How to Build an App Development Team that Exceeds Expectations Every Time

Your app is as good as the people developing it. That is why building an expert team is crucial to the success of your app. You could have the most timely and brilliant app idea that truly solves problems and makes lives easier, but if the app doesn’t work smoothly and function intuitively, you might not break even. So before investing money in the app, build a great team.

Creating a successful app isn’t a one man feat. Even if you are the fabled ‘unicorn developer’ who can mysteriously perform both designing and coding, it will take you a god year or two to come up with a tangible, saleable product. That is because when it comes to actually shipping a product that is worthy of customer attention, especially of customers spoilt for choice by over 3 billion other apps, there is an insane amount of details to pay attention.

That is why you need a full team. And not just any team, you need a great team, filled with experienced and innovative designers and developers, along with a few other people like project managers and QA analysts. You need the right people who understand your vision and are familiar with the territory you are operating in. only when you check all these boxed do you know that your app development project is in the right hands.

For starters, let’s take a good look at all the different people you need on your app development. The people you absolutely cannot do without are:

A Project Manager

The project manager is the one that ties all teams together and acts as the main point of contact to the client. The PM acts as a bridge between the client’s expectations and the development team’s implementations. The PM needs great people skills as well as a thorough understanding of the development process.

Designers

Depending on the magnitude and complexity of your app, you may have one, two or more designers in your team. The designer creates the layouts, color palettes and all other aesthetic elements of the app. a good design isn’t an add on, it’s the face of your app and in this business, the face matters almost as much as the soul.

Developers

The developers are the very backbone of your app. These are the people who make the most whimsical features a reality. Wipe off the tanning, spots and wrinkles from your selfie and make it look 10 years younger? Done! Let you select a picture of a couch and let you view real time how it looks in your living room? Done! Such are the powers of a developer, ahem, a good developer. Again, you may need few or more of these depending on your app.

Quality Assurance Analysts

QA analysts are of critical importance to an app development team. These are the people who test the app and determine if it is ready for the customers yet, they test each feature and function under all possible scenarios and have a final say in the quality of the app. they suggest improvements to make the app more error proof, bug free and usable.
There are other professionals you may need, depending on your app and your budget.

App Marketers

These are marketing experts who make sure the app downloads are maximized. They do everything from app store optimization to creating campaigns.

Consultants

If you are creating an app in a niche that you aren’t the absolute expert of, and could use some help, you could hire a consultant, maybe temporarily. For instance, if you don’t know everything about restaurants or banking, but you think you know something and can make it better, you can always get help from someone who is an insider.

So now that you know all the different types of pros you need on your time, you need to get searching. Here are a few tips to help you make sure your team consists of the best professionals:

1. In-House, Agency or Freelancers

You should consider having an in-house team if your app is going to be a full-time, ongoing projects with continual maintenance, updates and other future app launches. This way, you have total control over the team, easy face-to-face communication on a daily basis and total ownership of the code. However, this also involves ongoing costs of keeping a full time team employed and providing them the infrastructure and a good working environment.

You could hire a full stack app development company. This is great as you have all the professionals covered and you get everything you need. Just be very careful to choose a really good company that has enough developers, designers, project managers and analysts. Take enough time interviewing and assessing them; ask all the questions involving technological, methodical and legal requirements as well as check out enough of their past work to assess their proficiency.

Hiring freelancers is always an option that can be easier and cheaper, but it does come with its risks. If your project is rather small and if you are willing to handle significant time and effort on micromanaging the entire process, and need only a little help with development or designing, you could always hire a freelancer. Just be careful to pick well and vet properly. Here’s a great article on the mistakes to avoid when outsourcing app development.

2. Analyze Your Skills and Deduce What You Need To Add

Like we just said, from designing and developing to marketing and support, there’s a buffet of responsibilities to handle in app development. So to find the right people for the job, you need to first assess what you already have and what you need to bring in.

You could be any of all the different professionals listed above. You could be a developer, a marketer, a project manager. You need to assess your skills and analyze what role you wish to play on the team. And once you know that, you can start filling the other positions.

3. Quality Comes At A Price, But Has Its Rewards

When just starting out, you will want to save as much money as you can. The funding is limited and almost always less than what you wish you had. But quality professionals are priceless, or at least expensive. You may do a few careful considerations and cut corners just a little bit, but don’t compromise on quality by a large margin. Even if you have to go out on a leg to hire the best developer, with experience and passion, do it. When the result shows, you’ll thank your good decision.

Conclusion

Choosing the right people to be a part of your team is more of an art than a science. Even so, the above pointers prepare you for all the steps and contingencies involved. Here at Moveo Apps, we have already done the heavy lifting and chosen the best developers, designers, QA analysts, projects managers to make sure your app development turns out to be just as you imagined it. So drop us a line if you have an app idea and let’s get this show on the road.