All tech businesses will eventually come to a point where it will require scaling. It is one of the first steps of acknowledging how well the business turns out to be. If your business deals with software development, sooner or later, you must scale your software development team. Either your customer base starts growing more rapidly, or the stakeholders have new visions that they want to execute the earliest; in both cases, the scaling of your software development team is mandatory. Otherwise, your existing development team will be unable to handle the workload, and the quality of work will eventually degrade.
Most tech companies manage to start a business, coordinate the works of a small group of people, and even show results of profit. But when it comes to scaling, things start to go wrong. It takes good leadership skills and a solid set of strategies to implement a successful scaling of the software development team. There are numerous ways to augment your existing development team. However, the method and approach of scaling will largely depend on the type of business you run, your company’s future goals, current business policies, and the budget you are willing to allocate. Sometimes people confuse the scaling of IT companies with the scaling of software companies. Scaling software development teams often bring more challenges to the table as there are significant differences between IT and software companies. This article will explore the most effective way to scale your software development team to achieve your goals.
What is Scaling?
At first, you should have a firm grasp of scaling. We need to define our terminologies to understand the concept better. According to HubSpot, scaling is a method of coping with growth and filling inefficiency gaps within the company. People sometimes confuse the terms growth and scaling. However, there is a technical difference between the concepts.
- Growth: Growth is simply adding more to something. It could mean the addition of more project managers, customers, revenue, or engineers.
- Scaling: Scaling facilitates growth. It is recognized as a framework that enables suitable conditions for growth. Instead of adding more of something haphazardly, scaling is a structured and strategized process of conducting operations that facilitate growth where it is needed.
So, scaling is both a strategy and a process. It is an excellent way to empower companies and enable efficient growth. Like any other strategies, experts have studied and formulated the best scaling methods by studying companies all over the world. There are tried and tested principles to ensure your company’s scaling strategies are robust, transparent, and goal-oriented.
Your software development team is the most critical asset if you run a tech company. Figuring out the most effective scaling approach will undoubtedly enable growth in your company.
Issues Occurring from Flawed Scaling
Intuitively hiring new employees can create a lot of issues in the company. Make sure you adhere to the discussed reasonings before going on board with the scaling of your software development team. Here are some issues formulated from flawed scaling.
- The unbalanced workload for team members
- Communication gap and hindered growth
- Minor improvements and bug fixing time gets elongated
- Increased project support time due to an increased number of projects
- Design architecture failing to cope with a scaled development team
Ultimately, an unplanned scaling will increase cost while delivering decreased productivity. It can even disrupt the whole business. So, it would help if you were careful to avoid these issues by adhering to the following tips.
When Do You Have to Scale Your Software Development Team?
Before making the decision, the first question that should come to your mind is whether you need scaling or not. How do you know that your software development team requires scaling? It is a fair question to ask and seeking the answer will enormously benefit the welfare of your company as it will stop you from making unnecessary investments.
First, you need to assess the current state of your company. It will depend on the type of company you run.
If you run a service company
A service company provides software-related services. So, the size of your software development team directly correlates with the number of developers you can provide to the client and your revenue accordingly.
This type of company will require scaling when the demand exceeds the company’s current capacity. When marketing generates an influx of customers, the demand for your services will also increase. However, your software development team members can only effectively perform to a specific limit. If you are frequently receiving more orders than the existing team can address effectively, it shows you the perfect time to think about scaling your software development team.
If you run a product company
Product companies develop software applications for their customers. Hence, your software development team’s size and technical expertise at which pace you can deliver your products. Furthermore, your team is responsible for the unique value proposition compared to the competition.
These companies might require scaling when the team frequently misses deadlines for different projects. Sometimes, the team is working on multiple projects simultaneously. It may become almost impossible to keep up with the workload. Furthermore, more orders might be placed, which your team cannot address due to the pending work. Scaling can be a solution if you face one of the above mentioned issues.
Scaling Your Software Development Team from a Business Standpoint
Finally, you have decided to scale your software development team. The real challenge is only about to begin. It would be best if you considered certain things to make your company ready for such a change. These include the technical expertise of your team, work ethics, company future goals, the current state of business, financial state, customer demand, coding infrastructure, and many more. First, let’s discuss what you should consider from a business standpoint while scaling.
Elaborating the Essentials
Start by focusing on the core business essentials. It would be best to address your business’s core values and principles to understand where it is going and where it should go in the upcoming years. It is impossible to build a successful business without understanding these basic principles. Even if you are not facing any current issues, it does not mean things will remain the same after scaling your software development team.
To address these issues, define your company’s core value, mission, and vision. Make sure your employees are on the same page with you. These will be your guidelines and foundations for uniting the team and preparing them to achieve your goals. Good morale and a solid foundation will help you overcome scaling challenges with confidence.
Defining Strategy and Metrics
Prepare a strategy before going onboard with scaling the software development team. Address how you are going to manage the extra workforce. Scaling should be aligned with your development strategy. If you do not have solid reasoning behind scaling, it can lead to chaos inside the company and, ultimately, losses in the long run.
Set some metrics by which you are going to measure your team’s performance. Track your team’s progress frequently to maintain they are on par with your strategy and growth plan. Arranging team meetings and discussing the overall planning sessions will undoubtedly help you maintain progress.
Assigning Product Owners Roles
If your team is working on multiple projects simultaneously, it can get difficult to track the progress of individual projects. It is more prominent when your team is working on software products. It is a good idea to extend the responsibilities of the project managers so that they can overview the complete project on their terms. It increases work efficiency and builds trust among team members. However, you need competent project managers to implement this idea.
Setting a Maximum and Minimum Team Member
Scaling will lead to changes in the company. But how many more members do you require? By setting a limit based on your manageability strength, you can set a maximum and a minimum number of team sizes. Managing a small team is more accessible, and you have more control over the team. On the contrary, bigger teams can cope with the workload more effectively. Find a sweet spot that will facilitate your team’s growth.
Making Teams Independent
Small teams can be easily managed, which is the foundation of flexible scaling. However, just increasing the number of teams will not benefit the company if they are not independent. It will only worsen communication and increase management issues.
It would be best to assign each team a set of goals they need to fulfill. Individuals in each team should be held fully responsible for the project’s outcome. A structured team should be able to deliver project increments independently.
Successful businesses often start with small teams, and their dedication toward the end goal motivates them to achieve company goals. You can also start with a small team to see where it leads you before scaling.
Optimizing Communication Channels
When changes happen in a company, make sure that the communication channel is reoptimized. New employees should know how to communicate with management and address issues within the company.
If you plan to hire remote employees, be extra careful to establish a proper communication channel. Sometimes information can get lost and create significant issues in the development of projects.
Facilitating Automation Business Practices
If you can automate your business processes, it will allow you to distribute your resources most effectively. A manual process is always hard to scale. Augmenting your development team is an expensive and time-dependent task. Make sure everything is aligned with your business values.
Synchronizing the Work of Teams
Synchronization is a critical factor to consider before scaling your development team. Hire people where it is required the most. Otherwise, the workflow will be severely disrupted. For instance, scaling can lead to product development teams’ coordination issues. One team can finish one part of a project while another team is still in progress. As a result, the entire development process is halted because all parts of the project are interconnected, and you cannot go any further unless these individual projects are completed.
To avoid such issues, scale the team by the complexity and amount of work. Discuss with project managers and determine where resources are necessary and reallocate accordingly.
Hiring the Appropriate People
Employees are the backbone of any company. Dedicated and skilled employees can bring success even in the most adverse scenarios. Nothing will work unless your hire the right people for your company.
Hiring the right people is a complicated task as it can be subjective. People’s skills are not the only determining factor here. You must consider your company’s work culture and hire people who are most suitable for it. For instance, if your company is filled with young and motivated employees, hiring a very skilled but senior employee who cannot cope with the work culture will decrease your productivity. When scaling, the work culture of your company gets greatly challenged. So, consider human factors when scaling your development team.
Working With Dedicated Developers
When scaling a software development team, changes in company structure and the reallocation of the workload are bound to happen. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to add a developer for a shorter time promptly.
Hiring a dedicated developer can be an ideal choice for such cases. Instead of hiring a full-time developer, you can manage the workload through dedicated developers, which require a fewer number of resources.
Outsourcing Your Development Team
Hiring an employee is an expensive decision for any company. It requires a lot of effort and commitment. It would be best to make sure a newly hired employee gets medical benefits, yearly bonuses, etc. However, you will be free from such issues if you outsource your work. A freelancer might not be able to give his undivided attention to your project, but tasks that are burdening your company can be simplified through them. Outsourcing lets you scale up or down quickly as you only hire them for a dedicated project.
Getting Your Finances in Order
Spending without knowing your limits will put pressure on other departments’ budgets. So, setting a realistic target for augmenting your development team will help you address other issues in the company. The cost of hiring new employees should be within the allocated budget for the software development team. The cost can vary a lot depending on the experience and skill set of the new employee. So, make decisions that suit your budget.
Scaling Your Software Development Team from a Technical Standpoint
Running a tech company requires a good combination of business and technical skills. Scaling is one of the most critical decisions for your software development team. It shows that you are ready for growth and adamant about overcoming challenges. Here is a list of technical things that you must consider when scaling.
Planning Product Infrastructure and Architecture
Often, scaling does not bring good results due to poor infrastructure and application architecture. Once you have already scaled and developed new functionality for your product, you realize that the infrastructure cannot handle the new load. Or the architecture is built so that some parts of the application stop running.
When scaling your team, prepare the infrastructure and design architecture. It will also give a clear idea of how many more human resources you require.
Overviewing Product Management
With the increased number of employees, the management of teams should be more robust and strategized. Adopt methods that are tried and tested to show fruitful results.
For instance, you can use Kanban, a popular framework used to implement agile and DevOps software developments. It facilitates real-time communication and full transparency of work. It is also ideal for visualizing the development process. Data visualization allows businesses to gain insight into vast amounts of data. According to a study by MIT, 90% of the information transmitted to our brain is visual data. So, using such a framework will significantly increase the synergy between teams.
Encouraging Good Coding Practices
Code quality directly impacts the quality of the product you are trying to develop. Poor coding practices will bring nightmares at the scaling stage of your company. Because newly hired employees will have a hard time understanding and modifying the code if it is not written standardly. So, make sure your product managers are overviewing to maintain good coding practices in every team.
Using Pair Programming
Pair programming is a popular concept in the programming world. As the name suggests, pair programming is where two developers work together with only one machine. One programmer codes while the other one observes. His job is to proofread and check the overall quality of the code while also figuring out where to go next. These roles can be switched at any time. It is an excellent way to get newly hired employees accustomed to the coding practices the company is used to. However, don’t pair the best developer with a newly hired one. Instead, pair a developer who is a few steps ahead in knowledge and skill for the best match.
Statistics show that for a development-time cost of about 15%, pair programming improves design quality, reduces defects, reduces staffing risk, enhances technical skills, improves team communications, and is considered more enjoyable than working alone.
Source: ResearchGate
Make sure your team members are comfortable working together. Many developers love to work independently, and interfering may hamper their productivity. So, understand what your team members want and work accordingly.
Common Mistakes While Scaling Software Development Team
Try to avoid these common mistakes while scaling your software development team.
Dividing Teams by Areas of Expertise
If you divide teams based on their expertise, it can lead to fragmentation, poor communication, and make the teams too dependable on each other. Try to mix-match the teams to get the best output.
Judging by Only Individual Results
It would be best to make sure the team members are responsible for themselves and each other. Sometimes, a team member must step out of his comfort zone to help another team member. To motivate such actions, try to make your teams understand that they are collectively responsible for their part of the product.
Hiring only Based on Hard Skills
Make no mistakes; hard skills are essential, especially when considering developer and quality assurance engineer positions. However, do not underestimate the power of soft skills.
It is not possible to achieve company goals by working alone. Flexibility, team chemistry, curiosity, and mental well-being are essential skills, especially for a start-up company. During the scaling of your software development team, new people will join the company. So, the ability to work with new members and adapt to changes will bring favorable results.
More Developers Means Faster Development
It is a common mistake to think that hiring more developers will help you finish your project early. However, it is true to a certain point. There is an optimum number of team members for completing a project. Exceeding that number might result in unnecessary chaos and communication problems. So, think carefully before you hire new developers.
Summary
The above tips aim to offer a complete view of the scenario before a company decides to scale. It discusses what managers and leaders should do to enable growth and facilitate more revenue through scaling the software development team. However, the most critical task is to prepare a robust plan before deciding on scaling. The plan should contain a combination of different strategies that align with your current business needs. Scaling is a big step toward your company’s growth, and it shows issues within the company that were not visible before scaling. As a leader, you should be well informed about the current business trends in the tech world to prepare yourself for upcoming challenges. Whether hiring new in-house employees or freelancers, make sure the company vision, mission, and culture are undisturbed. We hope you can scale your software development team with flying colors in compliance with all the above principles.
Software companies are becoming more prevalent in Bangladesh. The current state of software development in Bangladesh shows promises for a better future in this industry. More and more startups are trying to cement their foothold in the software industry. However, these startups are struggling the most with scaling their software development teams. Having a clear goal in mind and adhering to the mentioned steps can surely ease the process of scaling for these startups.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q. How to measure the efficiency of a software development team?
Ans: You can consider lines of code per developer per month, function points per developer per month, 360-degree peer evaluation, task completion predictability, etc., methods to measure the efficiency of a software development team.
Q. How do you measure success in software development?
Ans: You can consider retention rate, number of active daily users, customer acquisition rate, customer lifetime value, etc., methods to measure success in software development.
Q. What is the best indicator that shows I need to scale my software development team?
Ans: When you are frequently getting more orders, you can attend to is the best indicator that you require scaling of your software development team.
Q. What is the best method to increase productivity in my software development team?
Ans: The best method to increase productivity is to provide mentorship and continuous education for your employees.
Q. What is the optimum number of people in each team?
Ans: There should be around 6 – 7 people in each team for maximum efficiency.
