Finding an efficient team to implement the project is among the major problems for startups. Talent is the development bottleneck that even unlimited resources cannot fix. With tight budgets and tighter deadlines, startups are desperate for experts.
Depending on the business niche, project scope, and specifics, startups require a variety of professionals, such as
- Marketing manager to research the market, work out brand positioning, establish promotional campaigns, and attract leads and customers.
- Accounting manager to assess the project budget, record expenses, and forecast project revenue and profits.
- Customer support and sales manager to build and nurture a relationship with new and existing clients.
- Technical team of developers, designers, quality assurance specialists, project managers, and consultants to implement the development plan and maintain the finished project post-release.
It is not uncommon for startup founders to take on the roles of marketing, accounting, and sales managers while juggling technical tasks. However, strategic startup development is only possible if you focus on growing the business, not get stuck on technicalities. For this reason, today we will talk about hiring and managing a technical team for your startup.
Why does your company need an outside tech team?
Even if you have basic technical skills to develop an MVP, outsourcing the development to professionals offers multiple advantages for startups. With technical consultants on your side, you:
- Foresee and avoid current and future technical difficulties based on their extensive experience;
- Delegate the technical tasks to specialists that have the time and skills to work out the details;
- Enjoy the latest trends and advances in technology you have no time to research and employ;
- Get a second opinion on your technical decisions and better alternatives for the solution.
To get the best quality IT services, choose a web development company instead of hiring a team of freelance specialists. When cooperating with an IT solutions company, you get:
- Customized development services for your startup;
- Interim reports and demos for your in-house team and investors;
- Confidentiality and satisfaction guarantees to protect your interests;
- Rapid team building and scaling to suit the project’s needs.
High-performing teams for startups
An established IT vendor can perform tech consulting services and estimate the most efficient team size and role lineup based on your goals. At FreshCode, we rely on a variety of team types for the projects at different stages of their business development.
If your budget is tight or you haven’t raised the investment funds yet, hire a web developer and/or a UI/UX designer. A one or two-person team is usually enough to create an interactive prototype to showcase the project’s feature set, test usability, and improve desirability. Developers can implement your vision into a proof-of-concept MVP with a minimal set of features. However, sometimes it is better to start with visual elements and hire a single designer to work on the user personas, flow and create an appealing image to impress investors and potential customers.
Once you secure the funds, the team development can go up a notch to include extra technical and non-technical roles. Besides additional developers and designers, a medium-scale project might benefit from:
Business analyst
to analyze the business niche and competition, develop customer personas, and work on a comprehensive system requirements specification (SRS). Non-technical startup founders will benefit most from hiring a business analyst, as this specialist can bridge the understanding gap between the owner, investors and the development team.
Project manager
to coordinate the scaled-up development team, assign and keep track of tasks, generate regular reports and conducts interim demos. When outsourcing the development to an offshore development company, you are unlikely to communicate directly with software engineers. However, an experienced project manager will keep you apprised of the progress and help resolve occurring issues.
Quality assurance specialist
to go over the code and features with a fine-toothed comb and locate bugs, errors, and glitches. Even the most experienced and successful team of developers is not perfect. While you might be tempted to save time and resources on QA and testing, do not leave out this crucial stage. The cost of fixing bugs in an active project will be much higher than removing them pre-launch.
If you hit a gold mine and scale-up the development, your in-house or outsourcing team will grow. New roles will appear to meet the new requirements. Most common of them include:
Tech lead
is a necessity if the development team count exceeds a dozen software engineers. A senior-level developer is the one to make executive decisions about the architecture and technology stack. Tech lead reviews and cleans up the code and communicates with the technical team, project manager, and startup founders and ensures the development runs on schedule.
Deployment specialists
are indispensable for large-scale projects, as they work on the solution’s dependencies and system requirements. They ensure end users can install, uninstall, and use the app with no conflicts and troubles from third-party software or hardware.
Training managers
help transfer the finished product to the client if you license the solution or rely on a SaaS model. Besides hands-on training, these specialists develop educational materials and content for your clients, such as presentations, webinars, guides, and more. While other team members can take on the training role, if your client is an international corporation with thousands of end users, you can afford to splurge on a coach.
Specific team roles are defined by the project’s scope, requirements, and budget. When working with an offshore web development company, you get a full lineup of technical and non-technical specialists capable of working as a cohesive team. You might pay a little more, but you save time compared to searching for individual freelancers and building the team from the ground up.
