Hi, I’m looking for advice or comments.
So I’m really good at my job and recently I got promoted to lead developer.
However, this hasn’t been completely beneficial for me.
Basically, the team dynamic is everyone comes to me for help/ideas/when they’re stuck and I try to help as best as I can because I don’t mind it.
But this causes my work to not get done or get delayed. And my scrum master who is sort of a micromanager keeps pressing me to get things done and is not very understanding of the situation. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do? I feel too much pressure right now.
Sarah:
In my professional experience, the basic goal of the lead developer is to keep everyone moving forward. I faced almost the exact same problem when I was promoted to a lead developer, where I felt like my focus was only on helping others.
Your scrum master should have a calculated velocity of 0 for every sprint. You’re a high-level thinker now and you’ve got to unblock your team and make sure everyone else is moving forward. You’re not an individual contributor anymore. I’d advise you to pick up small tasks to help out if/where you can, but anything that is more than 15-30 minutes, you should be assigned to another developer. You’ll find that your days are going to transition to meetings and calls with others. If you’re doing the lead position correctly, you won’t have hours of open time during the day to sit down and focus on medium/large dev tasks.
Also, set realistic expectations with your scrum master. You’re a team leader now, you have a say in everything involving the team. Don’t let your scrum master push you around.