It’s never solely the app’s idea that determines if the app will be successful. Various factors affect an app’s outcome, including its features, design, performance, and many others. However, the app’s development team is one of the most influential factors in an app’s success.
The right development team structure is vital to turning a business idea into a powerful and useful mobile app. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that assembles the perfect software development team to deliver a thriving mobile app. Many factors influence a team composition, including the app’s scope, complexity, budget, and deadlines.
To most, app development is uncharted territory shrouded in confusing tech buzzwords and engineering jargon. Today, we’re going to shed more light on the mobile app development team structure and roles to help you navigate the deep waters of the mobile app development world.
Before investing in your app development project, it’s better to understand what type of app you plan to build, including its scope, complexity, budget, and deadlines. Then, you can define what specialists you need to turn your business idea into a fully-fledged app.
For example, let's assume that you're going to create a mobile app operating on both Android and iOS. In this scenario, your software development team members may include the following specialists:
A vast majority of people often confuse product and project managers. While both are manager roles, the product and project managers are responsible for different aspects of a mobile app development project.
To elaborate, a product manager analyzes market data to assess the viability of your future mobile app and identifies if the market needs your product. Alternatively, a project manager oversees the app development process from start to finish. Specifically, a project manager continuously makes sure the project stays on track, ensuring the project goes as planned while meeting all the deadlines and budget requirements.
Simply, the difference between these roles is what they manage – a product or a project. A product needs to satisfy all users’ demands and be valuable, while a project needs to be a precise roadmap of software development with fixed deadlines.
To summarize, the primary role of a project manager is to supervise the mobile app development process and effectively manage their team. Further, they should possess the following hard and soft skills:
Essentially, the list of soft skills for a product manager and a project manager is the same, but their hard skills will be quite different. For example, a project manager deals with project management and should take advantage of planning and scheduling tools, while a product manager deals with a product and has to utilize various analytics tools like Google Analytics, Data.ai, Firebase, etc.
If a project is relatively simple, you don’t need to have both managers, as one specialist can wear both hats, taking on the roles’ combined responsibilities. Nevertheless, if a project is complex with a large scope, it’s better to hire a product manager and a project manager to divide the responsibilities. Having both specialists on your team can help you deliver a better product within the given timeframe and budget.
Every project kicks off with the discovery stage , where you solidify and put your app idea on paper. Business analysts ensure you develop a comprehensive understanding of the future solution, align it with current market needs, and gather tech requirements for future implementation.
Therefore, business analysts play an important role in researching the target market, your potential users, and direct and indirect competitors. Another key responsibility of a business analyst is to gather and document software requirements that describe the features and functionalities of a future mobile application.
Together with other team members, they run interviews, workshops, and meetings with stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of their needs. Business analysts then put these requirements on paper by developing clear and concise documentation for your business and technology teams.
Also, business analysts make sure the cost of development doesn't go sky-high. They help the development team prioritize core features with maximum user value so you don't have to spend money and effort on bloated products.
The list of hard skills may vary from company to company. Usually, business analysts are required to have hands-on experience in SQL and Excel and to be familiar with data visualization tools. They should also be able to analyze data in Python or R. Domain knowledge and experience managing Agile projects are also welcome.
The primary responsibility of a UI/UX designer is to create the visual part of the mobile application. Specifically, this specialist turns their creativity and imagination into a satisfying user experience and intuitive design.
Taking into account what a UI/UX designer does, they should have the following essential tech skills:
Ideally, you need to have separate app developers for each mobile operating platform since iOS and Android demand different approaches and programming languages.
Generally, iOS and Android developers are the ones who turn your business idea into a fully-functioning mobile app. The primary responsibility of a mobile developer is to build a mobile app, but their role encompasses much more beyond this task.
Since there are different tools and technologies for every mobile operating platform, let’s look at the foundational skills that are vital for iOS and Android developers.
| Basic skills for an iOS developer | Basic skills for an Android developer |
|---|---|
| Mastery of Objective-C and Swift | Mastery of Kotlin and Java |
| Knowledge of Xcode IDE and Apple Human Interface Guidelines | Knowledge of Android Studio and Material Designs |
| Knowledge of the latest trends in building apps for the latest generations of iPadOS and iOS | Ability to develop an app that works with a wide range of Android versions, devices, and screen sizes |
What if you need to reach both platforms simultaneously but you have a limited budget? Then, instead of iOS and Android developers, you may want to add a developer to your team who knows how to develop a cross-platform app. This approach can help you reduce development time and cost, but it also carries some performance issues and UX challenges and limits the number of possible features.
Backend developers are the experts responsible for server work, operational logic, and cloud storage.
As a rule, backend developers are experienced in the following:
The primary task of a QA engineer is to ensure that the app has no bugs and adheres to all requirements and the company's quality standards. QA engineers are involved in every stage of the app development process to detect app crashes and bugs on time.
A QA engineer needs to be on the same page with mobile app developers and designers to run successful test sessions. A highly skilled QA specialist should have:
Turning a business idea into a full-scale mobile application requires expertise, skills, effort, and financial resources. Mobile app development can be divided into the following five stages:
The app development stage determines a team’s composition. Here’s what your app development team will look like depending on what stage of the mobile app development process you are at.
At this stage, you need to envision your app, its features, and its business logic. While validating your business idea, you need to state the app’s goals, value, and features and research your competitors. The main purpose of the project discovery phase is to create a low-fidelity app prototype to ensure that you and your development team are in the same league.
Your discovery team should consist of a business analyst, a project manager and a UI/UX designer. Depending on the project's complexity or scope, you may also need to hire a product manager to delve further into your users’ ideas, market trends, and motivations for using your product. Without a UI/UX designer, you won’t be able to visualize your business idea or turn the brainstorming sessions into visual mockups.
This stage is where you validate your app idea by analyzing initial users’ experiences using a concept validation prototype. Based on the outcomes of the idea validation process, you may either pivot or start to create a medium-fidelity app prototype that will include your app’s flow and UX design.
While validating your app idea, you will need a project/product manager, a designer, iOS and Android developers, a backend developer, and a QA engineer.
At this stage, your team starts developing a detailed user interface and creating a high-fidelity prototype. As a rule, this prototype is interactive so that testers can test the app’s navigation and usability. Further, the prototype allows your team to fix usability bugs and improve the user experience quickly.
Developing a UI/UX strategy involves your entire development team from the idea validation stage, from the project/product manager to the QA engineer.
The design and development stage means that your team will start building a minimal viable product (MVP) to field test your business idea. An MVP is a version of the app that is feature-oriented and includes just the basic functionality that solves the primary pain points of the target audience.
The design and development stage is the backbone of the mobile app development process, requiring iOS and Android developers, a backend developer, a project/product manager, and a UI/UX designer.
This stage includes the analysis of user experience to fix all crashes and bugs and make any changes necessary to make your app the best it can be. In short, it is the final check on the application before sending it to the app stores.
At the final stage of your project, QA engineers play a leading role. Your testing and improving team should consist of a QA engineer, a project/product manager, iOS and Android developers, and a backend developer.
If you need to get your app to the market as soon as possible and have the financial resources, you can engage more developers and IT specialists to help develop your app faster for an additional cost.
Now that we have covered which IT specialists you may need to turn your app idea into a fully-fledged mobile app, you’ll want to determine your team’s structure. However, before deciding on your team’s final composition, it’s better to understand the scope and complexity of your app by considering the following factors:
When looking at app complexity, mobile apps will fall into three categories – simple, medium, and complex.
Let’s assume that you need a full mobile app development team that consists of an iOS or/and Android developer, a backend developer, a project/product manager, a UI/UX designer, a business analyst, and a QA engineer. Here’s how much time it will take them to deliver a fully-fledged mobile app for each complexity:
You can always add more specialists to your team to develop your app faster. However, if you don’t have the resources for extra developers, you can start with an app for just one platform and simplify its functionality; this approach can help you launch faster without going over your budget.
Now that you know the size and structure of your app development team, it’s time to find and hire developers for your project. Essentially, there are five employment models:
Hiring the right team to build your mobile app solution is critical to launching a successful mobile app. Now that you understand which specialists your team needs and when you’ll need them, it's time to assemble your team. At Orangesoft, we have everyone from project managers to QA engineers ready to deliver high-quality mobile apps for multiple business domains.
Contact our mobile app development company to discuss the team structure you need to turn your idea into a full-scale mobile product.
The number of experts is directly proportional to the complexity of your project. If you’re building a simple mobile app, your team may include:
Projects of middle or high complexity require a greater number of specialists or additional roles to be included in the team.
The costs of hiring a development team vary based on the location of your team. Overall, hourly rates range from $30 to $200+ per developer, with the USA, Australia, and Canada being the most expensive destinations for hiring a development team. India and Latin America are traditionally considered to be the cheapest hiring locations, while Poland and Romania offer the most optimal value-cost ratios when it comes to hiring developer talent.
An ideal app development team structure depends on several factors, including your project size, application complexity, project duration, and business goals. According to the Agile methodology, an ideal team size ranges from 7 to 9 specialists. For example, if you're developing a mobile from scratch, you will need at least one business analyst, a UX/UI designer, iOS/Android app developers, backend engineers, QA specialists, and a project manager to strategize your app idea and turn it into an MVP. Depending on the specifics of your app, you might also need an AI developer, a security expert, and other specialists.
A mobile app developer is in charge of creating and maintaining mobile applications. They also contribute to designing and developing app features, optimizing the application performance, and publishing apps to app stores. Moreover, mobile app developers are involved in the testing and debugging process, writing tests, identifying bugs, and fixing issues.
Аn average mobile app development project requires from 5 to 10 people on the team. The bigger the project scope is, the greater your development team should be.
