Why Every Product Team Needs a Tech Lead
Find a technical buddy you can lean on. It’s more effective than learning how to code.
Even if you have zero technical background (like me), your buddy can be your sounding board on anything technical. Not only that, building rapport with this “ring leader” will help you influence other engineers in the team.
What skills should you look for? When and how can you lean on them?
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1. Check-in with other developers on your behalf.
When you ask the engineers why a feature is behind schedule, they will likely give you technical reasons that you can’t tell whether it is true or not. You don’t have in-depth knowledge of the code, any recommendation you make will only hurt your credibility.
Your technical counterpart can diagnose the root cause and influence the other engineers — especially if that person is respected by others.
If the engineer is stuck on a particular function, then your buddy can make technical recommendations to bring it back on track. If a scenario is too complex to code, then you can adjust your requirements to simplify the problem.
What to look for?
Ability to context switch. They have to shift focus from completing their own features to helping others. Besides, coaching requires switching their logical brain (used for coding) to their empathic brain (used for mentoring). Most engineers (or most individuals) find this very draining.
2. Be your translator
When you don’t understand what other engineers are saying, your technical buddy can explain that to you in private. So you don’t need to feel embarrassed asking clarifying questions in front of the whole team. Ask your buddy to walk you through the technical architecture and point you to the documentation that you can read up on.
What to look for?
Able to teach. The best technical buddy I’ve ever had taught at a coding boot camp. He was great at giving analogies, providing examples, and drawing diagrams to help me visualize any abstract concept. I was lucky.
Even if they are willing to teach other junior engineers, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can explain the jargon in layman terms and plain language. But the willingness to teach is a prerequisite. They can at least tell you what to focus on that are relevant to your product.
3. Give you honest feedback
To know what you can do better for your team, nothing trumps asking for their feedback. This can range from how clear your requirements are to how effective are your sprint meetings.
The challenge is people are afraid of giving you negative feedback directly. Your counterpart can either probe other engineers.
They may not know how to express them in words. Your counterpart can give you his or her observations based on the interactions with the team.
4. Interphase with engineers outside your companies
Very often, you need to partner with other companies to work on integrations and customizations. Bring in your counterpart to advise on the technical details.
The goal is to build a partnership to ensure smooth implementations. It takes diplomacy to point out any blocker your team faces and communication skills to express what your team needs to move forward without pointing fingers.
What to look for?
Humility — Do they get defensive when other engineers in the team question their approach? Do they listen to others’ rationale and consider them? If they can demonstrate humility and listening skills when working with their teammates, you can be more confident that they will show professionalism when representing your company.
Sum it up
Any non-technical person needs a technical counterpart — much like yin and yen. Investing and building this partnership early on will save you more situations than what are described in this article.
Related post
Got a grand idea you don’t want to get shot down by the team? Bounce ideas off your buddy.
