I have been appointed team-leader for the maintenance team in my department. We are currently working very hard, trying to solve a lot of tickets, which have accumulated over summer and we are really getting some where...
The task of leading this small team was fun in the beginning, and it still is to some extent - but I am scared of what comes next.
I had a team-leading experience in the beginning of my employment. It was very interesting from a technical perspective and my team was only one guy (later I got one guy more), but the team was the garbage can of the project organisation (this is my opinion of what happened) and we choked on to many tasks and finally I was removed from the role as team-lead to become a bug-fixer.
So apart from my history as a team-lead my employer have hired a new manager for my department, one of the consultants who where leading the project we now are maintaining and which a have been mentioning over and over againg in this journal and you could say that we have some history together.
I now have major concerns how things are going to be when he starts. Will it be like the project period all over again? I am not afraid of working with this guy, but I am just not sure we see things the same way.
Already now there is talk about maintenance goals, status reports and all kinds of stuff which slowly shifts the focus from the pratical work of maintenance and into a more stiff and less enjoyable environment.
Many of my colleagues have turned down the maintenance team-leading role. I do not know for how long, I can be in the position of team-leader for a maintenance team, I was asked today to hand over all my web services stuff, leaving me with very few programming tasks (none actually), of course I should not be programming when I am a team-lead for a maintenance team - but I am a programmer at heart.
I used to work as a 3rd. level supporter, after this I worked as a programmer and developer I seem to have returned to this 3rd. level supporter role - that is not exactly what I imagined.
I have some very simple ideas and principles on organisation and how to do these things and they seem to work. Since I took responsibility in the maintenance team (before becomming the official team-lead) things was really progressing and I think this is why I was selected for the team-lead role.
But just because you show responsibility, that does not necessarily make you a good team-leader, I am sure I could manage the team (in my own style), but since I am going to act as the official face of the team and I have to follow all kinds of procedures and I have to make all kinds of status reports - I am afraid of ending up a paranoid team-lead.
Of course I should be able to handle this and it would be a good learning experience, but I must admit that my ideals and priorities are very different from what I see my organisation changing into and my views on people, organisation and the work we do is not exactly a perfect match.
Maybe I should pursue my dream of starting my own company... even though that thought is almost more scary
