Now that I lead the development team, I need to participate in trouble ticket meetings. Twice a week we go over every single open problem. This in and of itself may not seem like a large chore. But you need to make sure you have your facts straight before the meeting. And you can't prepare too early because the customer wants the most recent status. The real pain for a developer like me is that these meetings are held early in the morning.
I cannot complain too loudly. The last time I got drafted into team lead duties we were really in trouble. There were a whole lot of open trouble tickets. So we had meetings every day with an irate customer. If the meetings went poorly, they were held twice a day. So I have to keep looking on the bright side.
Some of the pain from our current meetings is that there seems to be a lack of coordination. Customers are looking at different trouble ticket lists than our team is. And our project coordinator is new at this. Most of the responsibility of keeping the show in order belongs to the project coordinator. Our help desk support is also new to the project. These little things add up. It is not quite pandemonium yet. But some people are worried.
The good news is that I shield our rank and file developers from this heartache. I just tell them to fix trouble tickets and post their status into the system frequently. I might not like the role of a team lead. But since I am here, I might as well do a good job. But not too good. I do not want to do this for the rest of my life.
