Ted Neward on Development Leadership - Episode 135

This week Jeffrey is joined by a fantastic return guest, Ted Neward! Ted is the Director of Technology Culture at Quicken Loans (where he has held several previous positions at). He is a self-described geek who takes great pride and joy in making other geeks into bigger and better (and hopefully more highly rewarded) geeks. Having recently stepped into a management role, Ted has been looking for more and more ways to leverage his skills as a "force multiplier" across his entire team to not only better the team itself — but the entire organization as a whole.   In the conversation with Ted today, he and Jeffrey talk all about development leadership and stepping into a managing position. How do you become a better leader? What can you do as a manager to bump up the effectiveness of your team? What does it really mean to be a team lead? How do you measure if your current plan and strategies are actually effective? What are the should-do’s and the should-not do’s of leading a team? Tune in to find out!   Topics of Discussion: [:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes. [:50] About The Azure DevOps Podcast, Clear Measure, the new podcast Architect Tips, and Jeffrey’s offer to speak at virtual user groups. [1:20] About today’s episode with Ted Neward! [1:35] Jeffrey welcomes Ted back to the podcast! [4:00] Ted introduces himself and shares about his current role with Quicken Loans. He also explains what Quicken Loans does and what some of his previous roles looked like. [9:18] How they measure the productivity of their developers at QL. Ted also shares advice on how you can determine if a program or activity is successful. [14:23] What can a manager do to bump up the effectiveness of their team? [18:54] What it really means to be a team lead. [19:59] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast’s sponsor: Clear Measure. [20:29] Why “rewriting” and replacing everything is almost NEVER the answer. [27:29] Why do we keep making the same mistakes? [28:30] What many development teams don’t understand. [29:38] How often do teams make true architectural decisions? [32:11] Talking reactionary architectural changes. [34:27] Why you don’t want to teach your team an entirely new programming language. [41:01] Jeffrey thanks Ted for joining the podcast! [41:15] Ted shares some resources, advice, and how you can personally get in touch with him.   Mentioned in this Episode: Architect Tips — New video podcast! Azure DevOps Clear Measure (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook! Jeffrey Palermo’s Youtube Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! The Azure DevOps Podcast’s Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow The Azure DevOps Podcast Ep. 30: “Ted Neward on the ‘Ops’ Side of DevOps” Ted Neward’s LinkedIn @TedNeward on Twitter Blogs.TedNeward.com Neward & Associates “The Simple Idea That Became Intel’s Secret Weapon Against Motorola” “Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking” The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick Brooks Jr. George Santayana Quicken Loans [email protected]  The Azure DevOps Podcast Ep. 134: “Sudhanva Huruli on Azure Sphere”   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.