Advance from team member to leader on your software development team - 10 Key Traits

How do you become a leader in a software organization?

In my experience, the qualities of a true leader don't vary much between work environments. This holds true from small startups with less than 10 employees to large companies with 100,000+ employees. I have worked in both extremes and had the pleasure of learning from many of these leaders.

I'd like to share my observation of ten of these qualities. While not every leader can be strong in all categories, I have seen all to be strong in a large subset. 

So, my top-ten list is...

• Devotion and Knack for Design and Architecture
• Attention to Quality
• Relentless and Effective Communicator
• Personal Excellence - constantly learning and growing
• Personal Integrity
• Innovative Thinker - bring unique perspectives to problems
• Technology Advocate
• Dedication
• Love for Mentoring
• Balance and Perspective - Understanding of when and how much technical debt to tradeoff vs market pressures

I have found that people who exhibit these attributes are recognized by members of their team and become de-facto "group leaders", increasing influence within and outside the organization. Other members of the team  look to these leaders for input, thoughts, and ideas.

In upcoming posts I will delve more deeply into these characteristics.