This is the second post in a series exploring the practices of engineers on the path to becoming team leaders. I recommend starting with part 1 if you haven’t read it yet.
Future TLs…
7. See the bigger picture beyond the backlog
Aspiring team leaders influence the work of the team by understanding the bigger picture and advocating for things to happen. They recognise that work items do not begin life in the backlog — rather, they start outside of it, through speaking with stakeholders, understanding context, identifying opportunities, and prioritising the problems that need to be solved.
Team leaders need to think about work at different levels of abstraction. The tickets that make up the next cycle of work are part of larger projects, these projects might have themes or associated goals spanning many quarters, which in turn are part of a wider vision that can be multi-year. Understanding this relationship between the work and the broader context is important to be able to explain to the team why their work is valuable. Seeing how work fits together at different levels, and thinking about longer-term timelines is important for spotting opportunities and heading off threats.
To practice seeing the bigger picture beyond the backlog, it’s necessary to get exposure to the conversations that shape it. If you’re operating primarily at the level of individual tickets it can be hard to see this wider context and influence direction. As well as attending rituals like backlog refinement, ask your manager if it’s possible to be involved in longer-term planning meetings with product owners and other stakeholders, even if it’s just to listen and hear information first-hand. Attending group or department-wide town hall meetings is also helpful for increasing context and understanding of the role of your team, and the needs of the business.
8. Contribute to initiatives outside of their team
Future team leaders are typically involved in initiatives outside of their immediate team. This could be things like recruitment, technical guilds, meetups, or employee resource groups (ERGs). Contributions in these areas help to:
- Increase your impact beyond your team. For example, involvement in recruitment means you’re contributing to the continued growth and sustainability of the department and the wider engineering community
- Expose you to different types of both technical and people challenges, and allow you to practice a different set of skills to your core role
- Grow your network and your understanding of the wider company as you meet people from different teams and departments
- Force you to practice prioritisation and time management
These experiences are all valuable in preparing for the TL role. As a TL, you’re exposed to many different types of work, and need to be able to context switch between them effectively. A strong network is important to help get things done, and to unblock your team. TLs must juggle a number of priorities, and shift their attention to the areas most in need — they need to be prepared to push back and say no when required, to manage expectations, and to own their calendar.
9. Are open to change
Change is the only constant — the way the team works, the technologies they use, the current best practices, the team’s work priorities, the team members, the stakeholders they interact with — at any given time it’s likely that change is occurring in one or more of these dimensions. Team leaders are frequently required to “lead through change”. This means communicating the change, explaining what it means for the individuals in the team, outlining a plan, gathering feedback, and supporting individuals as the course is adjusted.
Leading through change is one of the hardest parts of the job. Team members can have strong reactions and be resistant to change, certain changes might adversely affect your team for the greater benefit of the wider group, and sometimes you’ll need to implement changes you don’t fully agree with. Working through this is difficult.
Future team leaders demonstrate a mature and positive attitude towards change. This is not easy — change is hard for all of us — but as the team leader, you’ll be expected to be able to manage your reaction, and approach change with openness and curiosity. If you’re generally resistant to change, or often find yourself expressing scepticism to new ideas or ways of doing things, it will be difficult to make progress — eventually people will stop proposing ideas, and bad habits can become cemented.
Practicing your response to change requires exposure to change. Consider picking up items of work in unfamiliar areas of your team’s codebase, attending tech talks about new tools or technologies, or exploring someone else’s idea with them, demonstrating curiosity by asking questions, and running an experiment to try it out. All of these activities will help you increase your resilience to change, and increase your confidence that you can adapt as required.
That’s it for part two. Finally, part 3.
Thanks to Melanie Harries for reading drafts of this.
