According to Habr, the average salary of development team leads is 200 thousand rubles. A high level of salary presupposes an appropriate level of qualifications and responsibility. People management skills, project supervision, to which crisis management also adjoins—this is the minimum list of requirements for a position today. Therefore, before taking on such functionality, it is extremely important and useful to study the experience of other specialists from this field, get acquainted with the list of necessary competencies and answer the main question for yourself: “What is an effective development team, and what can I bring to it? ”
Yuri Kerbitskov, head of the development group at ICL System Technologies, tells how to build a team correctly and what skills are needed for this.
How can a team lead build a team?
Determine the team size
When building a team from scratch, you need to determine its optimal size. The management processes in it will depend on this. When the team is small, you can reach out to everyone, work on their motivation, take time, and communicate. A person can simultaneously hold up to 7 contacts: beyond this limit, such a scheme is already ineffective. As the team grows, you have to rebuild. The vector of changes will depend on both internal and external working conditions.
Determine the team composition
It is necessary to determine the composition of the team, the required level of specialists. To do any project, you need a certain set of competencies. In the product approach, there is a tool—the Star Map—which allows you to form a matrix of competencies required for the implementation of the project. Looking at this map, you can close the competencies and subsequently form a cross-functional team.
Be prepared for losses
When building a team of specialists who meet the required skills only relatively, it is important to understand how the team leader is willing to invest his time and resources in team members.
At the same time, the team lead must be prepared for the fact that the applicant, who came up initially on formal grounds (skills, work experience, etc.), subsequently will not be able to join the team. In this case, it is important to realize the situation in time and start looking for another specialist. A project should be started with a ready-made team, or with a clear understanding, including on the part of the customer, that there is no team yet, and it will take time to recruit and form it. Taking into account the current situation on the labor market, the search can take up to six months.
In order to avoid incongruence, it is important to select people who are close to the team in values and outlook on life. If there is a need to create a team for a short-term project, and there is no need for the processes of building it, you can rely only on the competencies of the members. But if a team is needed for the long term, it must be synchronized in values. A person who does not fit into the general system of values will leave in any case. Sooner or later.
Emphasize communication
When the team is already formed, it is important to pay special attention to internal communications. At the stage of lapping, conflicts are possible. And here it is important not to reduce them to nothing, to allow them to flow naturally, controlling and preventing escalations. So the team will be able to effectively pass the storming stage and get the performance as a result.
What skills does a team lead need?
Soft skills
The head of the development team must be a leader and have the appropriate qualities: be able not only to manage processes, but also to take responsibility for their result; burn with what he does while inspiring others, and mentor employees. In addition, the leader must have basic knowledge of psychology. Without this, it is difficult to build work with people.
Since we are talking about people-management, we often have to face doubts of people, the desire to earn more, insufficient motivation, the need to build/rebuild communications.
Hard skills
Hard skills are important, but not so fundamental for a team lead. As Steve Jobs put it, “It’s pointless to hire smart people and tell them what to do.” It is necessary to take people who’ll tell what to do. Ideally, a team lead should be competent and have expert knowledge of the development process. And understand how the product is made. It is not at all necessary to know all the nuances: it can be a high-level understanding of the situation, but in all its integrity, taking into account the interconnections and mutual influence of individual elements.
If a person is an expert, he will quickly enough penetrate into this or that area in case of a problem. If the leader is not an expert, he will need someone who can provide expert judgment with a minimum set of software skills. The manager can work perfectly in tandem with a techie.
It’s important to separate team leads and tech leads. These two positions have different requirements for the level of competence. The tech lead, as an expert who leads the technological expertise and writes the code, must have leadership qualities in hard skills. At the same time, he practically does not deal with management, and, accordingly, should not have these skills. The team lead is primarily concerned with management. Therefore, the competency map focuses on people management.
Continued at tproger.ru.
