How to move from a Developer to a Technical Leader role

1 Point Contributor

If you think you enjoy what you do and it’s a wishful thinking to move to a Technical Leadership role, ignore reading it further. If you feel you’re determined to move to the next level, welcome to the journey. There are many traits of a technology leader and a lot is written on this subject. To move from a developer to a technology leader, it’s critical to acquire technical, leadership, and business skills. Here are some basic steps:

1. What to explore as a developer (or a similar role):

  • Master a technical skills set: Learn all the deep technical skills in a single skills set. If you’re a backend developer, deep dive to know the limits of the backend solutions. The moment you start sharing your code and mentor new developers, it’s a good sign of advancement.
  • Move beyond a technical skills set: You explored your single skills to the best. Now is the time to look for opportunities to learn other technical skills. Find the opportunities to work on other similar technologies. If you’re a Java developer, find out what different capabilities a python stack developer has. If you’re an application developer in a non-ERP environment, find an opportunity to learn an ERP solution. 
  • Think beyond: Learn how other technical solutions interact with each other. How these technologies evolved over time? What should be the future of these technologies?

2. Find the opportunities to lead:

Look for the opportunities to lead a project, as a Project manager (PM) or a similar title. Project Management is a great role to learn below skills:

  • How to lead and communicate: As a technology leader, it’s important to learn how to lead people and how to manage systems. Learn how to help others to succeed in their career path. Learn how to lead the project for the end to end integration, without getting inside of the code. Learn how to communicate effectively with your stakeholders. As a PM, you’ll develop skills like decision making, taking the responsibility of a failure, and giving the credit to your team for the success of the technical solutions.
  • How to influence stakeholders: As a PM, it’s one of your prime responsibilities to influence your stakeholders. The unforgettable moments of joys as a PM are of a different kind. You can’t forget your preparation and the number of stakeholders you invited for a critical decision meeting. What a happiest moment when the majority of them agreed with a point of view, in favor of the project.
  • How your technical solution is funded: It’s important to understand why and how the funding is allocated for a technical solution. Is it important to fund it because you used the most innovative technical skills in it? Or, is it important because it solves a critical business problem?

3. Find the opportunities to learn a business domain:

As a technology leader, it’s critical to learn how your technical roadmap supports and aligns with the business needs. Here are some basic tips to begin learning business skills:

  • Stay curious: Ask the right questions. How a business function is established at first? To run the business, what systems are used? How the business has changed in the last decade? What’s the future of your business? How it can influence the technology landscape?
  • Get the training: Get the training on your business domain. It doesn’t have to be a formal training course.
  • Build the relationships: Making relationships with your business stakeholders has multi-dimensional positive outcomes to your journey of becoming a technical leader. You’ll gain more credibility among your business customers. You’ll learn their business terms. You’ll know their technical pain points. What do they like in their job? How do they make business decisions?

4. Final steps:

  • Review your progress: Decide the milestones for your journey. Review your progress every quarter. What did you learn in the last quarter? What are your goals for the next quarter?
  • Join forums and communities: Join the forums and communities to learn from other technology leaders and share what you learned.
  • Introspect: Are you enjoying the journey? It’s not an easy transition. But, you already made a decision and you love what you do. So, don’t look back. Stay on it. You’ll succeed if you don’t give up.

This article was originally published at LeadDev.com (https://leaddev.com/personal-development/three-skills-develop-becoming-engineering-leader)

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