Technology
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Crafting a perfectly balanced software development team structure is vital for a project's successful outcome. Profound knowledge, skills, and experience, supported by a well-thought-out strategy, will bring you from product ideation to triumphant fruition.
But how to assemble the winning team of professionals tailored to your project needs? We'll navigate you through the main team structure approaches, roles, and factors influencing your decision.
The factors that define your team's size and structure are encompassed in your future project's key characteristics. Consider the following when selecting your team:
Before hiring your team, carefully analyze the scope of your project — the number of specialists you need directly correlates with it. For a small prototype or MVP development, you'll need 4-5 people, while building a new application with rich functionality and integrations may require a team of 6-8 specialists.
"In estimating software development costs, we consider time, resources, and scope. The scope encompasses the tasks required to achieve project objectives; available time dictates deadlines; and resources determine the effort you can afford".
Anastasia Kulesh, NEKLO'S Project Manager
The stricter the deadlines, the more resources you need to finish the project on time. Imagine you have a tough development time frame, and your project needs to come to market fast in a fiercely competitive business landscape.
You might think that increasing the number of developers can significantly accelerate the development process: for instance, 200 hours of work can be accomplished by one developer in five weeks or by five developers in just one. However, there are some reasonable limitations to that approach — you cannot rely solely on numbers.
Not every task, such as design, can be divided between multiple specialists for faster completion. The finishing time depends on team members’ seniority level, task complexity, third-party dependencies, and occurrence of sudden requirement changes.
The available financial resources influence the whole project planning stage, including the software development organizational structure. It impacts the number of team members, their seniority level, and a preferable outsourcing model that you can afford.
Agile software development helps optimize costs responding fast to changing priorities, ensuring better result delivery, and minimizing risks of failure. Applying full Scrum can lead to up to a 250% quality increase.
The two main approaches to project management — traditional Waterfall and Agile (and hybrid options in between) — significantly influence the roles, responsibilities, and management style of your future team and the software development organizational structure.
What are the differences in a nutshell?
Waterfall methodology breaks down the project into sequential stages with fixed roles and responsibilities. Each stage starts after the previous one is completed: analysis — design — development — testing — implementation, making project budget and outcomes more predictable.
This methodology entails a defined project scope and requirements, a hierarchical team structure, and the project manager's complete control over the project and responsibility for pivotal decisions.
Agile methodology represents a dynamic approach to project management. Its iterative and incremental nature allows it to accommodate changes and feedback fast, keeping all team members actively involved. Each sprint the team develops a piece of functionality, implements decisions from previous discussion, and defines errors and bottlenecks met during the cycle.
Agile makes teams self-organized and self-managed. While there are still leaders, like Scrum master or Project manager, their responsibilities are focused on creating a work environment for the team's effectiveness. Moreover, Agile team structure allows some degree of autonomy and freedom in workload prioritization.
Traditional (waterfall) team vs agile team
P.S. Hybrid development models are also gaining popularity, bridging the gap between Waterfall and Agile constraints. According to the 17th State of Agile Report, 42% of respondents revealed that their organization uses hybrid models.
An average software development team includes five different roles, but their overall number exceeds 10. You may not need all listed specialists for your project, but knowing them leads to more well-informed software team structure planning and better resource allocation.
Business analysts transform business goals and requirements into tangible technical specifications. They bridge the gap between company executives, stakeholders, and the development team.
Business analysts examine corporate procedures, identify potential for development, collect and analyze data, and provide reports and recommendations to the client. This role ensures that technical solutions align with corporate goals and keep the business processes efficient.
In software team structure, system analysts determine the client’s needs and transfer them into specifications. Their job is to make system evaluations (hardware and software) and handle testing, system configuration, and instructions. Additionally, they find ways to add new functionality to the system and troubleshoot issues that arise.
Sometimes, business analyst positions also include some system analysis. This requires more training, deep technical knowledge, and a comprehensive understanding of software systems.
At the pre-development step, software architects examine the requirements, constraints, and risks of the future project. Later, they determine how the software will look and function and outline its core modules, connections, and integrations. Such professionals coordinate technical teams, enforce coding standards, and perform regular code inspections, engaging with the development team at every step of the project.
Compared to tech leads, software architects concentrate on strategy, communicating their decisions to stakeholders and developers. The role requires deep technical knowledge and robust communication skills for software engineering supervision.
Project managers plan and organize the development process. They orchestrate the team, ensuring the project moves in the right direction and the work gets done. Project managers assign tasks to the team, control task fulfillment, and keep the project on track. Another important aspect of this role is adhering to the project schedule.
The project manager is responsible for project delivery. They identify the project scope and are the first to know if some extra scope of work or issues emerge. This role is crucial in the development team structure and requires great problem-solving and communication skills, as well as work structuring capabilities.
Product manager takes ownership of the product and prioritizes its features and functionality. Working closely with the development team, they monitor how the product meets the target audience's needs and aligns with business goals.
Product managers think more strategically and see a bigger project picture behind day-to-day operations than a product owner does. It is the duty of the product manager to ensure the software achieves both success and profitability.
UI/UX designers are responsible for user-friendly interfaces. They also create graphic prototypes and mockups of future products, focusing on ease of use and aesthetics. Designers provide web and mobile apps’ responsiveness and modern look.
Why does great design matter for business? Well, nearly 40% of users will leave an app if they find it visually unappealing, and 94% of respondents say that the first product impression is design-related.
These are the ones who write code that later becomes a functional, feature-rich product. Software developers should be skilled in various programming languages, frameworks, and development tools. There are many clusters inside the role depending on skillsets and expertise.
The software development organizational structure often includes front-end and back-end developers, mobile developers for iOS and Android platforms, who connect development and operations teams.
Quality assurance engineers ensure that product features and functionality are consistent with requirements and that no severe bugs can disrupt user experience. They write and run tests and check different pieces of code for defects and documentation compliance.
In the ideal case, a quality assurance engineer would be part of the team. They would be involved at every stage of the development process and responsible for bug-free product performance. In reality, some small projects and startups place the task of code testing in the hands of their software engineers.
As the name suggests, tech lead is a technically experienced person who has worked on various projects and systems. They help guide tech teams through technical matters and assist them with any difficulties they may face. Sometimes, tech leads take team lead responsibilities, but handling both can be very time-consuming.
Team lead focuses on team dynamics, encouraging collaboration and open communication. They need to have strong interpersonal skills to connect with team members, good organizational skills to manage workflows effectively, and the ability to mediate when competing opinions or priorities emerge in the team.
Product owner is a member of the Agile team structure. They help the team focus on the customer and their needs. In this role, the individual works closely with team members, needs to be detail-oriented and organized, and must have excellent communication skills.
Compared to a product manager, a product owner has a more narrow scope of responsibility and makes less strategic and more tactical decisions. They aim to bring maximum value to end users.
The role is rising in popularity and is expected to reach 10% demand growth by 2028. A remarkable fact: In startups, the product manager often takes on the role of a product owner, handling both strategic vision and execution.
Scrum master is another typical Agile development role. They establish and maintain a project management framework by delivering iterative development, collaboration, and continuous feedback. The Scrum master is responsible for ensuring that the team follows development principles and is effective and productive. As Scrum remains one of the most popular Agile frameworks, this role is hard to underestimate.
The DevOps role bridges development and operations teams, making development cycles shorter and deployment more efficient. Such engineers manage the CI/CD pipeline, alerting systems, and cloud resources and deployments. They ensure the product’s enhanced security, quality, and seamless functionality through constant monitoring, automation, and testing.
There are three main methods of assembling winning teams: generalist, specialist, and hybrid. Every option is tied to your project objectives, complexity, and available resources. Let’s take a closer look at them.
A generalist approach implies hiring professionals with a wide range of skill sets. Such do-all team members take various responsibilities without shrinking them to one specific area, contributing to the project's flexibility and adaptability. The team's versatility allows its members to contribute to different parts of the project, while strong analytical thinking and multi-domain knowledge help tackle a variety of challenges.
The advantages of generalist approach include:
The disadvantages of the generalist approach include:
Generalist software team structure works well for small Agile teams that develop MVPs that will evolve over time, low-budget projects where the business cannot afford costly experts, and small—to medium-sized projects.
Relying on a specialist approach, you hire a development team of highly skilled individuals with narrow expertise. Each team member is an expert in a single niche and is responsible for their part of the development process. Together, a specialist team can build a high-quality product of any complexity.
The advantages of the specialist approach include:
The disadvantages of the specialist approach include:
This software development team structure is suitable for projects with highly specialized requirements which call for narrow knowledge and skills, such as complex projects like cloud migration or enterprise-level app development.
A hybrid development team structure encapsulates the best features of a generalist and specialist approach: flexibility, profound knowledge, efficiency, and performance. Its adaptable nature allows it to tackle any project with skill and expertise, from legacy app modernization to messaging platform development.
The advantages of hybrid approach include:
The disadvantages of hybrid approach include:
A hybrid software development team structure suits large, complex, cross-functional projects; it is often applied in large organizations with multiple projects and enables better resource allocation.
Generalist, specialist, and hybrid team structure approaches work well both for Agile and Waterfall development methodologies.
Agile is considered a modern software development team structure, although it was implemented for a dozen of years and has already proved effective. It still prevails among other approaches to the development process, making the projects thrive.
However, Agile is not a one-size-fits-all methodology. Some projects may require a more linear approach, like Waterfall, while others will work best with hybrid methodologies, like Water/Scrum/Fall. Let’s outline distinct criteria for choosing an Agile software development team structure.
Choose Agile, if you prefer:
Agile teams suit complex projects, those with evolving requirements and a high uncertainty level. Agile shifts change management, enabling cross-functional work and the use of diverse skills, resulting in better operational and commercial performance.
At the end of the day, what is the value that the Agile teams provide?
Overall, the Agile methodology promotes flexibility, responsiveness, and efficiency. The Agile team structure helps deliver high-quality, customer-centric software solutions quickly.
How can the most efficient software development team structure bring the most value? While many aspects depend on project type, complexity, and methodology, some common advice for team management exists.
Remember that there is no single solution to an ideal development team structure. Your project is unique, and so are your team's roles and responsibilities.
Many things can go wrong when creating a software development organizational structure. We suggest not blundering into things on your own but learning from others' mistakes instead.
The structure of your team stems from your business values and work style. If your company values self-direction, choose a flat team structure that promotes collaboration and innovation — opt for cross-functional teams. To make it short, if you prioritize transparency and open communication, set proper channels and procedures for sharing thoughts, progress, feedback, and more.
Rigid management structures limit creativity and innovation. By contrast, collaborative decision-making promotes engagement and leads to better, well-informed choices. While removing hierarchy from the equation is impossible and unnecessary, at some level, there should be independent thinking and ideation; as a rule, it leads to more successful project outcomes.
Team isolation can result in a product that deviates entirely from its original vision. Without comprehensive project insights, internal and external alignment, and proper guidance, the risk of failure increases. To mitigate this, break down data silos, participate in project reviews and cross-team collaboration sessions, and gather feedback from stakeholders and other teams.
The dynamics of software engineering team structure can change over time. It depends on project size and complexity, and neglecting such changes may lead to misalignment, low morale, and motivation loss. This is especially true for hybrid teams, where the mix of generalists and professionals has a greater dynamic impact.
Monitor team dynamics and make adjustments to ensure everyone remains engaged and motivated.
Conduct regular peer code reviews and create accessible knowledge repositories to promote team efficiency. Maintain thorough project documentation so that each team member can address it and clarify their concerns. Sufficient documentation is a must for every project, but specialist teams rely on it more than professionals from any other development team structure.
The nature of your project defines your software development team structure. The first steps to building a well-suited team include refining key project parameters and selecting the right development methodology. You can adopt a generalist, specialist, or hybrid approach, ensuring a balanced mix of expertise and skill sets.
Looking for an Agile development team for your project? Contact NEKLO to discuss your vision and provide initial estimates. We take a meticulous approach, fostering a true partnership and treating your project as our own.
US-based and operating globally, NEKLO spearheads digital transformation initiatives for businesses worldwide. We deliver software solutions complying with your market and legislation.
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