Last November a change was made to the composition of our development teams.  I had been working as a team lead since the previous March and things were going really well.  But a gap in the department was identified and I was asked to change roles to fill it.   My new title became “Software Engineer – Agile Delivery Lead”, yes it is a mouthful but it encompasses what I do.   Almost 6 months later I have settled into my new role and we have been slowly defining what that means for our teams, department, org, and myself.   I’m still working on what my duties entail.   For right now I have identified a list of responsibilities that are on my plate and we prioritized them based on how much I can help by performing each role.  As with anything, it changes constantly.

#1 Team Support:  Keeping the teams moving and the work steadily flowing onto our production systems is the first priority that I have on my plate.  I currently work directly with 2 development teams and keep my ears open for what 3 others are working on.  This includes activities such as Daily Standups, Weekly retrospectives, quarterly retrospectives, team velocity reporting, and managing the “Coming Soon” part of the team backlogs.

#2 Product Manager Support:  Working with the product managers to help to research potential improvements to the systems and start scoping out the work.   Research, reporting, epic/ticket creation, determining order of the work to get done, backup for the team when the PMs are out, and reviewing the work completed.

#3 Senior Software Engineer: Utiliziing my skills as a Sr. SE in the department to help move the platform forward.   Estimating, documentation, cross-training, code reviews, backup for Engineering Leads, architecture, and special projects.

#4 Department support:  Helping upper management with keeping a pulse on the various teams and making sure things are flowing smoothly.  Team velocity reporting, department velocity reporting, process research & implementation, and help to manage engineering needs backlogs.

#5 Personal Projects:  Continue to grow my own skills and knowledge by doing projects that will help the team, department, and company work more smoothly.