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Advice for Team Leads

Advice for Team Leads

Owned by Joanna Lin (Unlicensed)
Jan 16, 2022
2 min read

  • If the team is large (6+ people), much of the work you do is just about arranging meetings and planning what you'll do in them.

  • Have a plan for how to keep engagement up in the last few months of the year and during exams.

    • It's not necessary to still be productive in the project during those times, but having study sessions or fun group events is still very helpful in keeping up interest in the project and helping everyone feel like they aren't missing out on the project's progression.

    • After you don't work on a project (or at least talk to the people working on that project) for a few weeks, it becomes significantly harder to become involved again.

  • It could be helpful to have diversity of ideas and interests in different parts of the project, and play to every team member’s strengths.

  • There's a lot that you'll not know how to do properly (eg. setting up a CI/CD pipeline, testing, deploying, etc.), so consider asking ex-leads, ex-directors, etc.

  • Deadlines are necessary in almost any instance where you want to get things done. The project should not feel like an assignment to be rushed out the night before it's due, but any high-priority features should have expected delivery dates that the team agrees on.

  • Be aware that you'll tend to be very optimistic at the start of the year. Don't feel disappointed when you can only achieve a fraction of what you wanted to achieve - especially given the difficulty of the project.

    • Be realistic with how much you (and the new team members) can take on. Often, 2-3 commitments is enough to completely occupy all your time assuming you're very good at time management. Taking on more things will mean you'll constantly feel like you're not doing anything to a standard that you're happy with.

    • When choosing new team members, candidates who take initiative to do a lot of things are impressive, but that also means it's very hard for them to find time to spend on the project.

  • With 2 team leads, some possibilities are to

    • Have 1 lead focus on 1 half of the project (eg. visualiser, content).

    • Alternate with the responsibility of arranging and facilitating the next meeting.

    • Split between technical and people management.