Are you a tech team project manager or a software business owner looking to hire an offshore development team? Either way, it's not wrong to say your target is to achieve the successful completion of your tech development projects on a steady basis. Having an array of competent coders doesn't automatically get you to the desired finish line of a project. That's because software development isn't a walk in the park.
Without established goals to guide the team, your assembly of excellent developers may as well be a bunch of nobodies. This is why working with an organised team via an offshore staffing provider is a good idea.
Here at Cloud Employee, premium offshore staffing solutions has improved our client’s operations in terms of workforce efficiency thanks to our highly skilled dedicated staff from the Philippines.
With that in mind, we’re here to offer five goals your software development team can adopt to ensure every project kicks off and gets to market on time. To begin with, let’s take a look at the vital roles of a development team.
As earlier mentioned, developing a tech product can be complex, especially when it's massive. If you've not established your software development team structure, then that's the first point of call. Let's take a quick review. It's a common misconception that a software development team is only an assembly of developers or tech geeks. But, development teams also comprise non-coders, such as those who handle the business aspect of the job.
Don't get it wrong; these non-coding members are quite knowledgeable about the job's technical aspect; however, they don't actually write any code. Note that the team size could be less or more based on the project's complexity or nature. Therefore, here's an example of a software project team structure.
Test Engineer: Responsible for creating scripts to identify and fix bugs.
Database Administrator: Creates and manages databases for software solutions.
Business Analyst: This member is one of the non-coders. The role entails ensuring the project's requirements correspond with deliverables and market expectations.
QA Manager: This guy converts a project's requirements into quantitative and qualitative test scripts for success measurement. Essentially, he makes sure the requirements and standards correspond.
Client: Here is the actual owner of the project, the financier, or the bankroller. Without them, there's no project at all. They are as important as the rest of the team. Sometimes, you'll find clients that are tech experts as well, so they'll likely take part in many tech decisions, such as choosing which programming language the team will adopt.
Project Manager: This person creates the project plan as he's the overseer. He sets deadlines, decides the development method, recruits if the need arises, and manages the team towards established goals. There's no project without a project manager. Even if there's no one with the title, someone in the team usually plays the role.
The Developers: These are the actual coders/software designers that build the software product. They implement the directives of the project manager and any other team leader. Now that you have an idea of a good team structure, let's jump right into the goals of a software development team.
There has to be a specific software specification that every member of the team must understand. The business analyst can organize a workshop to ensure every team member is on the same page with the requirements, i.e., the design up to the customers' expectations.
Furthermore, it's not uncommon for large projects to have adjustments because better ideas may come up as the project progresses. Therefore, there's a need to provide a structure to integrate change quickly without messing up the project timeline.
Sticking to the requirements is easier said than done. For a team not to deviate, there's a need to define key performance indicators (KPI) for measuring your team's input during the project. Check out some examples of KPI for software development teams.
This is the time consumed during a task; to move from one point to another. It's an indicator that helps managers measure the speed at which team members complete a task by previously setting a standard time for the task's completion.
Velocity is a performance indicator that measures the value a developer delivers within a certain period. Project or team managers can use this to improve their team or assign tasks to team members when time is of the essence.
It's quite similar to velocity; however, this metric considers the total output over a certain period.
WIP is a measure of the number of tasks the team is still working on over a given period. If the number is significantly high for the entire team, or a developer, it is an indicator of inefficiency or downtime.
The time it takes for the product to arrive at the market is crucial. The knowledge, idea, or decision to develop tech products is not exclusive to anyone. Your project may be similar to another team's work elsewhere. Therefore, arriving at the market early enough may just be the only leverage you'll have in claiming a significant portion of the market share. With that in mind, here are two ways to ensure the on-time delivery of the client's projects.
When it comes to working smart, automating the entire project's delivery pathway is part of software developer smart goals. This approach will ensure that projects are delivered on time, especially when you are saddled with a long list of repeatable processes during the product's development journey.
Also, there is a reduction of manual intervention, which promotes speedy project completion and seamless integration of new ideas.
Continuous tracking of the day-to-day journey ensures that the team members know how far they are from the final destination or a particular milestone. Tracking the team's project reveals the speed of carrying out a task, which helps make adjustments to achieve better momentum.
Quality is how well a product or service conforms to a certain standard. It's a requirement that should be part of the team's initial briefing. One aspect of a team's software development goals is to ensure there's no trade-off between quality and other requirements. This could lead to disastrous results, as customers may not patronize your product.
A high-quality product must encompass these three areas: Satisfaction(end user's opinion about usage), effective (fulfill task), and efficiency (speed of accomplishing the task).
Even if your team designs a 100% fantastic product, there's a possibility of misuse by the end-user. E.g., the input of errors or incorrect data. The product must therefore be able to withstand any unexpected error during use without crashing. Also, the security of any tech product is crucial. Customers must not just feel safe, but they should actually be safe as they use your product.
Achieving maximum reusability should also be part of a team's software development goals. That does not mean copying and pasting code for future work. Code reusability is a characteristic of modern software design that makes it possible to build new software from existing software without writing from scratch. It not only helps in reducing future development costs, but it also translates to achieving faster development cycles.
Another advantage of code reuse is that you don't need to understand all the details of the software components. This way, you can outsource many parts of the development to an offshore vendor.
Building a software product can be quite complex when you have to juggle so many other things, yet not compromise quality on your journey to the market. However, with a proper team structure, a system to measure performance, and adopting some software developer goal setting examples, you are more likely to achieve your project's requirements. At the end of it all, you'll design quality products that'll reach the market on time.