What is the Structure of the Development Team? 6 Key Roles Explained

Why is structuring your development team important?

A focused software development team helps your product grow and creates a productive and positive working environment. Skilled and eager to share knowledge and ideas, your team members can boost your project and even something more:

1

Increase project efficiency

Well-structured teams with project-fit professionals work more productively and can strongly increase the efficiency of outputting projects. They can complete tasks faster because they understand all information that goes into a project and have a clear distribution of roles and responsibilities. A professional development team doesn’t need additional control or micromanaging to stay on track and be efficient.

2

Build a strong community

Openness and transparency are the powers of a great team. If team communication is not done right, misunderstanding can lead to crucial issues and omissions.

Facilitating a good communication system and hiring a cultural match are the first points on your to-do list. Find specialists who will be a good fit based on how your company works. It will be the main pillar of a positive work environment and good communication between people who share the same values. That’s where just a team transforms into a strong community of like-minded enthusiasts.

3

Have access to diverse expertise and skill set

The product development process involves taking a product from the initial concept to the final market launch, and this is where solid knowledge and backgrounds in varied industries matter. One or two individuals don’t have enough experience or can't respond to everything all at once. That’s why your team is your superpower.

Well-built teams bring a unique perspective to identifying opportunities and managing risks. They help businesses adapt to changes smoothly. So, you’ll have the advantage of tackling the challenges that business growth or market changes create together with professionals. You’ll never walk alone. And that is a great benefit.

What are the roles in software development?

Each task within a software development project is assigned to a specific specialist, making everyone's responsibilities clear. Properly defined roles for every team member maximizes output from the entire team and help it work towards goals much more efficiently.

Let’s look at the typical software development team structure and its roles. These magnificent six can get your project off the ground.

Business analyst

A business analyst is the first communication bridge between the client and the development team. Processing clients’ requests or discovering missing software requirements, BA has to interpret and integrate them 100% correctly. This specialist is responsible for a clear understanding of the system functionality and business logic of the entire team.

Responsibilities:

  • Managing clients' requests
  • Software requirements elicitation
  • Gathering, reviewing, and approving detailed/missing requirements
  • Defining functional and user requirements
  • Estimation of needed functionality and feature list together with the dev team
  • Development of lo-fi UX prototypes to outline a product's flow and expected functionality
  • Software requirements documentation and keeping it up-to-date

Project manager

Project managers are those superheroes who help stay on track with a project plan that works. They ensure the client is presented with all the relevant information needed to make a decision.

There is no such bottleneck that can be missed by a PM — it will be timely detected, analyzed, and solved. As a result, the client’s costs are saved, and the team’s nerves and time are saved as well.

Responsibilities:

  • Keeping project processes transparent for all stakeholders
  • Effective communication between the client and the project team
  • Creating a foolproof project plan
  • Features prioritization and tasks descriptions
  • Tracking project progress and hours logged by the team
  • Collecting metrics and running reports
  • Unblocking possible project management bottlenecks
  • Managing project artifacts and keeping them up-to-date (logs, meeting notes, and more)

UI/UX designer

Designers are responsible for making a product convenient and easy to use for end users and how it will look across different devices and platforms. They create wireframes and prototypes and help to design the look and feel of the future product app. Such specialists need to have a good understanding of how users interact with apps and how to help them do it even more effectively.

Responsibilities:

  • Creating UI/UX design that meets platform-specific and device-specific requirements
  • Developing and maintaining the UI kit
  • Conducting competitive analysis of other products that operate in the same space
  • Developing mockups for the development team
  • Communicating with the client if required

Software developer

A good software developer is a nutshell of the software development team's structure. This professional implements system requirements previously documented by the Business Analyst and creates the best possible engineering solutions following them.

Responsibilities:

  • implementation of features that are required for the software
  • creation of business logic and ensuring the product can tackle the problems it was created to solve
  • setup of infrastructure and system environments
  • writing quality and clear code that can be easily read and enhanced by other devs

Quality assurance engineer

This specialist checks whether the results of the developers' work match the initial requirements. QA engineers are always aware of the most up-to-date product functionality and know better than anyone how apps should work. Thus, QAs are best assistants for business analysts and other team members who participate in decision-making processes.

Responsibilities:

  • compliance control of current functionality with initial requirements
  • step-by-step testing, search for bugs, and troubleshooting
  • test planning and test strategy implementation
  • documentation of testing processes
  • bug logging

DevOps engineer

DevOps engineers work on ways to ensure fast-paced development and release processes by implementing new technologies, enhancing infrastructure management, and reducing the occurrence of errors. They work with CI/CD pipelines, lightweight architecture, security, on-demand workload management, automated testing techniques, and disaster recovery.

Responsibilities:

  • infrastructure setup, management, and audit
  • designing cloud architecture
  • ensuring that systems are secure against data threats
  • сontainerization and container deployments
  • code refactoring
  • monitoring and alerting configuration

How to build a development team from scratch?

You have a software development project at hand and need a team to bring it to life. Where to begin and how to build a win-win team composition? Here are 6 steps to get started.

1

Define project complexity, budget, and deadlines

From the very start, analyze business needs carefully. You need to know all project goals, software requirements, budgets, and time frames. Software development projects can last from a few months to several years, so it is crucial to estimate and calculate all basic things from the beginning.

2

Specify what and how many specialists you need

Sizing a team is a pretty tricky task. Based on things described in the previous point you or the business analysts you work with can estimate how many people can achieve your project goals, what software development roles are needed, and what tech skills are required.

The more clearly defined the team roles are, the easier it is for them to do their job. Create well-defined roles and responsibilities for every specialist you need from the very beginning.

3

Thoroughly pick each specialist

If you already define what roles you need to build a stellar team, fill them with the best-fit talents. Pay attention both to technical and cultural matches. Skill set matters, but is the individual aligned with the company’s culture?

Assess how a professional fits in a project. Schedule a team of people with some relevant experience. It will help you advance in your field and gather people with proven expertise.

4

Hire engaged and collaborative people

Your team members are not just “workers”. They are your business partners who will bring your vision to life. Engaged teams have more ownership and proactivity, and a passion to grow with the businesses they work with.

Good teams listen carefully and deeply UNDERSTAND client’s needs from the very start. Make sure that the team knows what they are talking about and have enough expertise to implement it. That’s exactly what I got from Freshcode.

Victoria Lagodinsky

Founder at Client1st Software

Excellent team players are consciously responsible for what they do and understand how they can influence other team members’ performance. They can accept constructive criticism as well as keep personal boundaries or have the courage to offer new ideas. They talk openly about any concerns or issues occurring and ask for any changes or support if needed. All this forms the basis of a healthy workplace environment.

5

Prepare the work environment and set effective communication

Work environments and communication approaches vary depending on what team model you choose (in-house, outsourced, hybrid). Self-managed team or supported by project/product managers, in-office or fully remote, daily meetings or weekly reports, that all can be different on a case-by-case basis. One thing is constant — you have to keep communication and collaboration clear and transparent across all roles.

6

Stick to a flexible team structure

Try to approach the team structuring and managing flexibly. The core of this instrument is organizing team members in the best way that will meet business needs. Traditional work structure and the inability to benefit from cross-functionality can play a bad role in today’s world where staying agile and quick decision-making are must-haves for any business.

Freshcode best practices: Building a team structure for business needs

We've helped companies worldwide to organize their projects with a dedicated development team or particular specialists to solve specific business challenges.

Here is one of our cases when a well-built Freshcode team drives a client's continued success and builds a long-term and trusted partnership.

Vetting and compliance

The client came to us with the request to scale his in-house team with Freshcode’s developer, designer, and QA engineer. In turn, we offer the most efficient outsourced team model with a Project manager on board.

After estimating all the benefits, the client approved our PM in the team. Further, results showed that it was a very good decision.

After completing the vetting and compliance process, we started the implementation of one module with the designer, QA, project manager, and developer.

Spot issues in project management processes

The initial process could have been more efficient as it was managed in Google Docs and Google Sheets. The priority of tasks was collected through numbered lists: the higher position in the list, the higher the priority.

We identified gaps in project management, poorly managed processes, and areas for improvement. It was challenging to convey the necessity of proper project and product management, as the chaotic approach stifled the project from moving forward. We decided to implement changes bit by bit and overcome internal resistance.

Power product development with the right tools

First, it was essential to organize all documentation and provide the team with the relevant tools to achieve effective project management. Relying on our previous successful experience, we brought a proven strategy to improve processes and boost the project.

As a result, we gained:

• project data migration from Google Docs to Jira and Confluence
• implementation of a comprehensive task descriptions system
• implementation of a task prioritization system
• improved release forecasting
• product release planning strategy
• higher team productivity

Implement Freshcode’s onboarding system

The previous client’s experience with adding specialists to the process was problematic. The team and development stagnated. To deal with this, we provide clients with our onboarding system developed over years of delivering digital products worldwide.

During this time we have been achieving significant results:

• average time from request to onboarding is 2 weeks
• average partnership duration is 1.5 years
• employee retention rate is around 97%

Scaling team to expand product functionality

Thanks to suitable and timely improvements we seamlessly scaled our client's team with our specialists. One year later, continuing our partnership, the client requested a new scale-up. His product was growing, creating a need to develop new features and optimize the existing ones.

Based on his previous successful experience, our client was sure to continue his product development with the new Freshcode specialists involved.

As a result, there are 18 Freshcode professionals on this project today, and the client's product is constantly growing and attracting new customers.

Final thoughts

Despite the ChatGPT booming and general enthusiasm for AI technology, talented people and great teamwork have never been more important. Especially in unstable economic times, when fast decision-making, flexibility, and the ability to quickly adapt to changes are crucial for the success of any software project.

The key points we want you to remember:

• the team is the most valuable asset of any business
• hire talents not performers
• good product team structure = boosted profits
• a multi-talented team is a gateway to success
• individual approach to team structuring is at the core

If you need some help to find your individual approach and scale your team with the right specialists, we are ready to discuss opportunities or send you information on how we can help.