Startups face multiple risks, and hence it requires a highly efficient marketing staff and a strong development team. A software development company can either take your business to the top or bring it down to the bottom. Hence, you need a highly technical and reliable team that supports a common goal, i.e., to grow your venture.
The process of developing software is entirely different from that of an established business. This is because startups don’t have significant experience in developing ground-breaking software solutions.
14 Tips to Build a Highly Efficient Software Team for Your Startup
Hence, for a startup, hiring and building a high-performing software team is stressful. According to CB Insights, almost a quarter of startups fail because they don’t have an efficient team in place.
Apart from building a talented team, startups also need to maintain a healthy work culture to achieve excellence. Don’t worry — this post has got you covered.
Here are the top 14 tips that will help your startup build a fantastic development team that will take your business a notch up.
- Planning Your Budget
- Establish a Favorable Company Culture
- Have a Concrete Hiring Plan
- Hire Skilled and Experienced Developers
- Never Neglect Soft Skills
- Equip your Team with Appropriate Tools
- Establish a Work Schedule Everyone is Happy With
- Invest in Team Development
- Look For Passion, Energy and Complementary Skills
- Consider Full Stack Developers
- Invest in Problem-Solving and Communication
- Hire a Core Development Team
- Get Smart About Managing Things
- Build Emotional Safety and Trust
Let’s look at each of these tips in detail.
1) Planning Your Budget
As a startup, you might be short of cash flows in the beginning. Hence, you need to keep in mind the latest technology, infrastructure, and project requirements to build your engineers’ team.
Once you do that, you would be able to gauge how much you need to spend on the resource and infrastructure part. This exercise will also help you to gauge how and when you need to scale up your team and infrastructure.
2) Establish a Favorable Company Culture
You need to create a work culture that helps your development team to excel in projects. Besides, you need to entrust your employees and motivate them to take ownership of tasks assigned and make apt decisions.
You also need to ensure that your team is driven by passion, patience, and resilience and that they’re driven by a single goal. Having said that, you can hire a software team and assign roles that enable the creation of a thriving atmosphere.
3) Have a Concrete Hiring Plan
For having a technically strong team, you need to have a robust hiring plan. Your hiring plan should include hiring team members in the hierarchy right from the senior to the fresher level.
You also have to think about how many resources you’d want to allocate to the project, the number of hours your potential resources would spend, and the salaries you’d offer.
4) Hire Skilled and Experienced Developers
The thought of heading over to college campuses and recruiting fresh graduates is overwhelming. They will happily accept entry-level salaries. However, a startup must be hiring software developers who bring their experience and knowledge to the table.
Experienced developers are subject matter experts with vast experience in application development, and collaborating with them will help you deliver satisfactory results.
One thing you must keep in mind while finding and hiring talent is that you are not recruiting for an already scaling company. You are hiring for what your startup will become.
5) Never Neglect Soft Skills
Suppose you make the mistake of hiring an employee who’s excellent at their job but lacks people and communication skills; they might end up proving out as a wrong recruit.
Just as hard skills are vital for the project to keep going, soft skills such as communication, leadership, and negotiation are critical for your startup’s success. Your team members should interact adequately, honor each other, and should manage conflicts. Soft skills help people to work in harmony.
6) Equip your Team with Appropriate Tools
When you automate routine tasks, you give your software team the proficiency of concentrating on more complex problems. Work closely with your team to identify what they need to work efficiently and choose tools that enable effective collaboration and communication.
Some tools that you must plan to use could be security, customer relationship management, project management, testing, and release management tools.
7) Establish a Work Schedule Everyone is Happy With
You will face such times when deadlines are approaching, and you need to meet them. In such a scenario, you must ensure that your team doesn’t get overwhelmed with the work. You can do this by setting up a schedule that furnishes your development team with enough hours to complete their delegated tasks.
Besides, they should also get enough time for rejuvenation and recoup. Also, it will be beneficial if you offer flexible timing to your team.
Many studies show that people are often wired to give their best when allowed to work at different times of the day. Along with that, you should also offer performance incentives and yearly bonuses to make your team feel valued.
8) Invest in Team Development
Support your employee’s overall development by granting them allowances for courses, skill development, etc. This will keep them updated with the latest tools and technologies. The investment made in enhancing your team’s skills will show up eventually in the work they produce.
9) Look For Passion, Energy and Complementary Skills
People who love their work and can walk the extra mile to accomplish a task will always help you push your goals. Besides, you can also look for people with complementary skills. Ideally, you should hire people who have a unique skill set from you.
A team with staff that has complementary skills works best. Having said that, look for people with whom you can work well and those who share a similar vision as yours.
10) Consider Full Stack Developers
A startup should recruit people who know the job. This way, it becomes easy for you to manage. Hiring full-stack developers for your startup is a worthy choice to get started with. They’ll take care of both your frontend and backend.
11) Invest in Problem-Solving and Communication
Conflicts within your software team may result in severe hurdles for the efficiency and performance of the entire team. Consider taking explicit measures to resolve disputes and manage your team proactively.
For instance, if you have a team member with considerable talent but poor work ethic, the cooperation will not work out as expected no matter how hard you try.
12) Hire a Core Development Team
In the beginning, all that matters is the core team. The only people you should hire are those with skills you can’t do without. You can add other roles at a later stage when the startup progresses.
If you start hiring broadly or without a specific reason, you will end up wasting money and other resources that could have been used more wisely to help your startup grow. Hence, hire only those people in your software team whom you need.
13) Get Smart About Managing Things
You are aware that collecting data will enable you to make smarter decisions about marketing, pricing, software features, and several other facets of your business. Have you started using data to manage your team as well?
Several savvy managers already use data about their team members’ traits and statistical models to enable their teams to excel in the quality of work delivered and productivity.
14) Build Emotional Safety and Trust
The best teams encompass members who feel free to communicate through their minds. Whenever they face a shortcoming or problem, they are aware that it should be brought to light, without fearing retribution or ridicule.
Emotional safety enhances the confidence level of your team, improves productivity, and strengthens the relationship. Give the liberty of sharing their inputs to all your employees, make them comprehend that their views are respected and that you take them seriously.
An emotionally strong team will help you inculcate a feeling of trust and would do your job without any bottlenecks.
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Vikrant Bhalodia
Head – Operations
Head of Operations with 12+ years of multi-functional expertise across Sales & Marketing, Consulting, Web Content Management, Operations and HRM at WeblineIndia. Having passion towards technology and with multi-functional expertise in a Software Development Company based in USA and India, Vikrant loves sharing insights on optimizing the success and internet visibility of the customers’ businesses.
