Typical mistakes novice technical director in IT - expert opinion

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From some employees of IT companies you can still hear this remark: “I don’t quite understand the exact value of the Technical Director position”. As one of “Toaster” users noted in a very simple form, “CTO is a technical person who understands something in business”. If we consider this concept a little more broadly, then we can say that it balances at the intersection between the development of IT products with a team of technical specialists and the adoption of business decisions together with managers.

Accordingly, for professionals who want to take the position of technical director in IT, there are at least two ways:
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1. standard - “Developer -> Senior -> Team lead -> CTO”;
2. humanitarian - “PM -> Senior PM -> CTO”.

Of course, in the case of the second option, it may be more difficult to understand the technical details of the technical director.

But having achieved the desired, in general, an experienced specialist goes into the category of beginners. He becomes a sort of Junior-CTO and faces new challenges.

We asked experts to tell you about the mistakes and pitfalls awaited by the new technical directors in the IT field.

Victor Shaburov, entrepreneur, investor and one of the founders of Looksery Inc., Handster Inc. and SPB Software

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes with deadlines?

This is a typical mistake of almost all stations from the CIS - they try to show themselves as the most effective, that they can do everything quickly. I do not even struggle with this - it is useless. Just double their deadlines in my assessments.

What cases can you remember?

Yes, it is 100% of cases. Sometimes it is possible to explain the SRT that he himself needs to double the time when you give the top, but the team does not speak. The command to drive according to the initial plan - then it turns out to be done in time.

How important is this to you?

It does not matter, because I have already entered Zen and have accepted this as an inevitable natural phenomenon. Just need to double their deadlines.

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes in setting and distributing tasks among employees?

In principle, I was lucky to always work with good service stations. They probably were often mistaken, but they were well watched. A couple of days can be seen if the tasks are distributed incorrectly, and they solved this problem.

How important is this to you?

If the SRT closely monitors the work - this is not a problem, you can quickly fix it.

Which specialists are more affected by technical director errors? Testers, developers, project managers? What cases can you remember?

Pah-pah - all the stations I worked with were excellent. Handster (and then Opera Software) Alex Reshetko were especially lucky - he first needed to launch the Hewlett Packard Appstore for the New Year, and later the Opera Appstore again for the New Year, both projects in a couple of months. The whole team stood on their ears during the holidays, no one drank or slept.

We rolled out the appstores to the multi-million dollar base, it was very scary both times - but the launches were excellent. Opera Appstore for the year grew to 100M monthly users.

Do you perceive the mistakes of a novice technical director as miscalculations of a senior comrade or as incompetence of a manager? Will the team be able to "educate / grow" a technical director?

Technical competence a person can gain. But the responsibility should be initially - if it is not there, you must immediately change the person, it is not grown. This is usually seen in the interview.

What cases can you remember?

The most striking case is probably Yuri Monastyrshin, who led the technical side of Looksery. Responsibility was very high and the right approach to all problems - they need to be addressed now.

It is still a mystery to me how he (being a student of the 5th year) coped with the creation of a project that hundreds of millions of people now use and which generates several billion views a day.

Dmitry Shashlov, iOS developer:

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes with deadlines? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

“Since ancient times in Russia” they began to mark the date with a deadline, having shown the result to which, everyone around will just squeak on how cool and clear you have done everything and passed. With all of this, for some reason, all the Mylston towns also became deadlines in an unknown way and if they didn’t fit in, then write was gone, everyone was finished, the tender was lost and no one would ever work with us anymore.

Going beyond the originally set deadlines is natural for most of the tasks on the market (you start working only on TK?), You just need to be able to properly analyze and argue why you went out of deadlines, what factors influenced this, and what measures were taken to repeat situations similar to this, later did not happen.

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes in setting and distributing tasks among employees? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

The teams in which I have worked most of all are 80% of technicians up to 30, among which the following reactions to the formulation of the problem are quite common:

- A. “I do not feel confident in a task I have never done before.”

- B. “Roll up the site? Great, I'll figure out how to parse on Perl at the same time. ”

- C. “Making joins by tables is for youngsters, give me some normal task already!”

- D. “Will the form be a validator?” If not - 8 hours, if it is, then 10-12. "

And then - the constructor: where it is necessary to investigate by the forces of B, it would be irrational to use D, by virtue of his rational calculation; if you give a friend A a help with C - but the first one will be charged, and the second one will stop itching. So, probably, the most important thing is not to be indifferent, and apply ingenuity.

Which specialists are more affected by technical director errors? Testers, developers, project managers? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

If the technical director has enough management experience, then all tasks whose solution can lead to errors that are critical for the further process are usually delegated to technical staff engaged in the direct execution of the task (or their team leaders) - as a result, these same employees suffer from their own decisions.

Here, much depends on the organizational level at which decisions are made - in various situations both individual employees (made a decision that is close to themselves, regardless of the context in which a decision is required) can “suffer”, and the whole team (the technical assignment was transferred to insufficient amount of initial data, attention was not paid to some important points for implementation, management was carried out without an understanding of the necessary product sales sequentially).

But, of course, it is important not to be able not to make mistakes, but to be able to extract the right conclusions from them: what was the planning error, which employees should be given more / less freedom to decide which test should be used to test the implementation hypothesis and so on.

Do you perceive the mistakes of a novice technical director as miscalculations of a senior comrade or as incompetence of a manager?

The assessment is purely subjective, it all depends on what role the CTO plays in what you are working on: it is unlikely that you will treat Mr. Bring and Bring as your elder comrade; on the contrary, when you have a feeling that the CTO is also a participant in the process and the benefits that it brings directly to your production process are tangible, and, importantly, you, as a technical officer, feel that in "this Jedi there is more power" - you penetrate to such a leader with respect and begin to perceive your failures as common. There is, however, the risk of a story on the cover, and then break off badly - then this is an experience in your own piggy bank of the ability to read people.

Will the team be able to "educate / grow" a technical director? What cases can you remember?

More likely no than yes. But to make it stronger, only the team can.

Victor Rpsl Announcer. Man Orchestra.

Hello everyone, first of all I would like to emphasize that our world is multifaceted, and you can not make hasty conclusions about the mistakes or incompetence of managers. If you occupy different positions, then you have different belltowers, and the view from them opens. Often those omissions that seem to be a miscalculation at the moment can be useful in the long run or dictated by business.

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes with deadlines? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

I can not remember the stories when the technical director would be greatly mistaken with the timing of the execution of tasks. Any boss has a good experience in the positions of the developer, and he knows how to solve problems, what tools to use and how much time it may take. Usually, if the task is set with a clear deadline, then tech. always he himself lays a “buffer” of time, plus coordinates the execution of the task with the performer. Such an approach always ensures the execution of tasks within a specified timeframe, if the task is material, and not a “research” plan.

How often does a novice technical director make mistakes in setting and distributing tasks among employees? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

If we talk about the distribution of tasks among employees, then mistakes happen much more often. Very often I have seen, when tasks were distributed according to the principle “you already did this, you would do it faster”. Again, this is a mistake or not, you can debate for a long time, but in the long run this results in the fact that the team loses its understanding of the system and all become specialists in their narrow profile, unable to work with the other components of the system.

In my work, I prefer to shuffle tasks between performers and try to avoid people who are considered the “feature owner”, this approach allows everyone to be aware of everything, have a multi-faceted look at various components, and the atmosphere in the team improves.

Which specialists are more affected by technical director errors? Testers, developers, project managers? What cases can you remember? How important is this to you?

His subordinates suffer the most from the mistakes of managers, because they have to rake what happened. This applies to both the promises of the timing, and the choice of the wrong tools or approaches. It is important not to confuse this with situations when the chosen solution was suitable, and then new requirements appeared. This is a normal situation, it is the work that needs to be done, and not planning errors.

From my practice, I have only one moment in my memory that for many years, I remember persuading my technical director to change the standards and switch to git from svn and to idea from netbeans. All my attempts were broken against the wall of misunderstanding and the statement that "these tools do not give anything new, absolutely the same thing can be done in current ones, which means there is no sense in changing platforms."

Do you perceive the mistakes of a novice technical director as miscalculations of a senior comrade or as incompetence of a manager?

Personal perception of the mistakes of others is a very subjective thing, it depends on the people between whom this process takes place and their relationship. Some will rejoice at failures, others will empathize.

Will the team be able to "educate / grow" a technical director? What cases can you remember?

The team absolutely must educate their boss, just as the boss must educate his subordinates. There is no healthy relationship in life, in which one is the business and others are not. I do not want to go deep into the behavioral factors, but any boss, technical director or team leader, must be a kind of “mother to the goose” for his subordinates.

It is not necessary to be with each best friend, but it is very important not to fend off the team and always communicate with people, both with everyone together, and with everyone face to face.

I remember when I was a timlid for the first time, I usually decided to go to lunch with each of my subordinates at least once a month so that we could have a heart-to-heart talk. I could tell about the processes that occur in the company and what is planned in the near future, and the guys could discuss with me those things that they do not want to voice at all or in chat rooms. There are a lot of books on this subject, for example, “How to shepherd cats”, they describe all this much better than I can state.

Thanks for attention.

PS

Hopefully, the statements of experts have pushed someone to interesting conclusions. Someone may have recognized themselves in their stories, and someone was convinced that he is doing everything right. In any case, the success or failure of projects is not determined by the number of errors of technical directors, but by the end result of the overall work. From this point of view, the “infallibility” of the CTO seems to be a secondary factor.