This document discusses the role of a technical team leader in agile projects. It describes when Scrum works well for projects, such as those with stable teams developing codebases over many years. It also discusses when Scrum may not be suitable, like for short-term projects with fixed costs, schedules, and scopes. The technical team leader acts as a group player, specialist, and manager, providing technical leadership. Their responsibilities include infrastructure setup, prototyping, documentation, and code reviews when needed. The goal is to help the team grow their skills over time and avoid failures by preventing issues before they occur.

1. Technical Team
Leader
in Agile
Titas Lapinskas
t.lapinskas@ba.lt

2. 2
Shortly about
me

3. How do you like Agile?
3
• We are not using Scrum/We are planning on
using Scrum shortly
• Scrum works perfectly for us
• Scrum fails to help us to deliver projects on time

4. 4
When Scrum works
perfectly

5. When Scrum works perfectly
5
• Product development
process
• Long term (2-10+ years)
development on the same
codebase
• Static or very rarely
changing team
• They release after each
sprint, but release to
production is after some
set of functionality is
complete
• Ex. Banking system,
Online Shops, Content
Management Systems

6. Project management triangle
6

7. Scrum team lifecycle
7

8. Burndown history
8

9. 9
When Scrum
doesn’t work

10. When Scrum doesn’t work
10
• Short lived project
• Fixed price + fixed scope + fixed time
• Newly assembled team
• Usually one-time activity
• Classical project definition
• Ex. Migrating to SEPA payments, Switching to new
CRM system, Integrating new partner’s business
system into data exchange

11. Project management triangle
11

12. How customer understands agile
12

13. Burndown history
13

14. Who is Technical Team Leader?
14
• Group player• Technical
– Specialist
– All rounder
– Key person
• Soft skills
– Leadership
– Coaching
– Management

15. Start of the project
15
• Gather technical information
• Prepare infrastructure (Continuous integration,
dev/test environments)
• Select or adapt to the frameworks/tools
• Do some prototyping (proof of concept)
• Document all this
Survival kit / Survival guide

16. Let the team fail?
16
• Classical Scrum Master says : “Let the team fail”
• I say: “Don’t let the team fail, if you can prevent
that”
– Several failures in a row, makes that a habit
– New members quickly pick up traditions
– People start concentrating on what was bad instead
what must be done
• Never be afraid:
– Of new things and technologies
– Refactoring

17. Confidence
17
• Make the decisions:
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the
right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and
the worst thing you can do is nothing”
Theodore Roosevelt
– Sometimes timely made bad decision is better than long thought
good decision
– Experience helps to find balance
• “Selling to the team”:
– Believe yourself first

18. Team’s growth
18
• Team skills must grow as they do the project:
– One gets acquainted with technology/library while reading about
it, one learns technology/library while working with it
– Talk with people in advance about areas they want to grow
– It is much faster to learn from someone, comparing to learning
alone.
– Pass knowledge outside the team: conferences, blogs, knowledge-
sharing
• Team must grow as a team!
• “People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make
any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A

19. 19
To code or not to
code ?

20. To code or not to code ?
20
• Technical Team leader responsible for covering:
– Prototyping / Initial tackling with new components
– Working on extremely hard bug
– Provide on spot consulting/help with an issue
– Code reviews
if ( unit.getVendor().equals(“Cisco”) && unit.getType() ==
HARDWARE.SIDE_PANEL ) {
if ( unit.getType() == HARDWARE.SIDE_PANEL&&
unit.getVendor().equals(“Cisco”) ) {
• Paradox: “The stronger technical team leader is in

21. Technical Team Leader …
21
• Is a part of team:
– Fails together with the team, succeeds together with the
team
– He is not a superman, the team does the job
• Is not a replacement for a scrum master.
• Is not replacement for a product owner

22. How to deal with Technical Team
Leader?
22
• Technical team leader is a normal person:
– (S)he likes proactivity from team members
– Reacts very well to praises
– “Thank you” is a phrase everybody likes to hear
– There are unpleasant activities which (s)he likes to
avoid
– Hates overtime and failing projects
– Any other things good to other people

23. #enjoyIT
facebook.com/BalticAmadeus
linkedin.com/company/baltic-amadeus