The Kolesa TeamLead Day — an IT event focused on managing people and teams

On May 20, Kolesa TeamLead Day took place in Almaty. This is a platform for exchanging experience among middle management in IT. Managers at different levels in development shared practical reports on relevant topics with each other.

In recent years, the IT sector in our country has developed significantly, with a growing number of people managing product and development teams: team leads, tech leads, software engineering managers.

They help save money on product development and operation by simplifying processes and reducing delivery times, and most importantly — they accomplish business tasks.

Both team leads and tech leads work with people, but their areas of responsibility differ. A team lead is responsible for people: they manage the qualitative and quantitative composition of the team. A tech lead works more with the technologies that these people use.

How to develop in middle management

Theory alone, even the highest quality, is not enough. The most effective path is gaining experience and building professional competencies from colleagues in the same field. There was a need for a platform for discussions, experience sharing, and mutual assistance.

Therefore, for the second year, Kolesa Group has been organizing events for experience exchange among middle management in IT. This year, the company increased the scale and organized Kolesa TeamLead Day for over 200 people who are developing the IT market in the country. Speakers from Kolesa Group, STRONG, Aviata.kz, Tele2 Kazakhstan, and N-iX gave presentations.

Svetlana Chuksina, Brand Manager at Kolesa Group, main organizer of Kolesa TeamLead Day

During the rapid development of IT in Kazakhstan, communities of developers, managers, marketers, and other IT professionals have formed. However, there was no such platform for IT leaders.

The goal of Kolesa TeamLead Day is to create a community of Kazakhstani middle management in IT. A community for discussions, experience sharing, and mutual assistance among team leads, tech leads, and managers. Today, our event brought together over 235 emerging IT leaders and those preparing for a transition into leadership roles.

Kirill Tolkachyov, Global CIO at JUG Ru Group

Kolesa TeamLead Day is an engaging event where, in a short period of time, you can learn how other companies live and work. The speakers had both Kazakhstani and international expertise — which is always interesting.

Temirlan Mukhametov, System Administrator at the "Tagam" canteen network

A great IT gathering: experience sharing, networking, new acquaintances. I received a lot of useful information that can be applied in business: working with a team, increasing productivity, improving monetization.

In total, eight speakers from different IT companies presented at the event:

— Konstantin Stroev, Mobile TeamLead at Krisha.kz, with the topic "How onboarding affects employee development and performance in a company"

— Azamat Kalmurzaev, Head of Engineering at STRONG, with the topic "Team Leads — Gardeners." He explained what growing cucumbers has in common with managing development, and why the gardener mental model is ideal for team management

— Maxim Gorbatyuk, Lead Software Engineer at N-iX, with the topic "Maybe We Don't Need Those Team Leads?" He told how a large e-commerce company operates without team leads and what should be adopted from them to make team leads happier

— Alexander Puzeev, Solutions Architect at Tele2 Kazakhstan, with the topic "Youthful Mistakes of a Team Lead. Learning from Others' Examples." The report is useful for those just starting their journey as a team lead or considering transitioning into this role

— Nikolai Kindyakov, Development Director at Kolesa Group, presented on "10 Rules for Creating Useful Grades in Development." He shared how grades changed during the company's growth and how the company itself transformed after grade changes

— Vadim Manko, Head of Frontend Development at Kolesa Group, with the topic "The Role of a Team Lead in Hiring. Formulating Requirements, Interviews, Decision Making"

— Akim Krotov, Head of Backend Development at Kolesa Group, prepared a report on the role and functions of DevOps using the example of "Kolesa" and other companies

— Kirill Solovyov, Team Lead and Frontend Developer at Aviata.kz, shared his experience with deadline failures and explained step-by-step how to improve processes to provide the business with realistic development timelines.