"A poor leader: the people fear. A good leader: the people love. A great leader: the people say, "we did it ourselves." -Sun Tzu
A project lead exemplifies the Dojo4 philosophy and operationalization of our mission. The following points should help...
- Being a lead means that it ships.
- Being a lead means listening.
- Being a lead means never letting your ego get in the way of what's best for the project and the team.
- Being a lead means you are constantly aware of the budget.
- Being a lead means that you have a mental mind-map of the whole damn thing. In your sleep. On Sunday. At 10:31 pm.
- Being a lead means that you plan your weekends and vacations around the project. You can hand it off. But you cannot just drop it.
- Being a lead means that you constantly upsell. At Dojo4 this just means looking for shit that needs or should be done, that we can excellently do, that the client isn't aware of. Sales at Dojo4 are normally just exchanging 'we can do' for 'you need to do' in the context of a running project. For Dojo4 sales this should should always represent acting in the client's best interest to see in advance, what your personal professional capacity allows you to see - that the client does not yet see.
- Being a lead means cutting the hell out of internal waste. You should fight, yell, and scream to reduce internal waste. We make money by being excellent and shipping code. Look for waste from the client's perspective and kill it dead. if you can reduce a project's spending from 100k to 10k just do it. They'll be back with other awesome projects.
- Being a lead means that you aggressively delegate and recruit when you can't do something yourself. You may have to fight for the resources you need.
- Being a lead means that you relish, and encourage, communication with the client whenever the client feels like it. Or, whenever and however you've agreed and patiently trained the client to communicate.
- Being a lead means that you identify with, care for, and empathize with, our clients. Their checks feed our families. And their ideas stimulate our own.
- Being a lead means that, when the shit hits the fan, you are responsible for making sure that the shit gets cleaned up and the fan is running smoothly.
- Being a lead means that you put it all into perspective: our projects seldom have lives hanging in the balance - you must manage your own relationship with the crises, real or perceived, that always, always occur in the lifecycles of technology production.
- Being a lead means setting the tone for the project and providing kind, encouraging and consistent leadership to everyone on your project team.
Not everyone wants to be a project lead.
Project leads don't want to captain every project they're involved with.
We need all kinds at Dojo4.
If you feel remotely uncomfortable being thrust into a 'lead' role on a project, or desperately desire that role on another project, talk with your team and adjust.
Everyone needs to be clear, comfortable, and capable in their roles.
Based on original by Ara Howard @drawohara: