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A Dream Team To Build A Successful Product For The Market

We often wonder what makes successful products rise to the top. Is it the idea, the execution, or perhaps the executives? A project might be run by an iconic figure or build under the supervision of a rockstar developer, but at the end of the day, this is a team sport. And more importantly, all team members are equally important and here’s why.

A Dream Team To Build A Successful Product For The Market | Shakuro Hero Image

It takes a tremendous coordinated effort to make a lucrative product and it can’t be bound to the success of a separate team member. So let’s try to figure out what makes a perfect team capable of accomplishing that.

Perfect Development Team Line-up

Product Owner

This is most likely the product owner, as their responsibility is to provide the overall supervision and business guidance of the product.
In charge of:

  • Business idea presentation.
  • Documented statement.
  • Design preferences.
  • High-level user story segmentation.

Must be:

  • Capable of leadership.
  • Communicable.
  • Business-intelligent.
  • Capable of monetary forecast.
  • Well-versed in user demands.
  • Knowledgeable in web/mobile development process.

The Product Owner does not necessarily have to be technically proficient in coding or have grid systems knowledge in design, but what they do must have is the ability to transcend and operate on a higher level and regulate the business development process.

As part of our initial interaction, we make sure e convert our clients to the principles of modern agile development through implementing our Perfect Client Partnership Tips. This helps us tune in to one general idea of delivering a better product for the market and enjoy our time while doing it!

Product Design Guru

In the development process, bringing the owner’s idea to life starts with prototyping the visual experience. As part of art direction, the design guru is responsible for the company’s signature style, feel, and charisma. This is not only UI laws and grid systems, but conceptual features like time-efficient UX and deep understanding of typesetting.
In charge of:

  • Designer team selection.
  • Mid-level user story segmentation.
  • Market & product ratio research.
  • Delivering high-profile mockups and prototypes.

Must be:

  • Competent in User Experience (UX).
  • Equipped with academic design knowledge and taste.
  • Skillful in deriving features from owner’s ideas and user’s requirements.
  • Capable of assembling the entire project prototype under a general idea.

A team of UI/UX designers guided by an experienced and perceptive leader is capable of achieving great results and on top of that, developing its signature game, a certain mannerism, that defines this specific company.

Project Manager

Unlike the boss, a Project Manager is the one working in the fields. Generally, a PM is responsible for the smooth communication and product development stages transmissions, data transactions, and succession of features development between the teams.

A PM uses a number of management tools for successful project supervision. One of the things we perpetuate in our PMs training is a multipurpose approach to software selection, that being RealtimeBoard that we use for effective collaboration between UI/UX designers, product owner, and project manager with succession to the development team when necessary.
In charge of:

  • Tracking the progress.
  • Scheduling and prioritizing tasks.
  • Monitoring teams’ performance.

Must be:

  • Inspirational.
  • Capable of effective supervision.
  • Masterful of online communication tools and scrums.
  • Knowledgeable in business development principles.
  • An expert in time/progress tracking tools (Jira, TimeDoctor, TargetProcess)
  • Financially disciplined.
  • Trained in team-building techniques.

Product Designer

A designer puts the concept into a visual form.
In charge of:

  • UI.
  • UX.
  • IA formatting.
  • Wireframes.
  • Mockups.
  • Working prototypes.

Must be:

  • Proficient in various design tools.
  • Knowledgeable in UX principles.
  • Flexible without compromising quality.
  • Insightful.
  • “In the know of the industry”.

Developers

The development team has to breathe life into the pictures and turn them into functional software.
In charge of:

  • Analyzing technical risks and limitations.
  • Clean and well-documented code.
  • Product deployment.

Must be:

  • Knowledgeable in a variety of platforms, frameworks, and tools available.
  • Aware of technical resources.
  • Capable of integrating information from owner, manager, and designer.
  • Creative in finding workarounds.
  • Active user of open-source data.

We consider our development team to be the core of our mechanism, hiring competitive developers means staying on top of the trends mountain and utilizing the most recent and effective tools and technologies to give our products an edge on the highly crowded market.

QA Team

Quality assurance is the work that often gets overlooked due to it being hidden behind the woodwork, and unlike design or development, it does not result in a freshly minted physical representation of the product. However, the QA engineers are the ones that have the most profound technical, business, and practical knowledge of the product.
In charge of:

  • Feature testing.
  • UI testing.
  • Documenting bugs.

Must be:

  • Efficient in multiple testing strategies and tools.
  • Insightful in automated and manual bug detection.
  • Capable of providing explanatory reports.
  • Analytical and precise.

In web development, a QA specialist is responsible for UX testing as well. This type of testing can’t be automated and objectified, instead it is a human-only approach and thus, it requires a certain amount of courage and persistence from a QA engineer in standing their ground, in addition to evidence-based reasoning.

Product Development Game Plan

At different stages of product development, different players play the key role, so a designer’s prime time is the wireframing and prototyping stage, front-end developer takes the stage when the design and backend are all set.

In this case only the owner and the product manager are equally present at all sprints. Their vision and the ability to emphasize and leverage specific features at certain time not only saves technical and talent resources, but also contributes to the agile methodology development in the company on a large scale. It’s important to have different people working on as many projects as possible, this is a good way to boost their communicative skills, reduce fluctuations, and ultimately, avoid being bound to irreplaceable people.

Team picking and player selection is a fun process when you are packed with pros, like we are. In that case you play the game of stats, math, and psychology to reach the highest possible level of human interaction. We provide different team operation models from a single-person employment for startups and mid-size team for mid-size business, to enterprise engagement where we extend the owner’s team and function as a development workshop, fully committed to the sole project.

In our previous articles, we opened up a little more about the general principles of business development process. Building a team is only one of them, but managing it is a totally different animal which can only be tamed with strong goal-setting game and market-oriented development policy.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
– Michael Jordan

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Written by Moses Kim

April 04, 2017

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