Building a software development team is not as easy as it may seem. You can’t just hire skilled professionals, bring them together, set some goals, and hope that they will work together as a single unit.
Defining a clear team structure, creating a great atmosphere, and managing a team throughout the whole development process is as important as the tech talent recruitment and interviewing process.
Here Are Four Prime Tips To Build A Strong Software Development Team
Let’s find out how to build a strong team for your next project.
1. Team structure and roles
At the very beginning of your app’s development, you will need to think about the future team’s structure and define clear roles for everybody involved. This will make the hiring process much easier and save you a lot of money and time later on. Usually, teams consist of a project manager, tech lead, developers, designers, and quality assurance specialists.
The project manager is responsible for controlling the whole process, making sure that developers meet deadlines, taking tabs on everyone’s performance, and providing all resources necessary for successful app development, and other tasks regarding schedules, documentation, and the team’s overall support.
The technical lead or senior developer is overseeing all developers’ work, serves as a middleman between the tech team and product owner, and sometimes can serve as a software architect.
This term usually describes the role of the most experienced and skillful developer, who determines the coding language, tools, frameworks, and other technical aspects of the project early on. It is not necessary for the tech to lead to serve as an architect, sometimes it is an outside hire.
Developers are responsible for implementing and deploying all desired features through the app’s code. They report to the tech lead. The number of developers is determined based on project needs and can change through additional hires or staff augmentation.
UI/UX designers are responsible for interface and user experience and work according to desired features and requirements defined by the product owner.
Quality assurance specialists test an application for user experience, interface, code integrity, and other details. Sometimes they are hired at the last stages of development through freelance sites or outsourcing vendors.
Team structure and roles are not limited to those mentioned. Building a high-performance team sometimes takes hiring business analysts, product managers, DevOps specialists, solution architects, and others. Those positions are considered by some less essential, but you will need to consult with your team about hiring or not hiring professionals for those roles.
2. Hiring options
Whether you already have some in-house tech talent at your disposal or need to assemble a team from scratch, the hiring process is vital in the successful development of an app. The most budget-friendly option is freelance, but building a whole team that way is almost impossible.
On the other hand, if you need to hire a low-level developer with a low wage, it is a great option. You and your HR department also can look at job boards like Linkedin and social media. If you want to hire a whole team of in-house full-time developers, the cost of the app’s development will grow significantly because of salaries, insurance, paid vacations, office spaces, hardware, and dozens of other little things.
It makes sense if you are working on an application with a huge amount of features and plan to develop it for a really long time. If searching for candidates and interviewing them is really not your cup of tea, you can pay extra and hire an IT staffing agency to help you out with this aspect of development.
Another really popular option these days is outsourcing development offshore. IT professionals from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America charge significantly less than their North American and Western European colleagues due to the lower cost of living in those countries.
With the help of an outsourcing agency, you can assemble a team of specialists from all over the world, hire a dedicated team from abroad or augment your existing team with foreign developers. The amount of control over the process will be not as great as with in-house hire, but you will save a ton of money.
3. Interviewing tips
If you already pricked a tech lead or decided to hire a recruitment company, you can count on them to confirm candidates’ hard skills and level of expertise. If you don’t have anyone with tech knowledge around, try to search for standard interview questions online depending on the app’s programming language.
Basically, your main concern during the interviewing process is confirming future team members’ soft skills. Their ability to stand under pressure, meet deadlines, make hard decisions and resolve conflicts that may arise will be crucial during the development process.
Creating a corporate culture and maintaining it is the product owner’s responsibility, so don’t treat it lightly. Besides personal conversations with candidates, try to do some online research, scroll through their social media and confirm their presence in professional communities. This will help to find out more about their general attitude and work ethic.
4. Managing a team
After the hiring stage is over, your responsibilities will be to basically monitor everyone’s progress, look over regular reports about the state of development, make suggestions if needed and provide your team with everything necessary.
Make sure that your employees can communicate with you and that you created safe and comfortable working conditions for them. If you did everything right during the planning phase and hiring process, the development stage will be a pleasant and memorable experience for everyone involved.
Final Thoughts
Building a strong software development team is an essential task for any business owner in this day and age. Due to the great variety of IT professionals available all over the world, the hiring process can be a real headache. But even if you had help from the HR department or recruitment agency, making everything work together as planned is not an easy task either.
Don’t forget about planning beforehand, communicating your desires clearly, and providing your team with all necessary resources and in no time a group of individual IT specialists will work as one to your benefit.
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