This job revolves around a person who can competently allocate resources to obtain an effective solution to the tasks assigned to the team. What functional responsibilities are assigned to the leader, what career prospects he/she has.
What features does the team leader profession have?
Right from the very job title, it becomes clear that the team leader is a “locomotive”, the driving force of a team that is busy solving one common task. Each team includes people with different personalities, abilities, and responsibilities. Even if each employee conscientiously fulfills his/her duties but does not coordinate his/her actions with other team members, it will be quite difficult to achieve impressive results.
A team leader organizes and coordinates the actions of all team members, understands the technical part of web development, motivates each employee, and controls every stage of the product creation process. At the same time, this worker communicates with the executives and customers while being responsible for the team’s success and failure. During the development process, a team leader is the main link between the developers, the customer, and the company’s management.
The main duties of a team leader
As a rule, experienced developers become team leaders who can find a mistake in the work of a subordinate and correct it in time. A team leader is not engaged in the development himself/herself due to the lack of time that is spent on planning, prognosis, organizing, and optimizing the process. In addition, it is necessary to distribute the workload and time among team members, considering the skills and abilities of each. And this is far from all that the team leader does during his/her working hours.
Since a team leader is responsible for the entire project, he/she must see what the final result should look like and be aware of everything that is happening at the moment: what errors have arisen, how to correct them, and who should do it. A team leader evaluates the volume and scale of work, budget, and deadlines for completing tasks. Based on this, the company sets its priorities and plans various tasks.
One of the key aspects of success is the human factor. A team leader needs to find an approach for everyone, to see what motivates each individual and the team as a whole. In order for the team to follow his/her instructions, this specialist should be tough enough in his/her decisions and remember to be flexible where necessary. He/she should listen to the ideas and suggestions of subordinates and reasonably refute unsuccessful ones. Only such an approach will allow him/her to earn the respect of his/her colleagues.
A team leader participates in the selection of employees for the team and is present at interviews. On behalf of the entire team, the leader communicates with the customer, signs contracts, and works with reporting documentation. Besides that, his/her competence includes finding a compromise between the customer’s needs and the team’s capabilities.
7 basic requirements for a team leader from an employer
Now, it’s clear what a team leader does, who he/she is, and why he/she is needed. With such fairly serious responsibilities, a candidate for the position must have the necessary skills and abilities. The analysis of vacancies shows that employers require the following things from the applicants in most cases:
- At least 5 years of experience in the IT field;
- basic analytical skills;
- ability to make quick and simple decisions in stressful situations;
- knowledge of programming languages, server technologies, scalability of web projects, and task scheduling;
- the ability to effectively distribute tasks within the team and consider each member’s opinion;
- knowledge of the rules of negotiation and conflict resolution;
- the ability to plan, effectively distribute tasks, plan a budget, maintain reporting documentation, and perform testing of the finished product;
- the ability to see possible risks and consider them when planning;
- the ability to form, train, and skillfully motivate a team to achieve the goal.
This is not a complete list of all the requirements that an employer can apply to an applicant. There may be others, and they depend on the area of the future project. In addition, it is also important to have personal qualities, such as responsibility, creativity, punctuality, patience, determination, stress resistance, etc.
Functional responsibilities of the team leader position
If you aim to get a job in a company and work as a team leader, you’ll be responsible for functional responsibilities that can be divided into three groups:
- Interaction with the customer. This includes negotiating, signing contracts, receiving a business task from the customer, and its subsequent processing into a statement of work for programmers and other team members;
- Working with a team includes all the actions that are necessary to achieve the goal. First, it is vital to assess the team members’ abilities and distribute the workload according to the possibilities and deadlines. Besides that, the leaders should allocate the budget, set priorities, be able to motivate and inspire subordinates, develop the project architecture, and organize the exchange of knowledge and experience. In other words, they should do everything to provide customers with the ordered product and secure a reasonable reward for a team.
- Reporting to management. A team leader maintains documentation and is responsible for the project team, for its progress on the planned work, and for meeting deadlines.
Pros and cons of the profession
To better understand who a team leader is, let’s highlight the job’s main positive and negative aspects.
| Pros | Cons |
| High demand in the labor market | Irregular working hours |
| Good salary | Frequent occurrence of stressful situations |
| Career prospects | High level of responsibility |
| Opportunity to develop and gain new knowledge and experience. The IT industry is extremely tough to handle without self-development. So, in order to lead a team and see mistakes, you need to know more than the team members |
Despite the negative aspects, the position of team leader has quite significant advantages. If you have leadership qualities, you know how to communicate with people, set goals, and achieve them, then why not try yourself as a Team Leader? On the LC Work job search site, you can find vacancies that may be of interest to both experienced team leaders and novice specialists.
What it takes to be a team leader
Getting a position as a team leader without any work experience is pretty much impossible. Besides extensive knowledge and practical skills, you will need experience in the area where you plan to work.
If you plan your future in advance, you should choose areas related to computer science and programming even at the stage of entering a higher educational institution. In addition, it is necessary to know how to work with human resources and manage them effectively.
After receiving the appropriate education, you need to work as a programmer for several years. You should constantly learn, show initiative, demonstrate leadership qualities, and take responsibility while working. Oftentimes, developers who have grown to the Senior level at their job move to the position of a team leader.
Remember that technical knowledge is not all you need to manage a team. After all, you will have to work with people; hence, basic knowledge of psychology, management, and effective planning will be useful. All this knowledge can be acquired either through specialized training or through self-education. A lot of good and helpful literature has been written on these topics, and it can help you improve your educational level and become an excellent leader.
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