Website Development Team Structure Every Startup Should Know About

As practice shows, programming alone isn't enough to make a website work for you. That's why many stakeholders pay great attention to design and marketing. Respectively, your web development team should fit the project's objectives and consist of specialists with diverse skills and knowledge.

While some companies provide it's customers with the full circle of specialists they may need for the project, others do not. That's especially true for young and narrowly focused firms.

So, every custom web development company may have it's own spectrum of services and the number of web development team members can vary. Let’s consider the core web development team roles, required skills and talents, that will make together a strong base for a good team.

The main task of this specialist is to take your vision of the project, analyze it, and translate into comprehensive technical specifications. In turn, these specifications will be used by the web development team to set time frames and get ready for the project.

Whether you're going to create a SaaS application for retail operations or marketing project software for digital agencies, the first question an analyst will ask you is, “What goals do you want to accomplish with your product? First of all, the requirements analyst needs to define your business needs.

However, the web development team won’t be able to create an actual product based on raw requirements. A business analyst needs to transform this information into a clear project specification that the team can guide. Shortly, an analyst details what each part of the web app must accomplish, what each feature is responsible for, what buttons should be clicked to perform a specific action, etc.

In other words, the requirement analyst prepares ground for the product development.

In a web development team, project managers are like the conductor of your web development team orchestra. Their main task is to organise, coordinate, and monitor the stages of workflow: from planning to assigning the tasks to each team member. The first thing they do is getting acquainted with technical specifications and the due date. Based on this information, the project plan is drawn up and divided into stages also known as sprints (set functionality for a set period of time).

Once the client has approved the plan, the project manager creates a new project using one of the project management platforms and starts making the project tasks. Jira, Trello, Basecamp, ClickUp, and Wrike — are the most popular platforms for managing a web development team in 2023.

Then, the project manager monitors the whole product development process to ensure each sprint will be ended on time. When the sprint comes to it's end, the project manager showcases you the product demo to get your feedback and approval to continue. If you dissatisfied with anything, he/she asks web development team to fix that issue.

Besides, the project manager keeps in touch with you all the time. So, if you have a question or want to make some changes to the project — that's the person you should address to.

Designers and developers work with information architecture and need multiple tools and resources on different stages of the project development, which require in-depth knowledge for the proper operation.

Solution architects systematize the shape and the content of the project. And they are actively involved in the early stages of the project. Their core task is to create site architecture diagrams that interpret the overall site planning to both the clients and the web developer team. The architects work closely with the project designers.

Coupled with project designers, the solution architects make page wireframes to present how the pages will be used and how the website’s architecture and page content are intertwined. They analyze users’ preferences to make it easy for them to find relevant content on the website.

Solution architects should provide both clients and developers with appropriate charts and diagrams to enable them to understand the website’s structure. These visual imitations are especially crucial for back-end developers.

The design is a milestone which sets the direction for the whole project. You will encounter at least two of it's numerous types — user interface and user experience design. As a rule, web development teams comprise one designer who takes over both these roles.

At first, a UI/UX designer analyzes the project requirements along with it's target audience to see the complete picture. Such approach lets him/her identify the difficulties users are faced with and effectively solve them through design. With this in mind, the designer creates a wireframe which is a schematic placement of elements on the website.

In some cases, the designer resorts to user stories which help to stay focused and keep in mind the project's objectives all the time. Put simply, a user story describes what a user expects to accomplish by using one or another digital product. Such stories are written using Gherkin language and it takes a lot of them to cover different use cases.

That's where the user experience design part ends up and the designer can jump to the interface design.

While UX is all about research and structure, UI stands for visual appearance. Color schemes, fonts, icons etc. In other words, the designer creates a prototype (final look of your website) based on the UX stage and tests it's usability. The prototype can be interactive or static.

Apart from the specialists mentioned above, you may also require a graphic and motion designer in your web development team. These specialists work on the visual concept of the project (custom illustrations, fonts, logos) and take care of animations.

The most commonly used designers tools in 2021 are:

• Sketch
• InVision
• Illustrator
• Sympli
• Zeplin

Programmers play a crucial role in the web development team. They turn your ready-made design into a working product that can be used by anyone on the internet.

Hiring web developers, keep in mind the division of their roles and responsibilities:

In teams providing web application development services, these parts can be divided between two dedicated developers or performed by one specialist:

For instance, Cleveroad's web development company team consists of both full-stack developers and dedicated specialists working with a wide spectrum of technologies. Our main tech stack is as follows:

• JavaScript
• Angular
• Node.js
• Express
• .NET

QA or a Quality Assurance engineer is another important website development team member. He/she protects your product from bugs invasion and keeps an eye on it's interface.

The process of testing starts with requirements analysis. Based on them, QA engineers draw up a testing plan. After the development has started, developers send each version of the product to QA engineers. In turn, they check whether it corresponds to technical requirements and specific demands of a customer (if any) by using automated and manual testing methods.

When bugs are found, QA engineers draw up a bug report, and send it to developers who take care of those bugs. Then follows a checkback that's intended to make sure the problem was completely solved. QA engineers work on a project up to it's release and sometimes even longer.

It's worth mentioning that testers also deal with the interface. They check size, fonts, colors and other elements for compliance with the requirements. QA engineers can also report designers if they find a usability issue and suggest them a solution.

You've got the web development team! If you decide to go further and promote your website, you should be aware of specialists we talk about below.

Unlike many other software development companies, we also offer marketing services to help your company meet specific marketing requirements. It's especially needed if your product sells goods or services as there is an enormous number of competitors and you have to stand out.

The role of a marketing strategist have something in common with the project manager's role. That's because the work of both these specialists extends from planning to post-launch stage.

The main task of marketing strategist is to create a working strategy which helps your business to reach it's objectives as well as ensure the realization of this strategy. This may include everything from storytelling to user experience check.

In many cases, the strategist curates a marketing team, analyzes the performance of different marketing channels, and defines whether the business objectives are met.

Put simply, the marketing strategist does everything possible to attract the right audience and inspire them to act.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most popular ways to attract the right visitors to your website. An SEO expert is probably the first person the marketing strategist would like to involve in the project.

Here are the main responsibilities of the SEO expert in 2021:

• Keywords research;
• Traffic & metrics analysis;
• Competitor analysis;
• Optimizing website's work in accordance with search engines requirements;
• Cooperation with writers and designers.

This isn't the full list of responsibilities as they may vary depending on a project. However, the main task of any SEO expert is to improve the website rank within search engines.

If you decide to build a product, it’s vital to cooperate with an experienced web development company. For example, at Cleveroad, we assemble a web development team according to the project’s requirements. We have 9+ years of experience providing full-cycle software development services: from optimizing CRM and ERP systems to developing iOS and Android apps from scratch.

Our Business Analysts successfully define our clients’ requirements. Meanwhile, solution architects analyze requirements to help clients deliver high-quality and cost-effective products and choose the best-fitting development tools.