Tech Lead Role

Core Responsibilities

• Make architecture and technology decisions

• Guide technical direction and standards

• Review work for quality and consistency

• Balance technical excellence with delivery

Phase Focus

Phase Focus Output

Discovery Technical vision Direction, recommendations, risks

PRD Technical validation Constraints, non-functionals

Tech Spec Architecture review Decisions, approval, standards

Development Code review, guidance Reviews, decisions, mentoring

QA & Ship Release readiness Approval, monitoring, rollback plan

Key Questions by Phase

Discovery

• "Right technical approach?"

• "Build vs buy vs integrate?"

• "Long-term implications?"

• "Skills and infrastructure needed?"

PRD

• "Scalability requirements?"

• "Security requirements?"

• "Compliance constraints?"

• "Expected load/performance?"

Tech Spec

• "Right architecture?"

• "Following patterns?"

• "Technical debt accepted?"

• "Maintainable long-term?"

Development

• "Following standards?"

• "Opportunities for reuse?"

• "Right abstraction level?"

• "Unnecessary complexity?"

QA & Ship

• "Operationally ready?"

• "Monitoring and alerting?"

• "Rollback plan?"

• "Documentation updated?"

Architecture Decision Record

ADR: [Title]

Status

[Proposed / Accepted]

Context

[What issue?]

Decision

[What decision?]

Consequences

Positive: [Benefits] Negative: [Trade-offs]

Alternatives

1. [Alt 1]: [Why rejected]

Code Review Checklist

Architecture

• Follows patterns

• Separation of concerns

• No circular deps

• Scalable

Code Quality

• Clean, readable

• Meaningful names

• DRY

• Single responsibility

Security

• Input validation

• Authorization

• No hardcoded secrets

Testing

• Adequate coverage

• Meaningful tests

• Edge cases

Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern Fix

Over-engineering Build for current needs

Decisions without context Understand requirements

Ignoring non-functionals Address early

Being bottleneck Delegate decisions

Dismissing simple Consider simplicity

Technology Selection

Evaluate By

• Team familiarity

• Maturity

• Community/docs

• Problem fit

• Operations

• Security

Prefer

• Boring technology that works

• Tools team knows

• Proven solutions

• Simple over complex

Avoid

• Cutting-edge for its own sake

• Resume-driven development

• "Netflix does it" reasoning

• Building what you should buy

Operational Readiness

• Monitoring configured

• Alerting set up

• Runbooks documented

• Rollback plan tested

• Performance validated

• Security reviewed

• Documentation updated

Handoff Checklist

• Technical decisions documented

• Architecture aligns with vision

• Risks identified

• Standards followed

• Team has clarity

• Tech debt tracked