsibilities, the ones that define who you want to be. Soft skills.

They are your choice, nobody can impose them on you.

They are a whole other area, related to leadership skills that is not being covered here.

Basic suggestions to consider while defining who you want to be as a leader :

5 questions to ask yourself when you transition from Software Engineer to Tech Lead:

You can find a detailed article related to the above questions here: 

4 - Unwritten responsibilities

TLR 5 -  Ask & Get clear

5 -  Ask & Get clear

TLR 6 - Homework

Now it’s time for you to do the work. To go out there and have conversations to bring clarity for you and for others.

Taking action, having conversations, it’s not always comfortable and this the only way to make things work for you and for others.

6 - Homework

TLR 7 - Conclusion

 and if you need further support feel free to message me.

7 - Conclusion

This course will help you discover and understand your responsibilities as a Tech Lead

Tech Lead Fundamentals - Defining Your Role and Responsibilities

In this module, we'll explore the common responsibilities of a tech lead, acknowledging that this role can vary significantly across different organizations. Here are the key aspects of being a tech lead:

A tech lead's position is pivotal and collaborative, sitting at the center of various team interactions. Regardless of organizational structure or departmental differences, a tech lead will commonly interact with:

Here's an outline of typical responsibilities of a tech lead, which might differ based on your organization's expectations:

2. Making Technical and Non-Technical Decisions

For those working in a Scrum environment, more information about the tech lead's role within a scrum team can be found in the linked article.

Now that you're familiar with the common responsibilities of a tech lead, reflect on your current practices:

Keep these reflections in mind as you work on this week's assignment.

What are the the common
responsibilities for a tech lead?
As I mentioned before, it's not a standardised role as it is the the scrum master,
so it is defined differently among companies.
There is no common ground and there are, uh, common responsibilities.
And we are going to look at, uh, those in this video
before that.
There is something that I want you to be aware of
Is that the tech lid? It's an important role
and you are in the middle.
It's a collaborative
role
and you are in the middle.
And no matter how the the company is organised, no matter the department,
definitely you are going to be in the middle.
As you can see, you're in the middle and these are the different possible, uh,
categories
of, uh colleagues to interact with.
So you interact with the
your team,
the Dev team,
the the other engineers and then, uh,
are the business analyst and the product owner.
It can be a product team
if you work on a product.
Then there is the Q a team
there is the architect.
Uh, there is the project manager. If there is one for the project
and you can even interact with the the client
now going back to the the common responsibilities.
Uh, we are going to look at those. I'm going to share the screen again.
So this is what I came up with in
regards to what are the common, uh, responsibilities
And some of them It might
be that they do not apply to you or
it's not something that is requested in your company.
And it's something that might be useful for you in the future
when you will work in a different company or, uh,
just for you to know like this is
what is, uh,
usually needed.
OK, so the first one
is I will start with the mentoring.
So it is expected of you to
mentor people.
And when I say mentor, I mean,
you are a
senior engineer,
you have experience,
and, uh,
you can influence,
and
you can
influence and contribute to the growth of your, uh, colleagues,
colleagues, engineers
through different ways. It can be through quad review.
It can be through pair programming.
Uh, it can be, uh, a conversation around the business of the
application you are working on or product that you are working on
to clear some business aspects.
As you know more, it can be you hand over one of the topics
and it can be you even, uh,
do workshops around the A framework that you use or a new technology
or something that you see
missing for all of them. You can create a workshop and, uh, do that.
So this is the mentoring part. You are a stand for their growth.
The second one that I put here is making technical and non
technical decisions.
What do I mean by that
Is, uh,
for example, for the technical ones, it might be that you work with an architect
and you decide together what frameworks to be used if it starts. Now,
the software that you are working on
or a a new feature is being,
uh, developed
and, uh,
you can come up with
OK, let's use this new framework. It will help us
with the performance. Uh, when with the imple
implementing it, uh, faster.
And as you can as I said, you can work with an architect or you can do it on your own.
It depends.
It's up to you. And then the the non technical decisions.
It can be,
uh we will releasing that date,
or we will
organise ourselves this way.
These are the non technical decisions.
OK,
The next part is
communicate the technical and non technical decisions.
So
it's to ask yourself
who
needs to be informed, Who needs to know that
it it might be at the beginning that you don't know.
Or maybe you work in a company in which the processes
are clear and you know who needs to be informed.
If not,
you can think about OK,
who needs to know that we are going to use
this framework to implement, uh,
this new feature.
And, uh,
once you have that answer, you can It's for you to communicate
the non
technical decisions.
OK, we are not going to release in, uh, that date we are going to release
a week later,
who needs to be informed? Probably everybody. Yes.
So this is, uh,
it's, uh,
part of your responsibility to communicate all the
decisions that happen inside the the team.
And it's something communication we are going to look in the next weeks.
Uh, the next one here is unblock the team
Unblock the team
is you're the As I said, you're in the middle.
If something
happens and the the team cannot work,
it's It's a priority for you to
to unblock that.
It can be that, uh,
the connection to a server is not possible. OK, who do you need to talk?
What do you need to do to make it happen? To shorten the time?
Then it can be that, uh,
user story doesn't have enough details or something is happening and
somebody is blocked by that.
So you go, OK,
who do I need to speak with? What do you need? So you
make things move and unblock them.
A big part of the role is that
and, uh,
the last one that I put here is backlog refinement.
I, if you don't work in a scrum environment, mean it. I mean the planning and
prioritising the the tasks.
And when I say backlog,
refinement means that you work with the closely with the product owner
and, um,
you define like you prioritise the user study so it works also for the
engineering team.
Or it can be that you refine the user stories to be more clear or request from others to
add more details. So you are involved in this process as part of leading the
the development team.
Ok,
now, if, uh
if you do work in a W in a scrum environment,
uh, you will find a link with an article
to see what is the the role of a tech lead inside of a a
scrum team.
So you'll get clarity of what can be expected of you
Now that you know this you can think about OK,
uh,
this is what is
This is actually that I'm already doing. This is what, uh
I would want to start doing
and you will build on the the assignment for this week.
OK,
thank you. See you soon.