Learnings from Tech Leading: Delivery

A while ago, I wrote about some takeaways from leading teams and reflected on the transition from IC to “Lead”.

One aspect of leading is the responsibility over delivery.

As an IC, I remember disliking “deadlines” because I felt like I was working towards someone else’s estimates and feeling disempowered. I felt like I understood “why” behind a project, but may not have contributed to owning “how” and “when”.

So I can empathise with developers if they feel like this and hopefully this post will provide some insights and techniques for everyone to feel empowered and understand how to meet their OKRs and delivery milestones.

What the delivery process might look like

I remember as a graduate, the software development process followed the Waterfall methodology. Teams would spend months gathering requirements and getting sign off, followed by analysis and design, then build, system testing, systems integration testing, and UAT. Then the product would be deployed in production and moved into BAU.

As I moved companies and as time went on, Scrum and other Agile methodologies were becoming in…