Lead vs Senior Developers

I recently switched from a senior developer role to lead developer role, and was surprised to find that the two positions are very similar. However, there are some additional responsibilities that come with being a lead developer. The lead role is a semi-managerial one in which the developer is accountable for a team’s development process and productivity. Let’s discuss the various differences between the senior and lead developer roles.

• Involvement with Code
• Development Process Oversight
• Managerial Responsibilities
• Interfacing with Non-Technical Personnel
• Summary

Involvement with Code

Lead developers spend less time programming than senior developers. Typically, senior developers will spend 70 – 100% of their time coding, while lead developers will usually spend less than 60% of their hours doing so. This is because lead developers will have many other responsibilities besides implementation work, for example, maintaining code standards, managing other developers and improving the efficiency of the development process. However, when there are tight deadlines involved, a lead developer may have to spend all of their time coding. This should be the exception rather than the rule.

In most organizations, both lead and senior developers must perform code reviews to maintain high code quality. Code reviews performed by lead developers will define a set of practical code review standards for the senior developers to follow. A lead developer should also inspect the code reviews performed by senior developers to ensure they are done correctly. A lead developer may also be expected to train other developers to perform code reviews.

Both lead and senior developers can be involved with architectural decisions within software projects. However, a lead developer is likely to spend more time on architecture than a senior developer. This is because senior developers are often inundated with implementation work and may have limited time for architectural involvement.

Development Process Oversight

While senior developers are accountable for their own work, leads developers are accountable for the general productivity of a development team. A lead developer must analyse and improve the team’s development process to optimize productivity. Leads must learn to recognize important patterns in the development workflow. To do this, they may have to answer important questions such as:

• Are certain kinds of bugs occurring more frequently than others?
• Are any parts of the software performing poorly?
• Is developer time being wasted on repetitive tasks which can be automated?

Once the lead identifies problems and bottlenecks in the development process, they must determine strategies to address them. While senior developers may also improve the team’s development process through their own initiative, they are typically not required to do so.

DevOps practices are necessary for a development team to operate at peak productivity and efficiency. Both senior developers and lead developers will likely have to deal with DevOps concerns such as continuous integration and continuous deployment. However, since senior developers’ time may be consumed with application development, lead developers will often be responsible for dealing with the DevOps aspects of the application.

Managerial Responsibilities

Typically, the lead developer position is not considered a true managerial role in the same way a development manager is. However, since lead developers are responsible for a team’s productivity, they have a significant amount of managerial responsibility. While senior and lead developers are both required to train and mentor junior developers, the managerial responsibilities of a lead developer extend beyond that.

A lead developer must determine the goals, challenges and ideas of all the developers he is responsible for. Lead developers must empower their team members to reach their goals and overcome their challenges. Lead developers are better equipped to solve these problems than development managers due to their strong technical abilities and more direct connection to the junior or senior developer. Improving the productivity of each developer can have a huge cumulative effect for a software project or business.

Lead developers will frequently be responsible for distributing and delegating work. Within agile development methodologies, individual developers can commit to work themselves. However, situations will always arise where unassigned work must be distributed to the right person. Furthermore, if a lead has an idea for improving the development process, but does not have the time to implement it, he may need to delegate the task to a senior or junior developer.

Interfacing with Non-Technical Personnel

In most agile development environments, it is necessary for every developer to communicate with non-technical personnel. However, lead developers will have to deal with the non-development parts of the software life cycle far more.

Lead developers are frequently required to provide higher-level estimates for software work to project managers. These estimates are typically used to plan release deadlines. They may have to explain to project managers, business analysts and clients why some features will take longer than they would expect and why some features might be impossible to implement.

Leads may need to point out technical inconsistencies in software requirements which would be difficult for clients and business analysts to identify. Lead developers may also need to help business analysts and clients to frame requirements in a way which will make sense to other developers. Leads are more likely to interact directly with clients and thus, they must possess excellent people-skills.

Summary

The difference between lead and senior developer roles is not as drastic as one might think. Here are some of the changes a developer would notice when switching to from senior to lead roles:

• Less time spent coding
• More time performing code reviews
• Higher involvement in architectural decisions
• Accountability for the quality and efficiency of the development process
• Higher accountability for maintaining DevOps practices
• People-management responsibilities
• Delegation and distribution of software work
• Increased involvement in release planning
• More time spent communicating with non-technical personnel