Azure & DevOps Podcast: Ted Neward on Development Leadership

Ted Neward on Development Leadership - Episode 135

Apr 5, 2021

This week Jeffrey is joined by a fantastic return guest, Ted Neward! Ted is the Director of Technology Culture at Quicken Loans (where he has held several previous positions at). He is a self-described geek who takes great pride and joy in making other geeks into bigger and better (and hopefully more highly rewarded) geeks. Having recently stepped into a management role, Ted has been looking for more and more ways to leverage his skills as a "force multiplier" across his entire team to not only better the team itself — but the entire organization as a whole.

In the conversation with Ted today, he and Jeffrey talk all about development leadership and stepping into a managing position. How do you become a better leader? What can you do as a manager to bump up the effectiveness of your team? What does it really mean to be a team lead? How do you measure if your current plan and strategies are actually effective? What are the should-do’s and the should-not do’s of leading a team? Tune in to find out!

Topics of Discussion:

[:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes.

[:50] About The Azure DevOps Podcast, Clear Measure, the new podcast Architect Tips, and Jeffrey’s offer to speak at virtual user groups.

[1:20] About today’s episode with Ted Neward!

[1:35] Jeffrey welcomes Ted back to the podcast!

[4:00] Ted introduces himself and shares about his current role with Quicken Loans. He also explains what Quicken Loans does and what some of his previous roles looked like.

[9:18] How they measure the productivity of their developers at QL. Ted also shares advice on how you can determine if a program or activity is successful.

[14:23] What can a manager do to bump up the effectiveness of their team?

[18:54] What it really means to be a team lead.

[19:59] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast’s sponsor: Clear Measure.

[20:29] Why “rewriting” and replacing everything is almost NEVER the answer.

[27:29] Why do we keep making the same mistakes?

[28:30] What many development teams don’t understand.

[29:38] How often do teams make true architectural decisions?

[32:11] Talking reactionary architectural changes.

[34:27] Why you don’t want to teach your team an entirely new programming language.

[41:01] Jeffrey thanks Ted for joining the podcast!

[41:15] Ted shares some resources, advice, and how you can personally get in touch with him.

Mentioned in this Episode: