Source: MC Today

Who is a team leader? Is it a programmer who is still coding or a manager? In fact, it depends on the way a person communicates, arranges the team’s work, and demonstrates leadership skills in various aspects. However, in most cases, developers don’t even realize that they are ready to become team leaders, as every company has different expectations for a person who should be promoted to such a role. In this article, we’ll share our vision of a successful team leader at AMC Bridge.

When can you become a team leader at AMC Bridge?

At AMC Bridge, team leadership is one of the key stages that proves the professional growth and development of our teammates. Specialists of different levels, from junior strong to senior, can be promoted to team leader. In this role, our coworkers gain new knowledge, acquire technical management skills, and take an active part in business processes within the company.

So, if you demonstrate high performance on the project, have solid technical skills, and effectively communicate with the team, you are already a team leader or will be promoted soon. Currently, the company has more than 200 ongoing projects. Thus, it’s a good opportunity to become a team leader, either of a big or small team. However, it doesn’t mean you will head up a team on the next project. You can return to the developer role or upgrade your management skills in a new team.

There are two ways of how to become an AMC Bridge team leader: either your department director can see your potential and the required skill set, or you can show your initiative yourself if you feel that you already have the skills needed for a team leader role. In this case, you can contact your manager, HR specialist or specify it in the survey our teammates regularly fill out.

Not only a developer but also a manager

At the very beginning, a team leader is a developer with profound technical skills who continuously improves them and performs the entrusted scope of work effectively. Put simply, a recently promoted team leader will continue to code, but the key focus will be shifted due to new responsibilities.

From the technical perspective, a team leader is responsible for all code-related tasks and decision-making. Besides, he or she can influence the engineering practices implementation, take part in selecting the development methodology, technology, architecture, and ensure the code quality.

A team leader learns how to select an appropriate technology depending on the key aspects that should be taken into consideration at a particular stage, for example, the client’s business requirements, the project duration, available project solutions. It’s crucial to draw on previous teammates’ experience and double-check whether the team was working with the same technology and what pitfalls developers discovered during the process.

Architecture selection is also among the potential responsibilities of a team leader who should define how the software will function and be supported in the future, how quickly the new functions are implemented and bugs are fixed. When it goes to architecture selection, our coworkers advise paying special attention to the client’s business requirements and the opportunities of its further support. Commonly, the architecture is selected together with technical experts and project managers.

Decompose tasks and check their progress. It’s a simple piece of advice that can help keep track of the project realization and deadlines. The most obvious way to do that is to ask teammates when they complete their tasks. However, based on our experience, the most expected answer you can receive is “Tomorrow.” Don’t worry, we can suggest a workaround. If you break down project tasks into subtasks, you can monitor how the project goals are achieved at every stage, perform code review right away, and correct inaccuracies. Furthermore, such an approach will help collaborate with the team to find effective fixes in time and successfully meet deadlines.

What about soft skills?

Team leadership is a valuable opportunity to develop your soft skills because you will interact with other project team members such as developers, client’s representatives, managers, business analysts.

A team leader at AMC Bridge is not a managerial position at its core. Nonetheless, coworkers should understand their roles in processes. Thus, one of the responsibilities of AMC Bridge team leaders is to ensure proper communication on this point.

On the one hand, a team leader should always inform the team about the board’s mission and vision and disseminate corporate culture among teammates. On the other hand, a team leader should establish internal communication—give and receive feedback, report on the project status and metrics to a project manager.

You are not instructed how to be a team leader at the university

Every company has its own vision and sets its own requirements for the specialists that can be promoted to team leader. There is no universal approach.

At AMC Bridge, we provide insights into technical aspects of work organization on the project. In our Research department, future team leaders are trained to create project documentation, keep track of project tasks and project status, prepare documents at different project stages and during a release. Overall, a training program takes from 6 months to a year.

This year, the company launched an online course both for current team leaders and other team members who will become team leaders soon. The course is a part of a program aimed to ensure the education and development of our coworkers. It contains information about technical and managerial skills, peculiarities of work with the team and client, and soft skills that an effective team leader requires.

Our teammates advise

• A good team leader is not only a person who performs the entrusted tasks effectively but the one who understands the goal of each and all of them.
• All decisions that were made should be rational and objective. Do not rely on your intuition only.
• Pay attention to business aspects of the project. Team leadership is not only about the code quality and technical components.
• Always foster a comfortable work environment and build a solid rapport with your teammates.
• Feedback is required not only when an issue occurs. Don’t forget to praise the work of your coworkers.
• Don’t be afraid to dip your toe into team leadership, show initiative, and be open to new opportunities.