How to Build a Successful Software Development Team?

Building a modern software development team is not easy thing. You must hire proper people with different skills and not only. Read our guide!

Nowadays, new technologies are developing at breakneck speed. Therefore, a key challenge for many companies is to build an effective, successful software development team, which will support the business and increase the competitiveness of the organization and help it become a pioneer. How to do this? How to organize a software development team? Please find out more in our article!

Building a successful software development team – what should you look out for?

Working on a new project requires that our development team consists of experienced, competent and qualified people. However, you need to remember that building a modern development team is more than just hiring people with the right skills. Many other factors must also be taken into account, such as:

• the type of project,
• technologies used,
• the target size of the team,
• the method of communication,
• customer requirements.

The correct choice of specialists

A modern development team is most often made up of people with general knowledge and specialists. This is the so-called hybrid model. This gives you a highly skilled team that can contribute to the project in many ways, rather than having one responsibility zone. Specialists proficient in one area have a deep understanding of a specific IT field. They can work faster and more effectively on particular tasks.

Conversely, developers with more general knowledge can handle all other duties, making work on the entire project faster. Their strengths balance each other’s weaknesses and conversely. However, it would be best if you kept the right balance depending on the project’s difficulty. Sometimes it may be a better idea to employ several people with general knowledge and choose IT outsourcing services for specific disciplines. In this context, it is worth considering all the offshoring pros and cons as well as nearshoring.

Define the roles and responsibilities of the successful development team

A successful development team does not only consist of programmers. Other members also play an essential role in the effectiveness of the work process. A modern software development team structure also includes:

• Product Owner – this person knows what the final product should look like. Takes care of the needs of end-users, sponsors or shareholders. He/she also communicates on behalf of the client with the development team.
• Project Manager – has a wide range of responsibilities – from planning and implementing the work, monitoring it, and delivering the finished product to the client. He/she is responsible for the work of the team and individual product iterations.
• Software architect – this role is performed in the team by an experienced programmer who makes critical design decisions regarding the internal structure of the software system and its technical interfaces. He/she is also supporting other programmers and help them in their work when they encounter problems.
• UI/UX designers – are specialists responsible for the design of digital product interfaces that will ultimately offer the best experience for end-users.
• Business analysts – they verify the customers’ business needs. Their work focuses primarily on finding ways to improve the quality of the products and services developed.

Communication in the development team

Successful implementation of software development projects depends significantly on communication. Setting precise goals and tasks for individual members of the software development team is a guarantee of success.

Clear rules of communication and interaction between individual team members can definitely accelerate the work. Simultaneously, they contribute to stimulating creativity in the team and better adaptation to novelty and innovative solutions. Importantly, communication is one of the core values of the Agile methodology. Therefore, every company that uses agile development should pay attention to communication issues.

Building a modern software development team is not a simple task. It is essential not only to choose programmers with the right competencies and other team members but also to define the team’s size and responsibilities, which will ensure clear communication.