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Building a dedicated software development team is never easy, especially when your core business activities are irrelevant to technology. Facing the pressure of digital transformation, many banks and financial institutions are on their way to building or hiring digital teams that work best for their specific requirements.
Considering the advantages that a dedicated team can bring to banks, here are our tips for building a dedicated team and choosing models best suited for each banking requirement.
Benefits of A Dedicated Software Development Team in Banking
As people are getting tech-savvy and prefer doing things online via their phones, banks and financial institutions need to join the digitalization trends to engage with their customers more effectively. Since banks have to focus on core business, having a dedicated software development team is worth considering. Below are some advantages of a high-performing development team for banks and financial institutions:
- Increase consistency and time-to-market of projects.
- Reduce the operational costs as the development team can be done remotely
- Lessen recruitment headache
- Keep the project under control and ensure its security
How to Build a Dedicated Software Development Team
Considering the value of the high-performing digital team, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, believed: “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team.” Despite the fact that a high-performing dedicated software development team model is highly appreciated by investors and tech industry leaders, building such teams is utterly a challenge, particularly as technology quickly transforms work settings.
In order to drive the IT team to new heights and increase team members’ productivity, here’re things that you should consider:
1. Create a Stable Team
According to a McKinsey article, team composition is a cornerstone among proven techniques to build dedicated software development teams. They opine that the teams should be ideally maintained small, but not too small, as that may lead to inferior outcomes due to the lack of diversity and slower decision making as a consequence of a team member shortage. It’s vital for companies to redefine some of team members’ roles and responsibilities so that they align with the transformation objectives. The main roles that you should have in the dedicated software development team include: The business analyst, the product owner, the software engineers, the UI/UX designers, QA specialists and automation testers.
The research also emphasizes that beyond the team size, the technical team leader should search for members who are proficient in some particular technology stacks. For example, the Front-end developers will be responsible for the design and implementation of the interface; they will need to know HTML5/ CSS/ JS/ React/…
Read more: The Right Way To Manage Your Dedicated Software Development Team
2. Develop a Value-Aligned Team Dynamics
"Teams are going to perform better if they share values" - this is how Francine Katsoudas, chief people officer for Cisco, elaborates on the success elements that drove a high-performing digital team.
It is essential to have a dedicated software development team in which each member shares a bond and interacts freely. This occurs when they align with the team leader's values and work in unison to obtain a shared objective. An effective IT team is characterized by shared values, a high degree of engagement, and a sense of trust among its members, all of which significantly boost productivity. Moreover, in ways to build dedicated software development teams, the leader plays an essential role in helping individuals stay concentrated on the vision through constant communication. Ensuring that your dedicated software development team’s managers must have some particular essential qualities is one of the best choices.
3. Encourage Open Communication
In meetings, team members often hold themselves back from voicing their ideas and thoughts as they may be afraid of being judged. By building a working environment that supports interpersonal risk-taking, this culture will motivate staff, encourage innovation, and facilitate the implementation of new ideas.
To boost the efficacy of an effective dedicated software development team, leaders must understand and evaluate team members' working styles on an individual level. Many leaders have implemented team-building indicators such as Belbin High Performing Teams, the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to understand team members' personalities, behaviour, and working processes.
4. Emphasize the Importance of Learning and Improving Skills
Encouraging a culture of constant learning to address skills gaps and various technology changes is vital to developing a high-performing IT team. This is especially important for the banking sector since the tech talents need to learn fast and often skill up to ensure cybersecurity.
In KMS Solutions, we always encourage our staff to enhance themselves by continuously providing them with corporate training in emerging technologies. This will help our technical talents skill up to be aligned with diverse development plans from clients. By entrusting your projects to our dedicated software development teams, who combine expertise in IT and business process consulting, your products will be developed promptly and in accordance with technology trends.
5. Set Measurable Objectives
One of the main characteristics of a high-performing dedicated software development team is apparent goals and expectations. Setting measurable and effective goals at the beginning of every project will encourage team members to be motivated, enthusiastic, and more creative. When all individuals know what they are working toward, they can diminish the time wasted on deviant tasks and accomplish more in less time.
Referring to the successful case study of the Asian Commercial Bank (ACB), the dedicated software development team of KMS Solutions needs to set the objectives of helping the bank go digital by providing full-cycle software development. Understanding the project’s goal at the beginning can help them have appropriate solutions like building a mobile banking app and delineating a product map for the following years.
6. Adopt Agile Software Development Methodology
Scaled Agile Framework enables collaboration between organized and cross-functional teams of experts. There’s much more chance of success when dedicated software development teams apply the Agile framework since they can accelerate project delivery speed, reduce risks, assure delivery with the business goals, and allow multi-tasks for higher efficiency. Technical requirements, project scope, and deliverables are reviewed for relevance on a regular basis, so individuals within the team can immediately respond to any changes.
The Dedicated Software Development Team Model that Fits for Banking
What needs to be concerned after developing a dedicated team is properly managing the team to ensure its effectiveness.
This model is ideal for banks with an in-house workforce and demand additional dedicated software development resources to handle the tasks. Banks regularly have their existing development team in case of technical uncertainties; however, the team may remain at a certain size and lack some innovative technology. By augmenting technical staff, technology vendors can help you scale up your development capacity by providing IT specialists and tools needed to get the project up and running. Under this method, you are still fully responsible for product development and team management.
This model of KMS Solutions often includes well enabled, train-the-trainer model, and efficient team mix. They are organized into scrum teams with 6-10 members, starting out with 1-2 scrum teams and are performed as a flexible engagement structure to plug in banks' existing teams.
For example: Considering the complexity of building a mobile banking application, ACB needs to augment an Agile digital team from KMS Solutions to collaborate with their in-house team to work through the project. The existing internal team of ACB includes Business Analysts, UI/UX Designers, and UAT Testers who worked closely with KMS Solutions’ talents of Scrum Master, Front-end and Back-end Developers, Test Engineers, and DevOps Engineers.
Banking Services and Operations that Need Dedicated Team
Hiring IT outsourced teams for specific services and operations within your financial institution can help you reduce time spent on complex tasks and cover up the lack of technical workforce from an in-house team. Here are some prominent services that you should consider engaging with the development team:
- Digital transformation: includes developing Mobile Banking Applications, Digital Lending platforms, eKYC solutions, etc.
- Omnichannel solution: services related to migration to omnichannel platforms that provide easy access from any device.
- Automated software testing: comprises the process of testing for functionality, performance, and security of the banking domain and system.
- Modernization: this banking service refers to the replacement, upgrade, or outsourcing of a bank's existing core banking systems and information technology (IT) environment.
- Integration services: deploy secure APIs to have 360°visibility of your data and have all data in a single source.
How is KMS Solutions Banks’ Perfect Choice for Having Dedicated Software Development Teams?
Nowadays, many businesses in the BFSI sector need dedicated software development teams to help them conquer the dream of digital transformation. With the assistance of high-performing teams, they can achieve their goals effortlessly.
At KMS Solutions, we concentrate on building an effective digital team that is effectively tailored for your business team size and specific requirements. We have provided all three main digital team models that can be suitable for your projects, even the most complicated ones. Just contact us and let our consulting team connect you with the right solution.
