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

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

Technology Selection

Evaluate By

1. •Team familiarity
2. •Maturity
3. •Community/docs
4. •Problem fit
5. •Operations
6. •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