Group Technical Lead
A useful Role and Role Name to think about in Technology Organisations.
I recently read Inspired (2008) by Marty Cagan to help improve my Product knowledge. In the book the Group Product Manager role is defined as an advanced position in the Product Management track.
…The GPM is the actual product manager for one product team, but in addition, she is responsible for the development and coaching of a small number of additional product managers (typically 1–3 others).
While the Director of Product Management may have product managers that work across many different areas, the GPM model is designed to facilitate tightly coupled product teams…
I recently wrote about the 4 types of management in product teams: product, delivery, technology and (engineering) people management — and I think that the Group role is relevant across all. These positions certainly already commonly exist in technology organisations but they aren’t often identified and labeled as such. I think it’s good to give a good concept a good name where possible.
The Group Technical Lead is a role that lets us take maximal advantage of a senior technical leaders ability in some cases. It is fairly well-understood that it’s difficult to plan, coordinate and collaborate efficiently in teams with more than around 10 engineers. So at this point or before we split teams in some logical way. Group Technical Leadership and other forms of Group Leadership can bridge the standard intra-team coordination and collaboration gaps / overheads / inefficiencies where teams need or want to be very closely aligned in various ways or even coupled.
I believe this is the right way to get teams of 20~ engineers to work closely together with minimal inefficiency. It obviously requires a strong Group Technical Lead along with strong Senior Engineers to act as technical leads in the sub-teams or otherwise provide strong leadership across the Group to bolster the links between the teams.
For delivery the Technical Program Manager is already pretty well aligned with this concept. It could just as well be Group Delivery Manager.
For engineering management the Group Engineering Manager role would be the place you find yourself as you enter senior management managing a hybrid of senior individual / team contributors and other engineering managers.
