How to Build a Successful Software Development Team?

Under many reputable agile coaches, approximately 90% of IT companies suffer from insufficient employee involvement in product making. Mostly, such a shortcoming is associated with an incorrect software development team structure. E.g., due to the absence of some specialists, employees of IT companies act as ordinary performers of specific tasks but are not active work process participants.

In the lack of the right links (especially within the management sections) in the software-making chain, business leaders hire new hands or train existing ones. The first case requires time for corporate, organizational, psychological, and technical adaptation. So, training existing employees is often less problematic. In this case, it’s enough to pay for educational courses. And for those asking how to do my homework, the IT companies’ owners may find online platforms that offer corresponding help.

How to Build a Good Software Development Team without Huge Expenses?

Coaches and business analysts are frequently invited for these purposes. Such specialists can identify hidden problems in the team as well as develop a list of recommendations that will make the workflow more efficient. According to Mordor Intelligence, money turnover in business analytics is increasing by more than 7% yearly. It shows that more and more entrepreneurs appreciate the effectiveness of such services.

What Problems Should Be Paid Special Attention?

Usually, most difficulties are associated with the incorrect definition of roles in software development teams. The problem often occurs due to:

1. Insufficient qualification or lack of a team lead. Here, the companies’ owners should understand that in addition to a high professional level in the technical component of the work, such specialists must be able to ensure the proper software development team management. Thus, team leads must have organizational capabilities.
2. Great gap between the skills of the employees of middle and senior levels. In many IT companies, ordinary employees have to search for about 90% of unfamiliar information on their own. It’s because the seniors simply don’t have time to answer the questions of interest to the middles. Therefore, there is no learning process in the workflow. As a result, the work speed of ordinary employees doesn’t suit the management.
3. Lack of team spirit. The atmosphere in many teams is unhealthy, and communication isn’t partner or mentor but with humiliation and ridicule. Moreover, numerous companies consider mistakes at the development stage as unforgivable. The latter is maybe the most significant fault in managing a software development team.

Business coaches and analysts help solve or avoid the above problems. That’s why such specialists are simply indispensable for building an effective workflow.

Software Development Team Roles and Responsibilities

First, it’s worth noting the position of the team leader. Such employees link management and ordinary developers within companies’ departments. Usually, team leaders are the most experienced workers in creating specific products within an enterprise. These employees’ responsibilities are:

• analysis of the most challenging parts of projects;
• assisting the team (especially juniors and middles);
• development process coordination.

Under the Developer Survey 2022 by Stack Overflow, over 80% of the professional developers worldwide work full-time, and only about 16% are freelancers. Therefore, it’s quite tricky to find a ready-made team leader. Thus, mainly, such specialists aren’t born but become. Among the other essential development team members, experts note:

• project manager position;
• frontend developer (it’s about the customer side of an app);
• backend programmer (work with web applications’ hardware);
• QA engineer (or software testers);
• customer service manager.

Let’s look at these positions in more detail.

Features of the Project Manager Position

Those interested in how to manage a software development team should be aware that such employees are responsible for organizing the workflow as a whole. Key responsibilities of project managers (or PMs) include:

• customer communication support;
• assignment of tasks to company departments;
• holding regular consultations as well as meetings with a team;
• control over the fulfillment of assigned tasks.

PMs in IT shouldn’t understand development at an advanced level. People without a technical background may also lead projects. Here, the personal qualities are more critical (e.g., communicability, stress resistance, along with the ability to be flexible when making decisions).

What Should Be Known about Frontend Specialists?

The development team roles of these employees are:

1. Layout of designers’ samples with CSS and HTML. Moreover, frontend programmers frequently know the basics of JavaScript. However, sometimes, when it’s necessary to use this coding language, they resort to the help of JS specialists.
2. UI creation and making interfaces from scratch.
3. Setting up site features (sliders, keys, etc.) together with testing these functions.

Moreover, frontend specialists should understand the basics of adaptive layout, multiplatform, as well as cross-browser software.

Responsibilities of Backend Developers

These specialists deal with the software together with the internal content of the apps, the web applications’ administrative part, as well as server technologies (architecture, database, and so on). In simple words, the backend starts, for example, after pressing the Enter key in a search engine. Those who want to know how to build software development teams have to consider that Java, PHP, or Python professional coders’ help may be needed when preparing backend programmers.

Peculiarities of UI/UX Designer Position

Among the essential responsibilities of these employees are:

• collecting data about current projects and their audience;
• style development and drawing up instructions on fonts, colors, as well as sizes;
• designing user scenarios;
• drawing interfaces in graphic editors;
• creation of layouts and prototypes.

In short, the responsibilities of UI/UX designers include everything related to the appearance of web applications, as well as analytics regarding exactly how users apply such software. Moreover, the described specialists determine what is important and useless or annoying to consumers.

Features QA Engineer Position

Those managing software development teams should know that these IT employees check the correctness of the applications’ operation and look for all sorts of errors along with flaws in the software. Such specialists are guided by technical documentation or even just common sense. Testers look at applications not only as a programmer but also as a user. Therefore, occasionally they “intervene” in the development process and offer to add more convenient features to apps.

Customer Service Managers

Such specialists should think in terms of solutions and see not only the project’s initial point or the creation process but also the result to which the team will lead a consumer. Additionally, an account manager needs to speak in an understandable language with both the contractor as well as the client. Finally, the quality of the work performed and the number of improvements on the project depends on it.

So, How to Make a Software Development Team?

We can form the following checklist for the working process of IT companies by applying all the information above:

1. Track issues in a team. To do this, use the help of business analysts.
2. Check the effectiveness of team leads.
3. Examine existing frontend/backend coders, UI/UX designers, as well as QA engineers. Offer them, e.g., JS, Java, CSS, Python, PHP, or HTML coding help if they need it.
4. Check that managers have the right personal qualities.

Experts advise doing the above actions regularly. It will help the team to grow and bring in more and more profits.