3 Options For Your Next Software Development Project

This article originally appeared on GlobalLuxSoft and has been republished with permission.

Nowadays, running a successful business is nearly impossible without reaching your audience over the Internet. Thus said, sooner or later every business comes to a necessity of hiring a custom software development team, as these specialists are needed to build a nicely-working website or an app. Below we will describe three steps to hiring a team of developers and managing it correctly to deliver planned results.

Hiring a team for an in-house development job

The process of hiring a good team of developers for a non-IT company involves several stages:

1. Employing an expert for consultations on all aspects of the process, including the process of finding a team lead.
2. Acquiring a good team lead, both capable of successful team management and solving technical issues, like creating test tasks for further interviews with developers.
3. Interviewing the candidates to find the talents your team needs and make sure they will work well together.

Here are more detailed explanations of these stages.

Employing an expert developer for your platform of choice

If you do not have sufficient expertise to describe your future product in terms of technologies needed for its development, you need to hire an expert. Such an expert can be the top-rated freelancer from corresponding websites or a renowned speaker from platform-specific conferences. Depending on the target audience you might need to search for Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Node.js, AngularJS, mobile expert developer, etc. Research their background to find the person with a good portfolio and feedback from customers and colleagues.

Once you find a trustworthy expert developer, describe your vision of the future product with as many details as possible. This will help the expert outline the code structure and the technological stack needed to get the project done, the parts of the job that have to be done by senior developers, and the parts that can be delegated to less experienced team members. Most importantly, the expert can write the test tasks using tools like Codility to ensure the applicants have sufficient skills.

Acquiring a good team lead

Once the technological stack needed for the project is defined, you can create the job description for a team and add the previously written test tasks to it. List the expected work experience, technical background, and the scope of responsibilities. A good team lead must be both a good developer and a good negotiator, able to balance a team of individuals, resolve inevitable conflicts through compromises, and direct their energy onto timely completion of the planned tasks.

Completing aforementioned test tasks will help efficiently siphon the developers with insufficient technical background and allow you choose three to five potential team leads for the final interview. During the interview you will need to evaluate several areas:

• The applicant’s soft skills (ask them to explain some concept as simply as possible, provide feedback on some code snippet, etc.),
• Problem-solving skills (ask for a managerial solution to a real-life situation),
• Stress-resistance (let them solve a pre-written task within a short timeframe, ask an unexpected question regarding a possible way to solve your project-related issue),
• Presentational skills (ask them to describe their favorite project or an ideal project they would adore to work on).

What’s even more important, ask your heart if you will feel comfortable working with this person, as the team lead is one of the most influential positions in a custom software development team and the company as a whole. A team lead can be the difference between making or breaking the project, so don’t try to save money on them.

Interviewing and managing the candidates to form a team of developers

Once you hire the team lead, it’s time to build a team. The lead developer can now take the responsibility of an expert or work in tandem with them. Repeat the process described above to fill all the needed positions — iOS developers, Android developers, web developers, front-end developers, designers, writers, etc. Don’t be afraid to hire people that do not correspond to 100 percent of the requirements or have little experience with certain technologies. Experience can be easily gained, and in-house cross-team training and tutoring help fill the gaps, while also creating strong bonds within your team.

Developer onboarding can be a path of trials and errors or a smooth, frustration-free process. To receive the latter, pay attention to providing a streamlined list of tasks with detailed information on the expected results and timeframes. Putting simpler tasks first allows helping the team blend together better and work more productively, than demanding fulfilling complicated tasks quickly from the very beginning.

Possible flaws of hiring an in-house development team

While hiring a team of developers is essential indeed, there are certain moments to keep in mind while doing this:

1. Hiring and maintaining a full-scale in-house development team can be feasible only if your company is large enough or is an IT business providing development services. In other cases, you risk having to pay for expensive talents who do little to no work, as product maintenance is much less costly than the initial development.
2. A developer might turn out to have insufficient qualification for the job, get ill, become injured for long, quit the job or even pass away. Such events might halt the process of development until a replacement is found and the new talent is ready to continue where the previous developer has left off.
3. Be prepared that the initial budget evaluations might be incorrect. Either developing the features that will be dropped later on, or having to add new features along the way can lead to significant increase in software development costs.

How can these threats be mitigated? By hiring a dedicated development team!

Hiring a remote development team

1. A contractor helps evaluate the project costs and timeframes and signs a legally binding contract to fulfill the job on time. You can concentrate on the business needs, while the contractor’s project manager will keep you updated on the progress.
2. Detailed business analysis helps you better evaluate the features and design of the future product, which removes the possibility of having to start from scratch amidst the project due to an important feature being overlooked on the start.
3. The contractor provides a dedicated development team, consisting of experienced talents and working like a well-oiled engine. If one of the talents get ill, goes on a vacation or leaves the team, they are replaced quickly and your project goes on without delays.
4. An offshore development team with vast experience in custom software development will be able to deliver the product in the shortest terms in order to provide an edge over the not-so-fast competitors.
5. Once the project is completed, you don’t have to pay the team for idle standby. You simply purchase one of the maintenance packages and receive the service on hourly basis when it’s needed, while the team works on other projects meanwhile.

Conclusions

As you can see, three steps to hiring a custom software development team form a time- and budget-consuming process. Many startups and non IT-businesses go for hiring an external team of developers instead. Delegating the website or custom software development to a remote team allows you to spend resources in the most optimal way.

This story was submitted by GlobalLuxSoft and does not constitute the views or opinions of Upwork.

The post 3 Options For Your Next Software Development Project appeared first on Upwork Blog.

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