RapidDelivery

After working on both startups and large tech companies I can say that there are a lot of differences between them. However, one of the biggest difference I noticed is the speed of delivery. In startups the goal is to deliver stuff as fast as possible, ideally before running out of money :D, while in big companies, although this is also preached, in reality it can be quite challenging to achieve it.

There can be many reasons for this disparity: from unnecessary bureaucracy that slows down development, to large consensus that must be achieved before making decisions or simply because people are not compelled to deliver their A game in an established and stable company.

In the last scenario I feel that tech leads can play a crucial role in pushing their teammates to deliver faster while maintaining the quality standards high. This does not mean making their teammates work over-time but rather help them become more pragmatic and incisive in the work they do, and creating a sense of urgency that sometimes lacks in big tech companies.

In Agile based companies I feel that sprints can contribute a lot for these issues. Because people will only feel obligated to deliver what was signed-off in the beginning of the sprint. The tendency is for that work to spread across the sprint even if half of the sprint was enough to do it. Or in the worst case scenario we could have carryovers from sprint to sprint because of a low sense of urgency.

This is where I think that tech leads could have a major contribute to help change mindsets and create this sense of urgency. The time that will be saved could then be applied in a multitude of ways such as training, addressing tech-debt, analyze and propose system improvements or in pulling other work related to the project being developed in order to under-promised and over-deliver :)

If the tech lead can make other teammates to acquire this mindset and they themselves help disseminate it, it can be a game changer. It can lead teams to the next level in terms of performance.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers!