Developer as Team Lead

~430 Words | ~1.5min Read

Over the last several months, I’ve been working with AI agents to build software. And I’ve noticed something interesting. I’m achieving output levels that used to require a team of five developers. Not by coding faster, but by working differently.

The more I lean into agentic development, the more I find myself drawing on my experience as a team lead. Across my career, I’ve served in roles from junior developer to adviser to engineering directors, and often as a team lead. And those team lead skills? They’re suddenly the most valuable tools in my toolkit.

Before being able to lead a team, you need to practice leading yourself. That principle applies here too. I’m spending my time differently now. Instead of heads-down coding, I’m defining team processes for my AI agents. I’m conducting code reviews on their output. I’m deeply considering my design. Just like I did when it would be handed off for someone else to build. And of course, I’m jumping in to help the agents figure out when something has gone wrong.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: I built a multi-agent orchestration workflow. I frequently had many agents work on the same codebase. Each agent gets clear boundaries and context. Human-in-the-loop checkpoints happen at stage completion, sometimes as often as each red-green-refactor cycle. I can focus on defining, reviewing, or enabling one feature at a time. I do the design work up front, and let the agents implement. While they’re doing so, I move on to brain work on another piece.

The key insight? The AI doesn’t know your intent. It can only discover it through your documentation, your ADRs, or what you’ve told it. So I wrote down my process. I wrote down the questions I ask myself. I’m trying to write down the stuff I always assume. Just like mentoring a junior engineer.

And it follows that same progression: I do, you watch. I do, you help. You do, I help. You do, I watch. You do, I check the results. That transformation doesn’t happen overnight.

A team is not merely a group of individuals you throw together and call a team. That’s a mob. They need a common purpose, and some coordination to their action. What we’re building with AI agents isn’t the same kind of team, but it requires a similar approach. The team lead skills are now critical for the most effective developers.

You get to write the rules. You get to build your ideal software team, starting now. If you have the courage to try, and the patience to iterate!