The Dream Development Team: Specialists and Their Tasks in Project Development
Development is not something that springs up naturally — to implement a product, you need a team of specialists with relevant expertise. Today, we’ll talk about the members of such a team. We’ll discuss the roles involved in development, identify their tasks, and define quality criteria for each role.
It is possible for the same individual to take on several roles at once, depending on the company or process. For example, in smaller projects, the same team member might serve as the sponsor, product owner, and product manager simultaneously. What’s important is that all of these specialists participate in the project.
Customer
The goal of the customer, or sponsor, is to generate revenue or reduce costs. They are primarily interested in the success of the product and understand best what business functions it should perform.
Tasks
Communicating and agreeing on the product vision. The customer conveys the product idea to the team and agrees on the Project Vision that describes the project essentials.
Funding the work. They are responsible for covering all costs, both internal and external.
Forming the team. The customer agrees on roles, assembles a team, and identifies which specialists from their company can participate in the development of a specific product.
Work Quality Criteria
- The customer and development team work cohesively.
- The project receives adequate funding.
- The project has been successfully implemented.
It is not enough to develop a product; it must also be implemented. Large companies might spend more time on implementation since any transformation involving digital products generally implies changes in business processes, whether within the company, with suppliers, or with clients.
Top-level responsibility for project implementation rests with the customer but can be delegated.
Product Owner
The product owner is someone who creates the project in the first place. They formulate the product's goal, define the target audience, and are responsible for the overall success of the product.
Some companies such as Leroy Merlin have a well-established system of internal startups, allowing any manager to initiate a project. The product owner first conceptualizes the idea and then discusses it with a sponsor.
Sometimes, the product owner may also act as the sponsor.
Tasks
Finding and testing the product’s business model. The product must be profitable; it should either generate revenue or save money for the customer. This requires identifying a user segment that has a clear need for such a solution and is willing to pay for it — this is how you validate the product idea.
Attracting users to the product. The product owner must possess strong marketing skills, understanding how to position the product, its strengths, its target audience, and its usefulness.
Implementing product monetization. The product owner needs to understand how the product will sustain itself financially once it attracts an audience, whether through advertising, subscriptions, or other methods. For instance, an advertising monetization model could be justified for products with millions of users.
Work Quality Criteria
- The market needs this product, as evidenced by its users.
- The product generates profit or saves money for the sponsor.
- The product's economics add up.
The last criterion is not always met. Many projects exist in the market where the product's economics do not yet align. This is an investment model designed to pay off in the future, after the project has gained an audience. For example, this type of model is used by Ozon and the Russian branch of AliExpress.
Product Manager
The product manager’s goal is to oversee the product development process. They assist the product owner or perform tasks to identify and define user needs. This may involve organizing interviews, conducting market analysis, studying user habits, and more.
Tasks
Identifying and defining user needs. The product manager formulates and tests a series of hypotheses to understand whether the users have a need for this product, whether they are willing to change their habits for it, and whether they would be willing to pay for it.
For example, by the time the Lyft app was created, its direct competitor, Uber, was already fully operational in the country. The product manager needed to ask: why should customers use the new product instead of one they’ve already grown used to? They must then find answers to that question.
Conducting market and competitive analysis. You need to study demand in the selected market segment and your competitors. What can they offer users, and what can’t they? Why will users choose the product that you’re developing?
Creating the project concept (Project Vision). The Project Vision is a concise yet informative document that describes the future product, including its main objectives, business goals, key user roles, and the functions associated with those roles.
Prioritizing the product work. The product manager prepares a backlog of tasks — essentially a queue of work to be completed. They set priorities and communicate with the development team about what needs to be done, why particular features are necessary, how to implement them, and the overall direction for the product’s development.
Work Quality Criteria
- The customer receives all required features for the project on time.
- The product achieves success in the market.
The product manager and product owner define what the team is building and are accountable for the results. These are some of the most responsible roles.
Project Manager
The project manager’s goal is to ensure that the project is completed on time. They focus on specific tasks. They do not determine whether the market needs the product – that responsibility falls to others before them. Instead, they are responsible for the timely completion of all the tasks included in the backlog by the product manager.
Tasks
Planning, organizing and monitoring all the project work. The project manager communicates with the development team, creates a development plan, monitors its implementation, prepares reports, and more.
Setting tasks according to requirements. The project manager allocates tasks within a task management system and ensures that no obstacles hinder task completion throughout the process. It is their responsibility to make sure every team member knows exactly what they need to do.
Work Quality Criteria
- Projects are delivered on time, meet quality standards, and remain within budget.
- The customer is satisfied with the outcome.
The project manager delivers the results that are within the agreed budget and time frame. The project manager handles all project communications and is deeply involved in the development process. They understand the workflows and coordinate the efforts of all specialists involved. Maintaining customer satisfaction is crucial, because they serve as the central point of communication.
Business Analyst
A business analyst is a specialist who creates technical documentation. They work closely with both the product owner and product manager to create project documents. These documents are then sent to the development team.
We have a separate article about this important role, which helps the customer save time and money on development.
Tasks
Preparing a detailed description of features for evaluation and creation of ToRs. The business analyst needs to produce high-quality requirements. If they fail to do so, development may proceed based on incomplete, contradictory, or unfeasible requirements. Unfortunately, these issues might only be discovered during the development process.
The product manager uses these requirements to verify that the product being created aligns with the initial plan. Meanwhile, the product owner relies on these requirements to understand how the app under development will function.
Formulating tasks for the designer. The designer and UX specialist analyze the requirements to determine where each element should be placed and to prepare the visual aspects of the app.
Work Quality Criteria
- Complete, relevant, feasible, adequate, modern, consistent, and understandable requirements.
If every team member knows what to do without needing additional explanations, then the business analyst has successfully fulfilled their role.
UI and UX Specialists
UI and UX specialists are primarily designers. They create prototypes and app designs.
Their goal is to develop a beautiful, user-friendly, and modern product. They prepare the corporate style and create designs for various platforms.
Tasks
Designing the user interface. Users should be able to navigate the app easily. To achieve this, designers create an intuitive navigation structure, user-friendly forms and data entry screens, and appropriate color schemes while also determining optimal sizes and layouts for interface elements.
Creating the app design and animations. Designers are responsible for everything from logos and mascots to smooth transitions. The quality of their work significantly impacts user enjoyment of the app.
Preparing the logo and corporate style. For the corporate style, you need to choose colors, shapes, and other elements that will be associated with the brand, as well as develop a logo.
Work Quality Criteria
- Usability and readability.
- Adherence with clear templates and guidelines.
- Aesthetic satisfaction from interacting with the product.
Guidelines are recommendations for app development provided by manufacturers for various devices. All developers follow these recommendations.
Platform users become accustomed to specific elements, such as menu item locations and particular functions. They develop certain habits when interacting with different apps. Designers must consider these established habits to ensure that the app remains usable for the majority of its users.
Team Lead
A team lead is the head of a technical team. They manage technical work. You will encounter technical issues in any complex product involving several groups of specialists, such as iOS developers, Android developers, or server app developers. The team lead acts as the main coordinator in resolving these issues.
The team lead also breaks down high-level tasks into smaller ones and distributes them among team members.
This role is crucial. Without a team lead, programmers may begin to address their issues with each other first, then escalate them to the product manager.
The solution that a programmer suggests to their colleague may not be optimal or may directly conflict with business requirements. Each programmer usually works on their own part of the project and does not see the whole picture. The product manager is not a technical specialist. They might lack the necessary technical skills and either will not be able to help or will give the wrong answer.
Tasks
Coordinating technical work. The team lead must be able to communicate and coordinate the efforts of various technical teams. Sometimes projects may involve specialists from both the customer and contractor sides. It is the team lead’s responsibility to resolve issues that arise at the intersections of different teams.
Breaking down the developers' tasks. The team lead interprets tasks formulated by the business analyst and determines the technical means required to complete them.
Choosing technical solutions for business tasks. The team lead needs to have a good understanding of the business. It is their job to decide which technical solutions to apply in different situations.
Work Quality Criteria
- The technical work is proceeding as planned.
- The acceptance of work is smooth.
- The contractor is meeting the deadlines.
Work is accepted by the customer or their representative. They check whether the product is functioning reliably, if the planned features have been implemented, and what work has been completed by the designer and analyst.
If any issues arise during product development, the product manager communicates these to the team lead. They will know where the process went wrong and what can be done to fix it.
Technical Team of Specialists
This team comprises programmers for all platforms relevant to the project. They implement tasks, write code, and integrate technologies into the project.
Tasks
Product programming and bug fixing. The primary responsibility of a programmer is to write code and build the product incrementally. They also fix bugs identified by test engineers.
Following modern technologies and integrating them into the products. While staying fully focused on the project at hand, a competent programmer is also open to new ideas. They study implementations of tasks by competitors and adopt appropriate solutions to problems.
Following best practices in product development for different platforms. A technical specialist must not only be familiar with various technical solutions but also be able to choose the most suitable one for a specific project. They can suggest the best technical solution and give reasons for their opinion to the project manager.
Work Quality Criteria
- The technical tasks are completed on time.
- The product works in a stable and reliable manner. It is easy to develop and maintain.
The quality criteria for the technical team’s work are similar to those for the team lead’s work. Code must be simple and readable for ease of maintenance.
Test Engineer
Also known as a QA (Quality Assurance) engineer. Their goal is to ensure the overall quality of the product. This involves identifying not only technical errors but also UI and UX issues.
A QA specialist must be an experienced user familiar with various products, using numerous apps on different devices and understanding their functionality.
Tasks
Testing the product to identify errors and user issues. The engineer’s main job is to check the functionality of the app. All buttons must be clickable and direct users to the appropriate locations. All fields must accept and process information correctly, and all features must function as intended.
Identifying UI/UX issues with the product and suggesting improvements. Technically, the QA engineer is the first user of the app. It allows them to evaluate usability from the user’s perspective and recommend enhancements.
Beyond their main tasks, they must also share feedback about the product, highlighting what functions well, what needs improvement, what is easy to use, and what may be unstable.
Work Quality Criteria
- The testing phase is where you identify and correct all the product errors.
No project development is completely error-free. A skilled QA engineer’s job is to uncover all issues before the product is released.
Each team member plays an important role in the project. And we can quickly provide all the specialists necessary for quality project work. Contact us for a free consultation.