The Skillset of a Technical Director
Following on from my previous post in which I covered the Role of a Technical Director, I thought I would follow on with a breakdown of what a typical Technical Director might cover. The position of TD will vary greatly to suit the agency they work for but nonetheless some experience in the items below will be an advantage.
Management & Leadership
- Managing teams
- Leading teams
- Mentoring
- Change management
Business
- Sales, pitches and presenting
- Trends & future direction
- Marketing
- Strategy
- Commerciality
- Employment law
Project Management
- Understanding methodologies
- Progress tracking and performance (velocity, burn down etc.)
- Understanding teams skills and dependencies
- Risk assessment & management
Planning
- Innovation & Ideation
- Scoping & requirements gathering
- Estimating
- Technical and functional specifications
- Business analysis
- System analysis
Development
- Current hands-on experience of the languages and frameworks used (or could be used)
- A knowledge and appreciation of other frameworks and languages (preferably hands on experience)
- Knowledge of architecture & design patterns
- Integration patterns
- Testing & QA
- Best practices
User Experience
- Design – what looks good and when to make the logo smaller ;-)
- Information Architecture
- Usability
- Accessibility
- CLI, GUI & NUI
Social
- In depth knowledge of creating social applications
- API’s, SDK’s and libraries
- Terms and conditions of use and restrictions