Thinking about starting your project but don’t know how to structure your software development team? If you’re new to software development, you may not be aware of the role each team member plays when building custom software. We’re here to help you understand software development team roles and responsibilities. Read on!
Who will be working on my project? Breaking down software development roles
The number of people who will work on your software project may vary depending on your technical partner. Most likely, your project will include some or all of the following software development roles:
- Business analyst
- Project manager
- UX designer
- UI designer
- Developers
- Quality assurance specialist
- DevOps engineer
Now let’s find out who’s who and who’s responsible for what.
SOURCE: STEELKIWI.COM
Business analyst (BA)
Some people think business analysts are just about making money for the company. But that isn’t true in most business scenarios today. A skilled BA plays a big role in moving a business toward productivity, efficiency, and profitability. BAs help businesses analyze their existing processes; define steps and tasks to improve those processes; design new features, products, or services; and evaluate the impact of new implementations.
In the software development domain, BAs serve as a liaison between a business model and the product being developed. They analyze business requirements and translate them into understandable development tasks.
Do you need a BA for your project? Our advice is to hire a BA if you have a project idea or business problem to solve but don’t have structured details and product requirements.
What do business analysts do?
- Identify market opportunities
- Discover, analyze, and report on user trends
- Find potential adoption problems and offer solutions to them
- Work closely with designers to deliver a great product experience
- Help clients create a strong product vision
- Gather, prepare, plan, document, and prioritize functional and technical requirements
- Test the product and create documentation and user manuals if needed
Project manager
Your chances for success are much higher when all stakeholders are involved in the project. There’s a huge flow of information throughout the development process. It’s therefore crucial for team communication to be clear, timely, and effective. A team full of great developers may not bring the expected outcomes if there’s poor communication. A project manager leads and manages the whole team, ensuring everyone’s on the same page.
Read also: Effective Collaboration Is the Secret to Your Software Development Project Success
What do project managers do?
- Involve all stakeholders in the project
- Make sure everyone’s on the same page
- Plan and monitor projects to prevent budget overruns
- Identify, assess, and minimize potential risks
- Organize and motivate the software development team to reach their full potential
- Set realistic deadlines and keep track of them
- Report to clients on progress and performance
UI/UX designers
The first thing you need to know about UI/UX designers is that user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design are two different yet interrelated things. The UI is the visual part of the product, while the UX defines how users interact with the product. Look at how Ken Norton, a partner at Google Ventures, describes the difference between UI and UX:
UX is focused on the user’s journey to solve a problem, UI is focused on how a product’s surfaces look and function.
Read also: The Design Development Process In 6 Steps
What do UX designers do?
- Define target users and their problems, identify a business’s core goals, and see how user problems and business goals align
- Research what target users want and don’t want in the UX design
- Analyze research data and present it visually through user personas and/or user journey maps
- Build out the design through visuals like site maps, user flows, mockups, and wireframes
- Collaborate with the development team to turn the design into a real working product
Read more - Software development team structure
