When I started in IT the roles were clearly separated. Business Analysts wrote requirements, Systems Analysts designed systems, Architects designed them, Programmers wrote the code and then spent weeks of their life engaged in the soul-crushing activity known as integration. In some organisations Testers would test the software and write reports. Cross-disciplined Analyst-Programmers were a rare and valuable commodity.
Over the last decade or so we have seen a shift towards “generalising specialists”, programmers who, as well as designing and building great software, can understand a business domain, design a user interface, participate in and automate some of the testing and deployment activities, and who are sometimes even responsible for the health and wellbeing of their own systems in production.
To succeed in this new world requires more than “3 years of C# programming”. The modern lead developer needs to be constantly reinventing themselves, learning, and helping others to do the same. In this session, Dan explores some of the skills and characteristics of the modern lead developer, and suggests some ways you can grow them for yourself.