How to Build an Agile Team that’s Geared Toward Innovation

How many of us like to head out after reaching home, just for a small but perhaps significant chore? Very few, we would imagine. But we would be delighted if someone could run such errands for us.

And that’s why we have delivery services available at our beck and call. They’re an agile solution of sorts, much like the approach we apply when developing digital products.

When you are building a digital product, you are not alone. There is a team and a flexible methodology that allows you flexibility to get large and small tasks done as you proceed. Even if you in the latter part of developing a module, you can make tweaks and run tests to produce desired results.

Product development companies opt for the agile methodology in preference to any other. The method fuels a product development process that is based on sprints with iterations. Regardless of the project size, success depends on how a team carries out the entire development process.

An agile team plays a prominent role in ensuring successful project development. It is an organized group of tech-savvy people who craft a project with the idea that drives. The team’s efforts pay off when the project stands out from the crowd and is rewarded for outstanding performance.

What is an Agile Team?

An agile team comprises a group of cross-functional geeky techies who mutually collaborate to produce a robust and nifty product. With business capabilities in their armory, these skilled people build exceptional product architecture that completely fulfills the purpose of product development.

The technical squad carries out tasks based on priorities and adaptive planning, while keeping a proper track record of the work process. An efficient agile team will have an excellent workforce comprising all types of expertise and qualities essential for your specific project development goals.

How to build Agile Tech Team

A strong team is a cornerstone on which project baselines depend. Today, software development companies operate in a dynamic working environment where innovation has become necessary to stay firm in the marketplace.

Software development companies in the modern age that harness the software tools and create an agile-friendly environment, allow the technical team to churn out creativity and ingenuity rapidly.

An agile team can tackle any hurdles as the foundation of such a team lies in cross-functional skills and accounts for agile project development. Here are some ways to help an organization build a terrific team that knows the techniques of building nifty software.

Explain Methodology and Norms 

As an agile project manager, you need to align your development team according to agile practices. Train and educate them with agile practices to give a clear overview of utilizing this approach and plan the development procedure accordingly — elaborate on details about the sprint teams, and what operations each group will perform in the sprints. Discuss your team’s ideas and ensure that they fulfill their responsibility with honesty and the best of their efforts.

Assign Team Roles

Who will do what? Everyone must know their roles and responsibilities primarily. Typically, the roles are divided into hierarchies based on each one’s level of expertise and experience. The team structure is based on entities like, product owner, project manager, team members (designers, developers, SQAs …you name the rest), and stakeholders.

A project manager gets involved with each team to extract the best possible technical expertise from a talent pool. Assigning team member a role means you have given them the authority and now that entails shared responsibility; therefore, each resource mutually tries to put their best efforts in until the project is launched in the market.

You might want to read about the top organizations’ agile approaches to software development

Call out Meetings Frequently

All team members must frequently unite to discuss what they have done so far to achieve effective project development. This approach will give the team leader and the customer insight into whether the project is going in the right direction or not.

The discussions offer an Instant boost in development speed, and help with identifying problems so that they can find the best solution possible. Discussions also keep the leader and customer apprised with their defined goals and purposes with feedback mechanisms in place, which is integral.

Indeed, there are so many other aspects that help ease your team’s work. Hence, frequent meetings can help you build quick-witted plans to proceed unhindered through the product design and development process.

Empower Team with Decision Making 

All top IT companies that build software products consider allowing the development team to make decisions. However, a study shows  that the employees who were given a high level of empowerment while making decisions, recorded a 79 percent engagement level. On the contrary, employees with low empowerment registered a 24 percent engagement level.

A great sense of empowerment can be achieved through openness of creative ideas, supporting and respecting other team members, building a positive and encouraging environment, recognizing efforts, and other acts of positive influence.

To that end, each member could make necessary decisions or share suggestions that might add value to the project. To obtain better insight, you might want to read a detailed article about building a team for app development.

Accept Versatility 

Agile methodology is highly based on the concept of modifications at any stage of product design and development. The agile approach has surmounted project development challenges, and modern companies seem to adopt this methodology to a tremendous extent.

Some well-known methodologies of the agile family are  Kanban, Extreme programming (XP), Scrum, lean development crystal, and so many more that follow the agile development approach.

A stellar software product doesn’t come into existence easily. It requires hundreds of modifications in the software development cycle. Therefore, build a flexible, agile team that could nimbly cater to product design and development requirements without disturbing the entire product development excerise.

Agile Team Interaction with other Departments

The agile team interacts with other departments which work parallelly with them in an organization. The departments include marketing, finances, design, and the rest. When all these departments work together, they elevate the scope of the project and quality. Indeed, agile teams with other departments perform exceptionally well and are highly productive.

Productive Collaboration

With effective communication among teams, a lot of project development gaps can be filled without hassles. To that end, communication tools or software can help employees enjoy their job roles.

Communication tools allow teams to collaborate sleekly. The results-driven collaboration requires innovation, idea sharing, equal participation of each person in the group, teamwork, transparency, solid decision-making, and other aspects. Above all, a highly collaborative environment is the base.

"Making clients part of your process will improve things" – Salman Lakhani, CEO, Cubix. 

Team collaboration with communication tools sets the standard for sharing information with one another, without being present physically in an organization. Especially during the pandemic, you can share your concerns with any team member living anywhere around the globe.

Normalized Failures and Lessons

With SaaS (software-as-a-service) niche companies, coordination among teams is a crucial factor, and is often the area where software products often fail when launched in the market. Failures take place due to a lack of clarity among agile and fellow teams, resulting in customer dissatisfaction with a software product.

To rev up the development process, teams need to understand drawbacks and failures. In order to bridge the gap between success and failure, continuous interaction of teams and early potential issue detections is necessary until the desired outcome is achieved.

"To be  successful, you must be ready to pivot your  ideas" – Salman Lakhani, CEO, Cubix.

Targeted goals

Development teams set goals to achieve things together and put customer satisfaction first, solving a problem  second. Teams get more productive when they are permitted to make sustainable decisions accordingly and ensure the optimal use of their resources with time, money, and mutual efforts.

The coordination of the agile team with fellow teams leads to better innovation in the project development process and the software product, improved collaboration among the cross-functional team in an organization, and reduce customer touchpoints that reduce time and expenses.

When software development companies implement agile methodology for their software development process, a cross-functional team closely identifies the gaps and finds the best possible solutions for common problems.

Moreover, the agile team, along with fellow teams promotes cohesion and productivity through innovation. The agile team works keeping in mind the demands for marketing, UI/UX, sales conversions, and customer-provided information.

Responsibilities of the Project Manager in Agile Tech Development

Guidance is a factor that keeps teams working together without many hurdles, and helps the team collaborate with new ideas, keeping each team member united. Therefore, a project manager is assigned with a traditional and agile team to keep directing them to a smooth path when the team may struggle.

A project manager is an essential employee of the team who performs multi-functional duties to support development practices. But, first, let’s obtain more information about the responsibilities of a project manager

Continuous Monitoring 

Monitoring helps the process or product to work for the long haul. A project manager is accountable for monitoring the entire development process, from getting involved in the team to generate reports and documentation.

They are responsible for ensuring the success of data while he monitors the critical elements of the project like scope, budgets, resources, time consumption, potential risks, stakeholder’s engagements, etc. Monitoring and keeping the track record of the process helps in analyzing and understanding the overview of the critical data. In addition, proper tracking ensures that the task is being executed as per the expectations.

Time-to-time monitoring of the process keeps your team member attentive and collaborative while working on the process; therefore, each member of the agile team works tirelessly until the task gets achieved collectively.

Track Agile Sprints

Sprints make the large-scale project much easier to handle. In agile methodology, a project manager is required to track each project parameter as well as need to keep the track record of the overall product development process. By keeping a closed eye on agile sprint performance, a manager can ensure that the team is focused and productive with transparency.

Agile sprints save your time and cost to a much extent and help exceptionally in leveraging the team’s morale. Sprints offer flexibility to modifications, with effective team collaboration, customer satisfaction, terrific quality product development, and reduction in potential risks.

You might like to read in detail about The role of the project manager in ensuring the project success.

Agile Manifesto Values 

For building an agile tech team, the techies assigned for the development process commit to creating software through the approach that provides advanced development versions in a limited time span. This approach is known as Sprints.

The agile manifesto defines four core values to add value for building an agile team and make the development process highly meaningful.

Value Workforce over tools and process 

The first and foremost value of the agile manifesto is to value employees more than tools and development processes. The workforce in the process responds quickly to business requirements and offers an instant solution to overcome the issues and possible risks.

The agile team negotiates with the client through effective communication to analyze the weak point of the development that could harm business value. Therefore, agile methodology’s first manifesto focuses on paying respect and value to the individual skilled employee to drive the smooth development process hassle-freely.

Agile recognizes each individual’s efforts.

Software functionality over thorough documentation

If we flashback to the old project management methods, we will focus on the documentation rather than the software functionality. As a result, software products used to fail in the final outcome, and the team used to face long delays in the development process.

Agile doesn’t deny the documentation in the development process but shows more focus on the functional ability of the software. It demands the documentation to be helpful enough for the developers to offer them the sleek and unhindered developing experience to ensure that the development process keeps going fast.

Agile ensures the software works practically well.

Adaptability over following a plan 

Unlike traditional project management, Agile provides flexibility in the project. Traditional development bound the team to work on the pre-defined tasks and strictly follow a plan. It also arises hurdles when any feature or process needs modifications. Therefore, it gets difficult to build large-scale and complex projects. Moreover, it reduces the customer’s involvement, which is a significant drawback in quality product development.

On the other hand, Agile offers versatility to the team and mitigates issues regarding any sort of modification at any stage of the development. Since agile follow the iterative process flow, any new feature can be introduced effortlessly. Moreover, the agile process considers changes in the project to enhance the value and quality of the project.

Better to modify than regret later

Customer Collaboration over Negotiation

Other methodologies that don’t consider agility in the product development process involve the customer in the very initial and final stages of the development cycle, where the customer has to negotiate in-detailed requirements.

Lack of customer coordination clearly defines that the software product will be built, but the quality will be compromised. Disengagement of customers creates a lot of MESS because of the lack of collaboration at the proper time, i.e., during the development process.

Agile manifesto eliminates confusion as it allows customers to get actively involved in the project and assist the team through collaboration. This strategy makes the process smooth and more accessible without having to solve the riddles of many factors in the process. During the agile development process, the agile team and project manager work according to the customer’s guidance, which is frequently done in meetings.

Frequent meetings are conducted in which customers provide guidance through demos to the agile team and project manager. Areas like the design process, modifications in any part, subtraction or addition of the feature, etc., are highlighted. This collaboration also helps both parties determine costs, time, and efforts.

Coordinate with customers rather than develop on your own.

Closure 

Every SaaS-based company needs a profound strategy based on an intelligent methodology that every project development craves to thrive in the market. To that end, Agile successfully aligns product development with business needs and is highly customer-focused.

To proceed with the complex project development, agile works wonders for the teams working in modern technical environments. Agile methodology has offered uniqueness in each stage of project development.

Cubix has been producing practical development strategies with the help of the agile team. As agile methodology has been the proven approach for achieving successful development processes while meeting the customer-business requirements, we put agile first. From working in an organization to working remotely, we offer the excellent opportunity to hire an offshore agile team.

Want to build a state-of-the-art software development? Our skilled team warmly welcomes you.