What mistakes can a technical team lead avoid?

A technical team lead (CTO) is a must in companies with tech profiles. But that only in software development businesses. Though his role is to prevent and fix technical issues, he/she cannot solve problems independently.

Tech it is looked upon as being related to a form of divinity, the contemporary century pragmatic messiah. And obviously, it has deeply altered humankind’s course. While many articles focus on innovation and new technologies, or the effect of it, there’s hardly any that focus on the context of embracing it, in the technological development of any kind of projects, from travel software to IoT systems or enterprise software. In the same way, as with the celestial matters, there are just a few that can logically treat new technologies or assessing it properly.

Technical team leaders understand that transformation is systemic

Technology itself, or even a designated technical team lead, will not save a company, business, or neighborhood. The key is really in systemic change, and comprehensive analysis of the information, before having any expectations from new technologies. Since the chief pioneer of software technology was a woman, Margaret Hamilton, our software would perhaps look otherwise if women wouldn’t have emancipated. Likewise, if your company isn’t prepared for change, the newest technologies that are going to revolutionize the firm will fail to deliver the expected outcomes.

That is the reason many businesses fail at very basic measures, while everything is preventable.

As a result, Sven Blumberg, Thomas Delaet, and Kartikeya Swami of McKinsey concluded that there are at least ten technology antipatterns. And by that, they mean ineffective remedies for issues. These aim to assist businesses, that mostly rely upon a technical team lead, to stop potential catastrophes, through specific guidance.

Here are a few of the anti-patterns they’ve found:

• decision-makers not entirely aware of a technological decision’s consequences out of fear of looking bad when they ask the basic questions
• adopting a particular technology due to tendencies rather than following the assessed needs
• not taking the process gradually, when embracing new technologies
• when the tech goal doesn’t meet the company’s objective
• treating IT solely from a price point of view can prove to be a very costly one
• outsourcing the main parts of the business that might lead to high vulnerabilities
• gifted tech employees placed in a control position then can lose contact with their technical part of the leadership

Since technological progress is speeding up, it has an overwhelming impact. This also contributes to certain emotional consequences that ultimately influence the decision-making procedure. A technical team lead cannot be responsible for all changes and difficulties that technology brings. Frequently, the issue lies in blindly believing or overestimating the worth of new technologies and consequently creating unmeetable expectations.