Team Leader Roles and Responsibilities
Team Leader Roles and Responsibilities
- Help developers resolve coding issues
- Keep an eye on the ATL’s that they are helping developers in resolving code issues or not.
- Ensure developers understand project requirements, following coding standards, and designing the software architecture to best fit client’s needs
- Ensure developers understand project requirements and also keep an eye on ATL’s that developer under them are following coding standards or not. Also help developer in designing the software architecture to best fit client’s needs.
- Ensure developers are updating clients on project progress every hour, especially if there are any issues
- Ensure Developer is conducting thorough quality assurance and that you have performed a quality review on all projects before telling a client a task is done
- Each hour do a physical walk through of your development area and check in with each developer to see if they have any issues
- Ensure that developers are updating code to the SVN regularly
- Ensure that ATL’s are reporting back properly to you that developers under them are updating code to the SVN regularly.
- Ensure that code confidentiality is maintained
- Listen to developers demands or concerns and raise them up the chain of command
- Try to build the relationship between the client and the developer so they have and maintain an excellent communication level and a trusting relationship with each other so they will not be dependent upon a team lead / project manager
- Acknowledge and reward team and team member accomplishments, as well as exceptional performance.
TL’s responsibilities to our clients:
- Ensure Developers are at their desk and working efficiently during working times
- Remind developers to ask for help and do not allow developers to go into shells or hiding when they are stuck or shy. Remind developers to be honest to clients if they need to research how to perform a task
- Help manage client expectations from a technical standpoint (project timeline, debugging, QA and feasibility
- Work with developers and clients to estimate project timelines accurately. You must be within a week’s time of accuracy on all project estimates
- Ensure you are openly and honestly communicating with clients regarding their projects and/or developers
- Build a trusting and nurturing relationship with your client, so if his developer leaves Datum for any reason, the client will feel comfortable continuing on with a new developer knowing that you are there
Your responsibility to the Company:
- Ensure that if a developer is asked to stay late by a client and/or AE that everything possible is done to make that happen
- Always show support for the company and upper management when facing any crisis
- Never have a public negative image of the company, upper managers or any company policies
- Raise all complaints to company policies amongst other team leaders or upper managers, never show dissatisfaction of a company policy or other company related issue in front of developers
- Keep a feel on developer happiness or mood, and inform upper management of any concerns that might affect the company’s normal operating patterns
- Inform upper management immediately of any safety concerns amongst any employee of Datum
- Inform upper management immediately if a developer has confided in you that they are quitting or leaving Datum, and try to convince the developer to stay
- Never make promises to any developers or create any policies on behalf of the company without consulting upper management
- Monitor developer’s non-work related activities and keep them to a minimum
- Bring in new ideas to solve issues that will help the company to improve productivity, reliability and working ethics
- Police everyone in the company including yourself so that policies and rules are followed so that everyone is in working in an orderly fashion.
- Try to make the company environment where honesty, hard work and dedication are appreciated and dishonesty, laziness and total disregard of the rules is dealt with in order to keep employees inline and behaving professionally.
- Lead by example (be a role model) – make your behavior consistent with your words.
Communication between AE’s and TL’s Best Practices
- Communicate with the other team leads if you need help with your workload
- Ensure that if a developer is asked to stay late by a client and/or AE that everything possible is done to make that happen
- Update in AE/TL room when you are leaving your desk for any reason
- Examples: Going to help a developer resolve any issues, hourly walk around, breaks, etc…
- Work closely with all account executives to ensure Allshore/Datum Policies and Procedures are followed
Chat rooms and Client Communication Best Practices
- Speak in client chat rooms often and let the clients know that you are there helping communicate technical requirements to developers.
- Monitor all assigned chat rooms and look for trouble spots. Try to step in and give the client confidence that you are helping his developer when you feel the client is getting upset or frustrated
- You are a trusted management member, therefore you are allowed to talk one – on – one with a client or call the client via Skype anytime
- Help the Account Execs keep developers talking and active in chat rooms
- Step in anytime with coding issues and offer to voice chat with clients often to help resolve any misunderstandings
- When developer is running low on tasks, call client though Skype (either Skype account or client phone number) to assign additional tasks to his developer and ensure they are added to Basecamp
- Communicate with clients to ensure understanding of project requirements
Team Member Training
- Assess developers strengths and weaknesses and develop action plans to improve the developers abilities and reduce dependence on other members of the team
- Work with our future training department to motivate, and train your developers on development paths that are helpful for the company and the developer
- Train the developer to follow standards in every part of the work environment mostly communication, development and quality so that developer can give quality output to the client so to minimize complaints