Delivering Through Leadership

Leadership and the role of a TPM

As a TPM, we are a leader in our organization. We effect change through our programs and projects, but also as a contributor to the technical direction and strategies of our team. We identify problems, but we also resolve them. Here are the ways in which our technical toolset helps us deliver through leadership.

Defining team direction

As a leader, we will be expected to define the direction of our team. This expectation grows the higher up we go as a TPM. To do this, we are expected to find issues and define and drive solutions to fix them. This can be a difficult move for some who prefer to work within the bounds of a specific problem. However, defining a problem and solution within the confines of a project is similar to the confines of a team or organization. Just as a project has a goal, a team or organization has a charter. The most reliable way to find a problem worth fixing is to look at repeatable efforts across projects and recurring pain points during development. If the problem occurs often, the ROI is likely worth the effort to solve it. We use our knowledge of our system designs, architecture landscape, coding practices, and our backlog of project issues and risks to help understand where problems may exist. The only difference between these is the scope in which we are looking to solve problems.