How to Build an Exceptional Software Development Team: Top 7 Best Practices

How to Build an Exceptional Software Development Team Top 7 Best Practices

Successful software development can be narrowed down to the delivery of high quality software on-time and within budget, meeting specific project requirements. Therefore, software development team effectiveness is one of the most important pillars for successful in-house and outsourced software development. 

But creating a consistently effective development process can be a daunting task. According to the latest 2024 data from Gallup.com, only 33% of employees are actively engaged at work. On the contrary, according to the same data, up to 16% of employees are actively disengaged. Many software developers say their teams are underperforming, citing poor work planning, frequent changes, and a lack of visibility into collaboration as key barriers to success.

In today’s blog, let’s examine key factors that significantly contribute to team effectiveness, including:

  • Assemble a software development team that fits your project.
  • Create processes that increase team productivity.
  • Encourage continuous improvement.

Effective software development teams are usually self-managing and deliver valuable software on time. We will share best practices and examples of project management tools that you can leverage to achieve effective self-managing.

Choose the right software development team structure 

There are generally three types of development team structures: generalist, specialist, and hybrid teams. Each of these can be effective in one project, but “inefficient” in another. To avoid this, you need to consider the complexity, time and budget of the project and decide which team structure is best suitable for it.

Define the project roles

The scope of team roles depends on the range of the software development task and may vary from project to project. Accurately defining the roles from the beginning of the project is essential to avoid missing technical key skills and sudden changes of team members at later stages of the project.

Generally speaking, a self managed software development team usually consists of a business analyst, a project manager, a solution architect, UX/UI designers, backend developers, frontend developers, QA engineers and DevOps engineers. Depending on the specifics of the project, you may fill in other roles, such as AI/ML engineers building AI/ML models or cyber security consultants ensuring your software meets data protection and other regulatory requirements.

Build small team 

Small software development teams can be more productive because it is easier to plan and coordinate their work as well as recognize the individual contributions of each individual member. 

Based on our software development experience, a team of 4 to 8 people is ideal. If it is a large-scale or enterprise software development project, you can break the team into sub-teams, each with their own team leader. And this is especially helpful for agile projects that emphasize individual contribution and require frequent communication between team members to quickly iterate on goals and respond to changes.

Use software to manage the software development process

Project management software automates repetitive processes. Routine tasks are performed through a set of predefined operations. For example, a developer starts the code change process and performs the first step: submitting the changed code for peer review in the project management application. Their team members can then approve and move on to the final step: sending the changed code to QA experts.

In addition, this kind of project management application enables the visualization of the entire development process. Each team member can see how their work connects with others. Thus, they see their contribution to the progress of the project, which increases the sense of ownership and maturity of the team and helps them stay on schedule.

Projects documentation

Business and technical documents must be relevant to the current status of the project to inform the team about the project direction and progress. Other materials such as meeting notes, coding and UX standards should also be easy to access and addressed to, which will improve the coordination of teamwork.

The best practice is to leverage knowledge management software (e.g. SharePoint, Atlassian Confluence, etc.) for the centralization of project document storage, as well as filtering and real-time collaboration.

If you are working with a dedicated development team from an external software vendor, ensure documentation of the software development process is performed regularly. By doing so, if you change vendors or hire a different team (like an outsourced QA team), you won’t miss important project details.

Hire the right people

To pair the best matches for each role on your development team, you can consider aspects such as the candidate’s technical skills, experience, qualifications, specific software development expertise and industry knowledge, their rates and workload expectations. 

Also, conducting interviews and tests can help you assess the candidates’ soft-skills as well as their ability to communicate in English which are not reflected in their resumes. Also, pay attention to your candidate’s interests: hiring an expert who is really interested in your industry will likely result in a better engagement and they can also provide valuable suggestions for the improvements to the less known aspects of your project.

Communication: Online & Offlines

Creating transparent communication channels is an important step towards a productive and collaborative work environment. Some messaging apps that are useful for collaboration include: Slack, MS-Team, Zoom, etc.

Specifically, instant messaging is much faster than writing emails or comments when working on tasks in workflow management software, allowing teams to quickly share ideas, concerns and discuss work progress.

Furthermore, frequent offline interactions are also important to increase team effectiveness. Open discussions between team members and project reviews help bridge communication gaps in teams and create a work culture built on trust.

Resolving team conflicts

Conflict resolution guidelines may help prevent disputes from escalating. For disputes and challenges, you should document an escalation process that describes the point of contact, escalation priority level, method of communication, and time frame for resolution. If there is a conflict between team members or sub-teams, a team Guidelines always come in handy to resolve the conflict.

Set clear KPIs to measure team’s performance 

Last but not least, establishing clear KPIs enables objective assessment of team effectiveness and can help you quickly detect potential problems. 

Conduct regular KPI reviews so your team members know where they’re at and stay motivated for continuous improvement with proper training. In addition to monitoring team performance, KPI-based methodology helps you identify areas for improvement and optimize the process for better results.