The Tech Lead role

This section is for people who are new to leading a team, about to step into the role, or wondering whether it is for them. Where the rest of the handbook focuses on the team and how it works, this section focuses on you: how the role differs from the one you had before, how to adjust to it, and how to keep developing as a leader once you are in it.

Most Tech Leads come to the role as strong engineers. That is a good foundation, because technical judgement and credibility still matter. But leading asks for different things: acting through others, measuring your success by the team’s outcomes rather than your own, and using skills that engineering work rarely exercises. Few people have all of these on day one, and that is normal. They can be learned, and this section aims to help.

• Starting to lead explains the difference between leadership and management, how the role changes as you progress, what success looks like, the skills and behaviours to develop, and how to approach your first few weeks.

Don’t Panic

You don’t need to have it all worked out before you start. Nobody does.

Once you have found your feet, the rest of the handbook goes deeper.

• People covers the core people leadership skills, including one-to-ones, feedback, and delegation.
• Ways of working describes a good default way for a team to plan, build, and improve how it works.
• Practices covers how practices work together such as testing and product design.