Software Development Team Structure: Your Comprehensive Guide

A developer, just like a practicing doctor in a private clinic, can get huge money, much higher than management. The demand for experienced specialists is high. In IT, it is not the company that chooses from many employees but the employee from many companies. Consequently, a person will not be afraid to leave if he is unsatisfied with something.

Software development team structure

In IT, there are so many options for building team connections, and there is no single right recipe. The structure depends on the market, type of product, stage of its development, and much more. Some people need their own lawyers, sales and support departments, but there are also companies of 5 people working with such giants as Meta. So, we decided to choose the most popular type of product – a cloud service with a website and a mobile app. We will also assume that sales are automated. Then, we will get the following top-level structure.

At the head of the product is the Product manager or Product owner. There is a difference, but it is not significant for us. He works with the market, communicates with users and investors, defines the product development vector, generates hypotheses and user stories, prioritizes them, and much more.

For example, he sees many users adding items to their shopping cart but not buying. His task is to formulate hypotheses to increase conversion on his own or by involving the team and select the highest priority hypotheses for the moment. Then, he passes them to the development team, which tests them individually on the part of the audience. If the results are positive, the changes are implemented on all users.

The marketing team is responsible for positioning the product and attracting users. The support team answers users’ questions. At the start of the product, you will need only one marketer, and customer support can be handled by product and project managers while getting valuable feedback. Therefore, we will not analyze these areas and will concentrate on the development team.

Don’t be intimidated by a large number of people. The diagram’s purpose was to show the structure of the team, not its size. It is pretty realistic when each branch ends in a tech lead, i.e., one specialist covers the whole direction.

Project manager

A project manager is responsible for implementing specific functionality within the agreed timeframe and budget. He defines the development methodology, establishes processes in the team, draws up a development plan, and much more. That is, he decides what to do, how, and when.

Scrum Master

Scrum Master is a specialist who helps the team to apply the methodology correctly, explains the rules of the methodology, and controls their implementation.

Business Analysts

Directly communicates with the customers of the product and finds out their wishes and requirements. The task of a business analyst is to understand what the customer wants, how he sees the product that the team will develop, the purpose of the product, and what tasks it will solve. At the moment of communication with the customer, the business analyst can offer his ideas for improving the product and, together with the customer, form the so-called vision.

System Analyst

It is an intermediate link between development, data engineers, and the business team: collects requests, comments, and complaints from the business. This is a translator of the business wishes into the technical plane. He understands the system’s technical limitations, nuances of work, and difficulties that arise for developers.

Architect

The key responsibility of an architect is designing software architecture, i.e., making critical design decisions regarding the internal structure of the software system and its technical interfaces.

UI/UX Designer

This person studies and evaluates how users feel about the software being developed. He or she is responsible for making the product easy to use, perceived value, usefulness, and effectiveness. He thinks through and evaluates the processes and scenarios for using the software. This specialist is also responsible for the UI design and appearance of the product.

Quality Assurance (QA)

He tests the product to make sure it is functional. Also, he or she ensures that the product meets the standards and expectations of the client. Finds bugs in time so that the team can fix them before end users evaluate the product.

Tech lead

Tech leads in each line of business have several additional qualities. They have all the information within their business line, allowing them to advise the leads of other lines of business, PMs, and sellers. Tech leads define the “rules of the game” in their department: what tools, approaches, technologies, etc. will be used. If every employee in a department does things in their own way, you can forget about efficiency.

Front-end developers

These developers receive layouts from designers, lay them (marking them up into elements and setting their properties), write the logic executed in the browser, communicate with the server, and adapt the site for different browsers and resolutions.

Mobile developers

The essence of a mobile developer’s work is very similar to that of a front-end developer, only instead of browsers, he focuses on the requirements of operating systems and devices. Front-end developers, of course, also consider them, but mobile developers are much more dependent on them.

Back-end developers

They write code that handles requests from the front-end, make queries to the database, configure servers, etc.

OS-System – your reliable software development team

As you can see, the project team consists of many specialists in different areas. On small projects, the number of people in one area usually does not exceed 2–3 people, and the inefficiency of any of them will significantly deteriorate the team’s final result. This makes recruiting one of the most critical success factors.

If you are looking for a reliable software development team, we can help you! We are a Ukrainian development team consisting of diverse tech experts. Our expertise can assist you in education, medicine and biotechnology, mobile development, and custom software development. We work with the following technologies: Python, React, Java, Angular, NodeJS, PHP, and others.

By the way, we at OS-System sometimes joke that we have made all the mistakes we can make in 17 years on the market. If you need an IT partner, we are your best choice!