Do you Really Want to Be a Development Team Leader?
Hopefully most will have actually considered the change of role and be looking for new challenges and ways to contribute more to their chosen profession. However, for some this is an automatic response to a question that is particularly difficult to answer in an industry with no clear career path. For others it's simply a way to move up the pay scale.
Before you start talking to your manager or applying for your next job it's worth considering what you're getting yourself into. Depending on where you work there will be different definitions of a Development Team Leader (DTL). To put this post in perspective this is my interpretation,
A Development Team Leader is someone who owns the technical delivery of a solution. They need to understand the business drivers behind the project and be able to lead a team of Developers to realise these drivers in working software.They are (IMHO) the central player in a project team and need to maintain excellent communication with all members of the team from Client to Developers and everyone in between.
I tend to distinguish between what I call a Senior Developer (SD) and a DTL. A SD is someone who still does the tasks of a developer but does them really well and has lots of experience. They don't tend to have the added responsibilities of a DTL. DTL's often (but not necessarily) have a SD background.
