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5 Necessary traits of software development team leaders 1

5 Necessary traits of software development team leaders

Are you leading a software development team that’s been dragging lately? Or are you struggling to onboard new team members to expand the team?

These instances are not a reflection of a lack of technical acumen, but somewhat deficient developer soft skills. To be a software development team leader, you must understand that the role is not just about technical leadership but requires a balance of emotional intelligence and vision to see the larger picture. It is important to consider if you lack any essential developer traits to improve the functionality and morale of the team, which is causing discord between you and the team.

In this article, we cover the top 5 software development leadership skills that will help you succeed in your role as a team leader.

1. Effective communication

Great leaders communicate well, and software development team leaders are no exceptions. You cannot succeed in your role if you cannot keep team members with the least effort. At every step of development, you will have to make team members understand what they need to do when facing a challenge. Also, you have to create an open, safe environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas.

As a team leader, the onus will be on you to ensure that the team is not wasting time on unnecessary communications. Focus on developing great communication channels utilizing tools like Slack. Minimize team meetings to the necessary to save time and energy that can help increase productivity. Also, facilitate team collaboration through tools like Asana, Jira, and Trello.

2. Customer-centric

Modern software development is more people-driven and value-driven than a bland set of processes and documentation. Team leaders must keep a customer-centric mentality and focus on the client and the end-user when guiding their teams throughout product development.

Businesses look at software developer team leaders to effectively transform their customer requirements into software development tasks. To achieve this, the software development team must have a customer-centric approach. It will help them anticipate the end user’s requirements and needs and create satisfactory results.

As a team leader, you must ensure that your software development team keeps the customer at the front and center through all the software development phases.

3. Delegation

As a software development team leader, one of the crucial roles will be to delegate the tasks to the right individuals. It is easier than it sounds. The art of delegation requires team leaders to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the team members to assign tasks to developers most suited for the job. Focus on getting to know each team member on an individual level. 

For instance, take note of which developers are good with frontend tasks and who can perform backend development roles more efficiently. When you assign tasks to team members based on their abilities, you encourage them to work at their best. This increases overall team productivity and positively impacts the team’s confidence.

A team leader is a delegator at their best. They help their team recognize their strengths and shortcomings through delegation.

4. Deep technical knowledge

In software development, you cannot rely on the whole “if you can’t do, teach” mentality. You cannot leave the development tasks for the developers in the team to figure out. Instead, you must know the entire tech stack inside and out. Deep technical knowledge is another essential trait for software development team leaders. Specifically, your expertise must lie in design, development, implementation, debugging, testing, and deployment.

Ultimately, your role is to ensure complex coding tasks are completed as per standards and the final product is delivered by the deadline. It also requires tech leaders to keep up with the emerging technologies to anticipate what tech should be part of a stack to have the most satisfactory results.

5. Emotional intelligence

A person’s emotional intelligence is their ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions. It is a crucial developer soft skill that a team leader must possess.

According to Wikipedia, “People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.”

When you are leading a software team, you will have to recognize, manage and handle varying emotions originating within your team. While your technical knowledge will help guide developers in the team when they’re faced with a challenge, to manage the overall team efficiently, you must be adept at managing human emotions.

For software development team leaders, emotional intelligence is an important trait that helps them understand what the clients want, empathize with the challenges they face, and motivate individual developers in the team to deliver the best results.

Conclusion

Being a good team leader isn’t easy. It’s one of the most challenging roles in software development. It is a role that requires much more than technical skills. To succeed, you need leadership qualities to encourage a team of developers to learn, grow, tackle challenges, and communicate well while allowing them to make mistakes in a safe environment. Ensure you have all the traits listed above before taking up a leadership role.

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Zaiba Fathima

Zaiba Fathima

Zaiba is Talent500's Product business analyst. Her degree in Computer Science helps her decipher the requirements of the product-engineering team, and understand both sides of the picture. Central to product development and delivery, Zaiba aspires to become a product manager at a young age and a director of the product team at rapid speed.

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