Leading a team
The summer of 2019, in the middle of my employment as maintainer of Coursemology, I was tasked to lead a CVWO team. We started out with 8, including me, and ended the summer with 9 after a manpower rebalacing.
Being a CVWO team lead
The role of a CVWO team lead is a weird mix of Product Manager (PM), Tech Lead (TL), and Individual Contributor (IC). Even though nothing is clearly defined about the role, it is decidedly Middle Management.
Above I had Prof Ben, who held an all-encompassing role of handling the sponsorship, liaisons and partnerships of the whole CVWO programme, as well as the individual projects’ system and UI/UX designs. I guess he fulfilled the role of the whole C-suite of the programme, if we were to organize ourselves like a startup.
All around I have clients, the Voluntary Welfare Organisations who would use the systems CVWO built. The great thing about CVWO’s operations was the clients’ appreciation of the product that we delivered. It was indeed a really good deal to have an IT system developed for their specific use case, completely free-of-charge.
And let’s not forget as a team lead, I would be responsible for ensuring everyone in the team got the most out of their summer working on CVWO projects, not for their sake or mine, but for the legacy of generations of CVWO recruits, not just the code they left behind, but the reputation and recognition they have built for CVWO.
Building a CVWO team
I have actually written a guide doc meant for new leads to prepare themselves for the summer ahead. It turned out to be quite an extensive cover of my experience being a CVWO team lead. I have reproduced it in this post if you’re interested to find out.
Something I did not mention in that guide was the awesome team that I, with sheer luck, managed to pick.
It was incredibly fulfilling to get to know everyone in the team, the experience they bring and the potential they have. It was truly humbling to see how fast they learn, given the right challenges.
There was no doubt after CVWO they would move on to achieve great things. At the end of the summer, just like the year before with CVWO 2018, I felt so grateful that I had a chance to work with such brilliant people.
Things I learned
CVWO 2019 was a period of great technical as well as personal growth for me.
The summer turned out to be the most professionally fulfilling period I had ever experienced. This was in spite of the intensity of juggling Coursemology and CVWO at the same time.
I learned, after taking the Meyers-Briggs personality test during the course of the summer, that my personality changed to ESFP. When I had last taken it, at the end of high school, I had been INTJ.
Being a CVWO team lead was a unique chance to try my hands at management, where the stake was not that high and there was Prof Ben to take care of things if I messed up.
I once said in a CVWO meeting that if you messed up as a CVWO team lead, you ruined everyone’s summer; but if you messed up as a manager in the real working world, there were people’s careers at stake.
For some reason people thought I was saying that as a joke. I wasn’t. Being a CVWO team lead truly was a unique chance for me to try to be the manager I always wanted to have, and see for myself just how hard that really was.
There are many things I miss about that summer:
- Weekly scolding session by Prof Ben
- Being able to live on sugar and caffeine and still lose weight
- Working in NUS University Town common area waiting for Starbucks happy hour
- That team outing we had at Dong Bei Ren Jia all the way in Chinatown (something I can’t wait to do again when I’m back in Singapore)
Tomorrow, Monday 11th May 2020, a new batch of students will take over CVWO projects. This officially releases me and my 2019 team from our duty as developers and maintainers of two CVWO projects: CareCorner and Sparks.
I’m both relieved and at the same time envious I am not one of the leads to face this challenge of managing a fully remote team in a world with Covid-19.
All the best to you kids!