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Dedicated software development teams are more than simply developers and CTOs; they are a combination of various abilities required for different phases of a project, such as analysing, designing, developing, testing, etc. Having enough resources is a crucial factor for a project’s success. However, there are approximately 60% of IT projects fail owing to poor team organisation and/or a lack of recruiting.
Thus, top management should understand that a successful IT project requires sufficient well-managed and trained team members in different roles. While it can take time and resources to hire enough team members, businesses now consider a dedicated development software team as an alternative. So, if you’re also looking to hire a remote IT team, here’s a list of must-have roles that you should consider.
1. Business Analyst - The Interpreter
Business Analysts (BA) are those who engage closely with stakeholders and dive deep into their requirements and processes to help them formulate business goals. As an "interpreter" of the team, BA helps translate the client’s vision into functional and technical languages that can be used by software developers to build the software.
BA plays an essential role at the beginning of IT projects as they need to gather information, analyse data, develop use cases, and create mockups, helping clarify requirements and ensure that every team member has a shared understanding of what is being built. This role may involve the foundation stage, even before the software team is formed and continue to bridge the gap between the client and the team during later development phases.
Some qualities that a good BA should have include:
- A profound understanding of business processes from various perspectives.
- A strongly developed imagination that can shape up a software product to create maximum business value.
- A data-oriented mind to deal with numbers and data.
2. Product Owner - The Decision-maker
In a dedicated software development team, a Product Owner (PO) holds a heavy responsibility for a product’s success than other members. Balancing both business needs and market trends, they have the ability to define a business strategy, manage product backlog, and ensure the product satisfies client requirements.
Associated mainly with flexible Agile environments, PO needs to be flexible, creative, diligent and accustomed to complicated projects where requirements and workflows may change frequently. The reality is that an agile team will be challenged to bridge the business side of the project without a PO. As a decision-maker and a captain of the dedicated software development team, PO brings along the project vision, key drivers, and success criteria, helping the development team fulfil requirements in a fast-paced environment.
Possessing excellent knowledge of the project and user, the PO is more business and customer-oriented, while the BA is often more tactical and focused on the project.
3. Software Developer - The Keyman
No software development project is completed without the participation of coders. Since Software Developers are responsible for creating the final product by coding in a range of different programming languages, they’re essential to the success of a product’s delivery.
So, what traits of good developers that you’re looking for? Besides coherent coding skills, they need to be adaptable to technology trends, problem-solving and time-concerned to deliver a given task.
Depending on the complexity of the IT project, your dedicated software development team may have junior, mid and senior developers. However, in larger projects, you will often find different experience levels within the software development teams. Junior programmers can support the rest of the team by helping with simpler tasks, freeing up more senior developers to tackle complex coding. An experienced senior coder, on the other hand, will need to be sufficient in practices like agile development, know various task management software, and is not afraid of working in various environments.
Developers are often categorised into:
- Front-end developers: create everything the end-user sees and interacts with. They focus on the usability and functionality of the software product to ensure a seamless user experience.
- Back-end developers: form the core of the application where all algorithms and business logic are implemented. In addition to writing code, experienced back-end developers are also responsible for devising an app architecture or implementing the necessary integrations.
- Full-stack developers: tackle projects that involve databases, and APIs, build user-facing websites, or even work with clients during the planning phase of projects.
4. Quality Assurance Engineer - The Nitpicker
There will need to be a Quality Assurance (QA) Specialist in a dedicated software development team to verify whether the product meets the requirements - both functional and non-functional ones. QA engineers will need to verify an app from various angles, such as functionality, usability, security, or performance, requiring them to be proficient in many types of testing.
In the dedicated software development team, a QA needs to be a detail-oriented person and has a strong concentration on delivering detailed test cases, running various checks, followed by analysing the test results and reporting on the app quality.
QA professionals may produce several types of testing documentation, such as test scenarios, test protocols, and test results reports, to keep track of the checks and guarantee that all requirements are covered with tests.
5. Automation Tester - The Accelerator
A test automation engineer is essential in the software development team as they can help enhance the speed and quality of the testing process. By creating test automation scripts, which are small programs that can provide reliable and constant feedback on software quality without the need for human involvement. Automation testers can help handle regression tests or recurring tasks and increase the test coverage, while other QA engineers have time to check other test cases continuously.
A skilful automation tester might advise you on which components of an app are better suited for automation and which ones should only be tested manually. They can also establish an effortless test automation framework to maintain and upgrade. Ultimately, they strive to ensure that your test automation strategy delivers the most outstanding possible value at a reasonable cost.
When hiring test automation specialists, you can check their knowledge of your currently-used automation testing tool and test management and bug-tracking solutions.
6. UX/UI Designer - The Mind-reader
UI and UX designers, in collaboration with BA and engineers, often work closely together to turn clients' ideas into intuitive products that match business requirements and satisfy users. While UX designer cares about identifying and solving user issues, UI designer is responsible for creating visualisable, aesthetically-pleasing, interactive interfaces. Generally, UX design comes first in the product development process, then followed by UI.
6.1 UX Designer
The primary responsibility of a UX designer is to be concerned with the user experiences when engaging with the final product. To ensure satisfaction, you should find a designer that is sympathetic, customer-centric, and knowledgeable about numerous approaches for determining whether their design works for the target consumers.
Such person-based work not only consists of analysing user behaviour. UX designers also need to take into consideration what the competition is doing, and continuously upgrade the design to win competitive advantages.
6.2 UI Designer
To get the product fully developed with the visual elements conform to the needs of users, a UI designer is needed. The primary responsibility of the UI designer is to prepare or design the user interface. This means transferring content, style, and graphics connected with a client or product to a system presentation layer.
Unless merged into one role on smaller projects, UX and UI designers primarily interact with each other. They also work closely with the programmers to make sure their designs can be brought to life through code.
Read more: Best Practices for UI/UX Design in Banking Applications
7. DevOps Engineer - The Balancer
Even in Agile environments, development and operations teams can sometimes work in isolation from each other. To bridge this gap, DevOps engineers act as a liaison between the two teams, streamlining and automating the software delivery process. They aim to achieve a balance between the speedy implementation of changes and maintaining application stability.
A DevOps engineer should have wide-ranging knowledge of both development and operations, including coding, infrastructure management, system administration, and DevOps toolchains. In collaboration with software developers, system administrators, and operational personnel, DevOps engineers supervise and facilitate CI/CD-based code releases.
Find a Remote Dedicated Software Development Team You Can Trust
Now, as you know more about dedicated software development team roles and responsibilities, you can make more conscious decisions for your team structure.
Your software team members should be skilled, versatile and eager to cooperate, exchanging knowledge and visions. It’s also important to understand that the team size doesn’t matter, but the quality of the output does. Remember to specify what and how many specialists you need for a particular project and find the right IT service providers that can help you scale up/down your development team effortlessly.
KMS Solutions development team with 14+ years of experience in leveraging our global expertise and professional perspectives to help businesses in the BFSI industry digitalise their transformation and develop fit-for-purpose solutions.
Contact us now for your desired software development team!