A Project Team For Effective Software Development: Roles and Responsibilities

During the pandemic, entrepreneurs have realized the importance of the omnichannel strategy in sales and service provision. It prompted them to start developing internal IT systems, websites, and applications. And the first arisen question usually concerns the necessary project team members. So, let’s find out what experts you need to implement your ideas and improve your competitiveness. 

A small remark: in the article, we are talking only about outsourcing.

What Is a Project Team?

The decision to create a website or application is just an intent. In order to bring your wishes to life, you need the help of professionals. Any software development team consists of a project manager and individual specialists. And it doesn’t matter what approach (Waterfall or Agile) will be used. By the way, we recommend you read the article to find out more about the approaches.

We can divide the development process into several stages. And completely different specialists are required for each implementation step.

• First engagement (the preparation phase): business analyst, sales and account managers, marketers.

• Second engagement (the development process): CTO, project manager, QA engineers, UX/UI designers, and developers.

• Maintenance after launching: mainly developers and QA engineers. However, other team members may be involved as well (marketers are just an example).

Not all specialists can be helpful in your project: it depends on the type of your solution. So, let’s clarify project team roles to help you determine which experts you need.

Software Development Experts: Roles and Responsibilities

Project Manager

This is a kind of a chief, which unites all experts. Without the team member, it’s impossible to get a software product on time with the required features and within the established budget. The project manager’s responsibilities are as follows:

• Leading and managing the entire team;

• Breaking down the development process into stages to make a step-by-step plan;

• Establishing dates and schedules;

• Assigning tasks for other team members;

• Preparing deliverables based on the plan developed.

Business Analyst

The specialist figures out the needs of your business and give recommendations on how to make your company better and more competitive. A business analyst estimates your project’s objectives to make sure the existing business problems are going to be solved. This member of a team for a project also tries to add value to your organization.

Thus, the list of the work responsibilities looks as follows:

• Finding out the project goals;

• Gathering requirements from users and business representatives;

• Documenting all requirements;

• Learning deliverables drown by the project manager to make sure they meet the requirements;

• Validating solutions by testing them.

CTO

A chief technology officer (CTO) is often a senior developer who is able to decide on the best tech stack, which is going to be used in your project. CTO ensures that your solution is scalable and can be built as soon as possible.

CTO doesn’t usually code: the expert mainly conducts technical research to implement your ideas in the best way. It makes the chief technology officer one of the mandatory team members.

In addition, CTO often holds the position of the team lead. This person helps his subordinates stay productive and inspired. It’s extremely important that specialists support the project objectives and are willing to work together towards the common goal.

Developers

There are different types of such specialists depending on the technologies/tools used and the development area covered (front-end or back-end).

• Front-end developers are project team members responsible for interfaces (a part of a website or application that users can see and interact with).

• Back-end development refers to server-side development. Specialists focus on databases, scripts, solution architecture, and so on.

In order to create a website or application, you must have both front-end and back-end developers.

Jack of all trades is an appropriate option only for small projects because such experts don’t usually have sufficient qualifications.

The duties of software developers:

• Researching, implementing, and managing programs;

• Writing efficient code;

• Deploying software tools/metrics;

• Supporting and updating the created solutions;

• Training users;

• Working closely with UX/UI designers;

• Looking for areas in the existing programs to modify them.

QA Engineer

This is a specialist who tries to find bugs and different problems in the created software. A good expert spends hours using several test environments, devices, and tools to provide the client with an excellent-working website or application.

UX/UI designer

The task of a designer is to create a modern design and make it appealing and eye-catching. The specialist also worries about the user experience because he knows the impact of customer satisfaction on the conversion rate.

The main responsibilities of a UX/UI designer are:

• Developing usage scenarios;

• Running usability tests;

• Creating screen flows and product prototypes;

• Assisting with content creators;

• Developing final layouts.

We should mention that a team for a project can also include a graphic designer if you don’t have appropriate photos/icons or cannot find them on stock sites.  

Thus, we have considered the responsibilities of the project manager and other crucial experts. The next question that may arise is how to choose a good team.

How to Choose The Right Team?

We would like to distinguish several key steps:

1. Make a detailed description of the project. It’s required to estimate the scope of work and the necessary resources.

2. Check the expertise of each company you have chosen.

3. Study portfolios. Try to find projects similar to yours.

4. Observe reviews. It’s great if they are posted on independent sources. However, keep in mind that some negative feedback may be ordered by competitors.

5. Get in touch with the most suitable company to figure out an approximate budget. At this stage, the description created before is going to be very helpful.

You can find more useful tips in the article “How to Find and Hire The Best Mobile Development Team”.

In the end, we just want to note: don’t try to mix in-house and outsourcing executors because it’s often so hard to achieve coordinated work, especially when in-house employees don’t have the needed qualification. An outsourcing company will create a working team that would include experts with the required experience.

Conclusion

There are numerous project team roles, which actually you shouldn’t sort out. Agilie has been operating since 2010, so you just need to voice your wishes: we’ll gather the necessary specialists and make sure that you receive your solution on time.

We are ready to help you in implementing all your plans! Follow the link to get acquainted with our portfolio. In order to contact us, just fill out the form below.