Software development team structure

The team structure is an important aspect of software development. The structure and number of team members depends on the complexity and current stage of the software product. As for complexity, oddly enough, everything is relatively simple: the larger and more complex the project is, the more team members and the higher their qualifications have to be. The situation is somewhat different with the stages.

At the start of the project, during the discovery phase, we usually need a project manager, a business analyst, a designer, and, of course, a technical architect. The business analyst describes the project requirements and forms the basis for future tasks for programmers, the designer creates and approves the basic UI/UX, and the architect’s task is to propose a technical basis for the future software and choose the most effective technologies, predict the necessary service and human resources. A project manager controls the software development process at all stages.

During the development process, we form a core team by adding programmers (backend, frontend, mobile, or full-stack – the number and level of programmers is determined by the needs of the previous phase) and testers – manual or automation. Quite often, devops, tech leads, or scrum masters can join the core team, but these roles can be replaced by stronger backend developers to replace devops and tech leads, and the functions of the scrum master can be performed by the project manager. The roles of the designer, business analyst, and architect are retained during the second phase, but the scope of their work is significantly reduced.

At the final stage, when the project goes live, the number of developers can be reduced, but it makes sense to increase the number of testers. As for other roles: a designer can act as a UX-tester, an analyst checks the functionality of the system, and an architect makes adjustments if problems are detected during performance testing. But the role of the latter is much smaller than during the discovery phase.

It’s worth noting that the ability to manage the team structure can have a positive impact on the project budget, as the involvement of relevant specialists occurs only when necessary.