Successful software development

Dave Longman at Headforwards argues that getting the team right is critical to successful software development

 

Team matters more than many tech leaders realise in software development. One of the greatest reasons for transformational failure is down to lacking the right team formula.

 

Forbes has cited micromanagement or mismanagement of agile teams as a top three reason why digital transformations can fail. It’s not a numbers game either: similarly to sports teams, you don’t automatically get a high performing software development team by pulling a bunch of individual developers together.

 

With the growing demand for application development - the global enterprise application industry’s market size is expected to grow to about $530 billion by 2030 from $240 billion in 2020 -  an app’s success rests entirely on the calibre of the development team.

 

However, there’s more to building a thriving development team than just technology. Designing high performing teams comes down to the fabric and inner-working of the team itself - communication, collaboration and an understanding of the business product or need.

 

Before we look at some of these critical success factors, it’s first important to recognise why team matters so much in software development.

 

The team in software development

Software in itself is inherently complex, and for anything of any scale, requires that we leverage the creativity and problem-solving skills from many people. Getting this best possible problem-solving capability requires having access to the wide variety of knowledge, experience and creativity found within a team environment.

 

Harnessing this knowledge into some core ideas requires maximising creativity and thought cycles. There are more thought cycles taking place because you’ve got people working together, which generates a lot of creativity. 

 

Most importantly, feedback loops within the team can help indicate whether their current train of thought is going along in the right direction and is the right answer or not. Ultimately, the sooner you get that feedback, the quicker you can begin to find the best possible solution to the problem.

 

Challenges for building teams

The scale of an organisation can dictate the challenges they will face in creating effective teams. Smaller organisations, start-ups and small to medium-sized organisations (SMEs) often lack the resources and draw for niche skills than their larger peers. SMEs that are focused on generating business value through their products and services, but are maybe not digital, or are becoming digital, might think that they can just form a software team which possesses expertise in the hard skills or whatever technologies need to be used. 

 

Meanwhile, for larger organisations, typically their success achieved to date has been caused by structures and governance that don’t lend themselves well to developing a high performing software team. With a bureaucratic mindset, hierarchical organisational structures, and legacy processes, these can all be obstacles for success.

 

Above all, this larger and more complex organisation can be distracted by their shareholder objectives, and must prioritise the customer for a successful project.

 

Key factors for high performing teams

There are several different elements to what makes a great software development team. The right characteristics will create a thriving, high-performing team:

 

Select people that show the right behaviours. The profile of the team must be right in terms of its soft skills. This means being able to communicate, collaborate, and being willing to learn and grow. Having teams comprised of individuals who communicate well and who are always looking for ways to improve will ensure that the team is resilient even if some of the other characteristics here are slightly lacking.

 

Select people with the right technical skills. While having the right behaviours is the most critical characteristic, you cannot overlook having the right technical capabilities. These skills determine how quickly a team can get up and running initially and start demonstrating value.

 

Having a team with the right behaviours leads to a continual learning environment where the impact of missing specific technical skills can be mitigated, but it’s much easier if you can get a team with the right technical skills in the first place.

 

Enable them to self-organise. Thirdly, we should want to enable this team to take control of its own governance. This includes the ways in which it’s working and making decisions such as how it’s going to deliver that value for the customer, without needing to be told by the rest of the organisation how to do it. A team must be given the autonomy to decide how to solve the customer’s problem and change that capability.

 

Effective leadership. To enable more autonomous teams, it is important to create an environment with effective guardrails that enable self-governance without destroying existing company or department-wide initiatives. This is achieved by supportive leadership, having people in key roles that can encourage and support pushing boundaries while still respecting other autonomous teams. This style of leadership is the ‘servant leader’ described in agile methodologies but is effective in all types of team and delivery approaches. 

 

Behaviour is equally important as skills

Not just anyone can build a software team. It’s essential to have an understanding of the right roles and resources that are required to make it work. It requires the right recruitment capability to identify the right talent. The right soft skills and behaviours within those team members are critical to the effectiveness of that team.

 

Choosing people who are great at collaboration and communication is vital to generate successful outcomes. Additionally, those that are aligned to an agile, iterative approach will stay motivated, passionate, and delivery minded.

 

Fostering a culture of psychological safety makes everybody feel comfortable and able to perform their best work. With the ability to be open and honest with each other, there’s a far greater chance that they can succeed in achieving that goal of delivering true business value for their customers.

 

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Dave Longman is Head of Delivery at Headforwards

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and pixelfit