I had two calls today with different types of leads (hence the pronoun switch in the opening paragraph) and both of them impressed me with their understanding of leadership in the team context.  The goal of the lead is to get to the right answer for the tough problems using the best information and resources available.

Some leads are thought leaders.  “Let me go off and think on this one a bit.”  Other leads are researchers and consensus builders.  “Let me get with our UI developer and designer and see if we can’t find a solution.”  Still other leads are coaches, which is one of my favorite types.

I am familiar with the recruiting practices of some of the larger software companies in the valley and have noticed that several of them seem to be only recruiting leads and leadership personalities.  Some top-notch engineers slipped through the cracks because the process did not account for teams and different leadership styles.  Put another way, while I love a good lead, the best teams I have managed were great because everyone executed their role well.  Michael Jordan starting winning championships when he started passing more.

I created the follow graphic to illustrate what I mean.  Please, no jokes about this not being a pyramid though I do love a good pyramid too!

The image shows various roles on a project.  Typical challenges, issues or areas of functionality you might encounter are listed in the center.  This team might be used to develop and deploy a large-scale application in a hosted environment. Your team make-up might be different, for example, smaller development teams often have one lead/architect/data architect.

Take integration in the lower left as a good example for how this chart works.  Programming interfaces can be very detailed and time-consuming to learn. Server engineers tend to be more disciplined and focused. Also, you should use the same person who designed the integration to implement the solution to limit the learning curve to one person. You need the system admin to work on protocols and security issues. As another example, user stories often come together from a collaboration between design and development teams.

You now see the challenge if you hire only leads for your teams.  We can set aside all the comments like “too many chefs spoil a meal” or “too many chiefs and not enough Indians” if you like.  Simply put, the best people to solve problems might be those who actually prefer not to be in leadership positions.  You’ll end up with a treasure trove of people who might be really into the minutia of data or very interested in understanding how systems communicate with each other.  The best teams are filled with diversity and overlapping interests.

The lead is essential and the best ones form the foundation of a strong team.  Once you have that person, your best bet is to surround him with specialists, experts and code jockeys who all understand their role in the team dynamic well.

One of the things I like most about near shore development is getting to know people all around the world. This month, I have projects with team members in Argentina, Peru and Costa Rica. As a person interested in both technology and the world, I am grateful to have found a way to combine them both. And by the way, I am showing it is 1 AM in Argentina and the guy is still going. What a rock star!

While I wait to look things over, I am playing poker in facebook, perusing contacts in LinkedIn for business where I just requested to join the Intuit Alumni group, and started a download of the first season of Lost into my iPhone for my upcoming trip to see my sister in NY.

My engineer wants an iPhone. I tell him the quality is not so good but we agree the device is cool anyways. Then he introduces me to the Jawbone Blue-tooth borg ear phone and the video alone convinces me I need to have it too. Turn about is fair trade so I point him to thinkgeek.com and the 2 Gig USB drive watch I bought the other week for $30. Looking around my desk, in addition to the multitude of computers, I observe a sea of thumb drives, USB hubs, think geek devices, and wonder if maybe I should admit I have a problem.

I decide I need a new movie for my trip and buy Cloverfield instead.

While he’s waiting for a job to finish, we discuss github which he wants to use for source code control. I am open to considering this. So he sends me a YouTube link to listen to Linus Torvalds discuss his creation. We like the idea of combining EngineYard, github and RallyDev (we’re not exactly in agreement on this last one so he tries to persuade me to look at Lighthouse) in one suite of Software as a Service tools for managing a project. This seems like a very effective approach to me. I agree to look at it later.

In case you are not keeping track, the technologies and related topics we have hit in just the last 30 minutes of our Skype session include: Ruby on Rails, iGoogle, facebook, LinkedIn, Blue-tooth, Jawbone, Apple, iTunes, iPhone, USB, Intuit, YouTube, Linus Torvalds, EngineYard, github, RallyDev, SaaS, Lighthouse, and Skype

I have two minds about this (I am a gemini after all): first, this is really fun to be in the middle of such a dynamic, evolving and exploratory industry; second, how can we all possibly stay up on everything that is happening in all this industry???

I guess the answer lies in late night Skype sessions waiting for builds. But I know in the next week, a client or prospect will ask me about the latest JDK, virtualization, cloud computing, Ning, something like that, and I will be back again Googling the Web trying to keep up on the latest trends and changes. That is what I think defines a geek. Not if you do this, but do you enjoy it?

After finishing this post, we had a really funny exchange in Skype I thought to add. It really captures the essence of my point this evening:

ARCHITECT
java isn’t full oo language
you allways fall on the primitives
and all oo goes to the hell
with generics java adds some dynamic
but still you need to write to much code

ME
Yes. If you get just wood, you really need a good architect to build a good house

ARCHITECT
yes, but, you cannot build a house of ice at africa

ME
Now THAT is funny.