Hi,
I recently became a tech lead at a startup. Before that, I was a software engineer for 6 years at various companies (big companies and startups, but always on a small team), and since I started this role, I’ve been having a really hard time keeping track of everything at once.
I sit between the PO and the developers (5 of us in total, including me). I also develop some parts myself and handle a lot of other things like DevOps, deployments, CI, etc. With all that, and given that we’re a small team, I don’t want to become the bottleneck I’ve experienced before, so I let the PO and the other developers talk to each other directly. But the developers are junior, fresh out of school, and don’t yet have the reflex to escalate things, and sometimes they escalate the wrong things. For example, I don’t really care how they implemented a given function.
We do use a project management tool, of course, but even that is pretty chaotic. The PO writes tickets directly for the developers, the specs sometimes aren’t kept up to date as development progresses, and everything moves very fast (and can change very fast).
Of course, we use AI heavily in agentic mode, both for development and for writing specs, issues, etc. That’s draining a lot of my motivation, because it’s hard to keep track of everything going in every direction. I’ve still set up everything I should: trying to keep all projects and issues in Linear (though I can’t find an organization that really works for me), automated unit tests and linting in CI, migration checks. But it’s still very hard to understand the whole architecture of the app, whether backend, frontend, or database, especially when everything was built with AI and, apart from the specs, very little technical documentation exists (or what does exist was written with Claude and is very verbose without saying much).
How do you handle all this as a tech lead or manager? Or even as a developer? How do you keep track of what everyone is working on while still making sure you understand how your applications work? And for documentation, do you write it by hand or with AI?Hi,
I recently became a tech lead at a startup. Before that, I was a software engineer for 6 years at various companies (big companies and startups, but always on a small team), and since I started this role, I’ve been having a really hard time keeping track of everything at once.
I sit between the PO and the developers (5 of us in total, including me). I also develop some parts myself and handle a lot of other things like DevOps, deployments, CI, etc. With all that, and given that we’re a small team, I don’t want to become the bottleneck I’ve experienced before, so I let the PO and the other developers talk to each other directly. But the developers are junior, fresh out of school, and don’t yet have the reflex to escalate things, and sometimes they escalate the wrong things. For example, I don’t really care how they implemented a given function.
We do use a project management tool, of course, but even that is pretty chaotic. The PO writes tickets directly for the developers, the specs sometimes aren’t kept up to date as development progresses, and everything moves very fast (and can change very fast).
Of course, we use AI heavily in agentic mode, both for development and for writing specs, issues, etc. That’s draining a lot of my motivation, because it’s hard to keep track of everything going in every direction. I’ve still set up everything I should: trying to keep all projects and issues in Linear (though I can’t find an organization that really works for me), automated unit tests and linting in CI, migration checks. But it’s still very hard to understand the whole architecture of the app, whether backend, frontend, or database, especially when everything was built with AI and, apart from the specs, very little technical documentation exists (or what does exist was written with Claude and is very verbose without saying much).
How do you handle all this as a tech lead or manager? Or even as a developer? How do you keep track of what everyone is working on while still making sure you understand how your applications work? And for documentation, do you write it by hand or with AI?