Steps To Building A Web Development Team

The first step to setting up a web development team is to secure a skilled lead developer/architect. The lead dev will drive the project from an implementation point of view, and so this position is definitely the most important position to fill properly. Things to look out for when sourcing a lead dev, is obviously their experience but also their attention to detail and communication skills. The first task that the lead developer will need to do is determine the architectural design of the webbased system, this system may include any number of web, mobile or desktop applications, and hence, can become very complex, so it’s important that a significant amount of thought goes into it from the outset. Other necessary tasks include setting up the source control and writing up any documentation that will be relevant to subsequent developers that are integrated into the project.

The next step is identifying and vetting senior, mid and junior developers that will do the heavy lifting of the development work. Typically, the architect will take care of the high-level design of the solution, as well as the tricky coding where necessary. The rest of the grunt work will be delegated to the team of other developers. It’s important that these other developers are vetted correctly in order to ensure code quality levels are maintained and to decrease the chance of avoidable bugs making their way into the production systems. Methods of vetting candidates include code challenges in the interview process, technical interviews, and simply ensuring the team fit is there from a personality perspective.

Once the initial team has been arranged, it’s time to ensure that the correct set of processes and procedures are put in place to maximise the chances of ongoing success. Things to look at here are things like regular code reviews and pair programming sessions, as well as daily meetings or morning stand-ups as they’re known in the AGILE methodology space. Setting up these processes early on helps ensure the quality of code contributed to the project is kept at a high standard, which ultimately makes for a better product or service.

These steps have summarised the methods that many online businesses worldwide have taken to setup in-house development teams. Ensuring you follow these steps in setting up your development team will help your business flourish and scale online with ease.