What should be the differences between the team leader and team member in a internal development team?

Question

What kind of characters can promote the person more likely to be a leader in the team ?

Also, what do you think the responsibilities a leader should have?

Answer 1

Any leader should have following qualities:

• He should be technically sound
• He should be able to delegate work
• He should be able to show the way when people get stuck
• He should not very hesitent in trying something new
• He should be a good listener, respect other people's opinions and a good conflict resolver
• He should be respected by all the team members

Answer 2

It depends on what exactly you mean by "team leader" ;-p

I've seen places where there is a distinct split between the technical lead (who might have more accountability for technical decisions, design issues, the "go to guy" for coding snarls; etc), and the development lead, who is primarily a facilitator, with two main jobs:

• resolve any non-coding blockages that arise
• act as the main liaison to the client/customer/user-champion/whatever

i.e. anything to preserve those few precious golden hours of coding. They might also do some coding on the side, but that isn't their primary job.

Main skills of a technical lead:

• experience of the subject, product, APIs, language, etc
• understand impact of changes to the above
• ability to make technical decisions
• general code problem solving
• accountability
• good at explaining technical subjects
• a "perm"

Main skills of a development lead:

• communication
• people management
• knowledge of the client/etc
• time accounting
• ability to steer the development focus

Answer 3

Main qualities team members are looking for in programming team leader:

1. Technologically savvy.
2. Understanding of business domain.
3. Available and approachable.
4. Fair.
5. Gets along with people (good manners).

Main qualities management looks for in a programming team leader:

1. Commands respect of the team.
2. Business savvy.
3. Gets along with people (good manners).
4. Loyal to the company and company management.
5. Trustworthy.
6. Gets things done.
7. Gets others getting things done.
8. Technologically savvy.
9. Understands software development process.

Main qualities programming team members look for in other programming team members:

1. Not a jerk (has some manners).
2. Pulls own weight (reduces entropy, instead of contributing to it).
3. Not work shy.

Main qualities management looks for in programming team members:

1. Able to turn cash into working software which is worth more than the amount spent.

Answer 4

In short, the team leader should be the person who can give answers to all persons within and outside the team. (Even though that answer could be: you should ask <name> about that.) Thus, the Team Leader would be a person with good communication skills and enough experience to find the answers he needs. If he lacks technical knowledge, then he should at least know proper sources to quickly find the knowledge he's lacking.

And, of course, read the other answers to see the things he needs but more specified. :-)

Being a Team Leader means you'll be blamed for anything your team does wrong, but then again, you get praise when your team performs above expectations. Unfortunately, it's an ungrateful job since you'll have to deal with many failures (read: bugs in the product) all the time before things finally succeed. Being able to deal with criticism is the most important trait you'll need because you're the most hated person if your team's project is failing. (Because everyone will blame you for this, even your team members.)

But if you can make the team's work a success then WOW! :-)

Answer 5

The leader has better technical or communication skills than the rest of team members.

The responsibilities a leader should have are those that make the team members know what their responsabilities are.