About 7.7 billion people are living on the planet, and 2.7 of them (or 35%) are the active users of smartphones, while 1.35 of the planet’s population (or 17.5%) operates a tablet regularly (Statista). An average smartphone owner in the US checks their mobile device every 12 minutes. And all phone holders in 2019 spend 90% of their time on apps. 

The numbers don’t lie, and with a naked eye, one can see that the mobile app development industry continues to thrive over the past decade. Once a business owner realizes the influence a mobile app can make, they would instantly begin looking for app programmers to bring onboard a professional team for their company. 

In reality, many companies do not interpret the concept of a mobile app development team and end up with a couple of devs and a designer struggling to deliver a great product and monetize it. 

This is why this article is to outline the structure of a perfect team for mobile app development and clarify what to expect from your workers.

Mobile app development team: the structure

Besides a developer and a designer, there are three more essential people or groups of co-workers that should be present in your dream-team: 

  • QA specialists (to monitor and control the app quality);
  • a team leader (to coordinate and update the company’s heads about the project progress);
  • a sales representative and a marketing specialist (to promote and sell your new mobile app).

1. Team leader

The team leader can come by different names: Project Manager, Product Owner, Product Manager, Strategist, and any other official leading position name. Regardless of how you call this person, their main function in the whole app development process is to create an idea and vision of the future application and ensure that the concept will turn into reality within the set timeline and budget.

The team leader needs to be knowledgeable in a wide array of fields: management, general technology, mobile app development, quality assurance, business communication, negotiations, and multitasking to unite different departments and workers for a single task – a new mobile app. 

The team lead will also ensure that the app development process and the upcoming result match the initial requirements voiced by the clients and will stay in close contact with the latter.

2. Developers

All top mobile app development companies require experienced and knowledgeable programmers to establish the core functionality of the app. They have to be competent in both iOS and Android development since today most customers require apps for both OSs. As a rule, devs should be specialists in Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, Swift, and C# to create apps for iOS, Android, and even Windows phones and devices. Whenever the requirement is to build a single cross-platform application, your software engineers should be knowledgeable about front-end languages, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

It is also essential to ensure that developers on a team have a basic understanding of the quality assurance process to ensure that they easily communicate with the QA (testing) team and can also perform necessary unit tests on their code.

3. Quality Assurance (QA) specialists

Quality Assurance experts test and re-test the whole close-to-completed app to go through all the functionalities and ensure that they work properly. Without their approval, a mobile app cannot be delivered to the customer and the end-users on the App Store and Google Play. Without the expert knowledge of the QA team, the apps get full of bugs that prevent the new software from leading the market and, in fact, turn the end-users away from a new mobile solution. Testers also frequently have an alternative vision of the whole app and hence can offer valuable tips on how to improve functionality, navigation, or general UX of an app.

4. Designers

Even though designers are put here after developers and QAs, in reality, these are the first people after the team leader who get down to working on app development. Before beginning to plan and build the new app, designers go through all requirements a client has for the app and read all technical documentation to ensure that no essential point is missed. 

Once all information is processed, designers establish a wireframe of navigation mechanisms and basic functionalities of the future app to prepare a skeleton with which the developers will work. 

Designers as a team frequently consist of not only a visual designer but also navigation and a content planner who populate the frames with content.

Besides that, designers are also responsible for UX/UI design of the app, which means that they step in after the core development is finished. They also cooperate with the QAs at later stages to check UX with real people and adjust the newly created app to the market changing needs.

5. Sales and Marketing experts

And the last, yet not least important part of the team comprises sales and marketing specialists. Without these guys, even the best mobile app in the world would not get distributed, and so will not bring any profit to the company. 

They communicate with customers, plan a marketing strategy for social media, email, and search engines as well as distribution efforts to engage more prospective end-users, and convert them into customers. Advertisement materials also lie on the shoulders of the team. So whenever the former three parts are almost done and remain in the phase of maintaining the finished app, sales and marketing people only begin fulfilling their professional duties.

How to build an effective mobile app development team

The performance of your mobile development team depends on how you define the game rules from day one. These three rules will help you do everything right. 

Shared respect

Every cog in the machine of mobile app development is essential for it to work and bring its bearing. So it is a team leader’s goal to promote and maintain mutual respect inside of the team and ensure that no part of the team proclaims it as the most important or begins to shame another part of the team. 

Professionalism

It is essential that when selecting a team for your app development, you get people of the same level of expertise. If you hire a team of junior developers and senior designers, then the project would not work since the latter would design a project that the former might not be able to deliver. Make sure to stay within your budget and yet get the best people in the industry to develop the best app in the market.

Flexible process

Yes, you need to have a fixed plan in place, yet your working conditions need to be flexible. If one day the market decides that the Chat button is no longer useful and the research confirms it, then there is no need to continue working on this feature in your app. Try to stay up-to-date with the market and adjust your development to its needs.

Afterword

You are now aware of the three main principles of an effective mobile app development team and understand the main roles that should be present. So get down to business and create your own dream-team for some know-how in mobile apps development!