What Agile Software Development Team Structure Looks Like

Last updated on May 19th, 2023

You’re ready for outsourcing your projects. You know that is the only way forward when it is all about software development. After all, it’s the fastest path to launch your app in the market. But, you have to consider certain factors prior to hiring a skilled team for your company.

One crucial point that needs your attention is the structure of the passionate team. As software incorporates various revisions, you’ll be required to engage a team that works efficiently.

Before we jump to know about agile software development team structure, let’s check out what traditional structure looks like.

Traditional Software Development Team Structure

In this fastest-growing world, every business must have specialists in-house and they work together to bring out the best results. However, the reality is that every business type has some limitations – budget and time. Here is the list of the members you will get to see in the traditional software development team structure.

1. Business Analyst (BA)

This is the person who is responsible for making goals, analyzing as well as documenting the systems and core processes. BA is everything to everybody. They find out what works better and then make the direction for business development.

2. Project Manager (PM)

This person is someone who handles the planning and execution part. They also pay attention to building relationships among the client as well as several organization departments. PMs manage every process, assign tasks among different team members, and make sure that every team member stays on track.

3. UX Designer

This is the person who designs the way users can easily use the product. They make sure that every feature solves people’s issues and achieves business goals. Also, they figure out how better the product will seem and how it will perform its functions. The key focus of a UX designer is usability and functionality.

4. Developers (Back-end/Front-end)

These are the individuals who do the core coding. Front-end developers work to make the product front view appealing to customers, whereas, back-end developers work on the functionality part, which is everything the user doesn’t witness.

5. Quality Assurance Engineer (QA)

This person holds the responsibility to test the product to ensure that it works well and fulfills the quality standards as well as client needs. QA pays attention to the minutest detail. They find bugs and any sort of errors so that the team can get them fixed faster before the product launch.

This is all about traditional team structure. If you appoint a conventional team, you’ll need to deal with certain complications when applying transformation during development. 

But then, what team is known as agile? How do you find one? Keep reading to get a great idea of what it’s all about.

Agile Team: What Is It? 

An Agile team comprises developers who work on the basis of the Agile methodology. It’s a team developed to produce deliverables effectively as well as aligned to the business objectives. The two most common characteristics of a perfect team are that they are cross-functional and well-organized.

You don’t really need a Project Manager explaining the tasks in an Agile team. The members worked together towards the main goal as well as holding one another responsible for the outcomes. By turning away from the traditional structure, an Agile team is less controlled, provides more ground-breaking ideas, and is fast to respond to some problems.

Developers, as a part of the Agile team, are also expected to work in various areas of development. This implies that Agile is formed of professionals who are competent in different disciplines. A programmer has the ability to handle usability testing and vice versa. Without any strictly-defined role, an Agile team can move faster in changing ideas into a working prototype.

How Is the Agile Software Development Team Structure Different from a Traditional Team?

If your teamwork is forced to work with traditional teams, working with an Agile team will be a refreshing transformation. It may take some time to get familiarized with how an Agile team works. 

Here is how an agile software development team varies from the traditional one:

Traditional Team vs Agile Team 

The traditional team works on a rigid, linear process and is managed by a project manager. The project manager turns into the central part of the team and is truly responsible for organizing the team member’s workflow. Likewise, problems that happen during development are extended to the project manager before any safety measures are taken.

In a meantime, an Agile team does not play a centralized leadership role. It is managed by self, where team members are planning to schedule the workflow across the agreed goals. In the event of issues showing up in software development, the team would effectively sort it out without any help.

But, in case you work with a traditional team, you’re wanted to offer concrete requirements with the goal to get the job started. But, it’s tough to give firm requirements, as there are few changes to happen along with the development. In this scenario, an Agile team would definitely shine, as they have the ability to work with changing requirements.

Also, there is a noteworthy difference in how both teams do the testing job. A traditional team will perform testing at a different stage, but Agile teams would include testing as a crucial part of the development. The agile team would clearly pay attention to the product itself instead of creating documentation. The opposite is absolutely true for a traditional team.

Types of Agile Team Structure

The Agile team structure relies on certain factors such as project type, resources, and cost. Moreover, agile team structures work truly well for different teams based on the requirements.

Here are some types of Agile team structures you can consider:

1. Generalist

This type of agile team structure is one where all the members have the general know-how of various topics without digging into one particular topic. In easy terms, a generalist agile team understands a bit about most technologies and tools. And due to this versatility, this team can effectively work on other tasks easily. Generalist agile team structure is mostly utilized by smaller teams where experts utilize their versatile know-how to work on various parts of the business.

2. Specialist

Specialist agile software development team structure differs a lot from the generalist. In this agile structure, every member of the team has expertise in another niche and is responsible for various tasks under the domain they are specialized in. This team provides great insights to boost product quality and is usually utilized in a big team.

3. Hybrid

This type of team is a combination of both generalist and specialist teams. In this agile team structure, each specialist expert will pay attention to developing the project’s complex components, and the generalists will effectively tie these elements to provide meaning to the project. It enables the team to get more knowledge from each other. The hybrid agile team can boost the quality of the deliverables, teamwork, and sense of ownership.

4. Parallel

The parallel agile team structure enables its members to change tasks more often. Put simply, in case, the team is working on the web app design in the initial sprint, they will completely move to the development in the newsprint. This allows the agile team to work side by side. Thus, utilizing this structure of team development needs lots of training with specialist professionals who can adapt to various roles.

5. Sub-team

Building large web applications needs bigger Agile teams. So, the sub-team agile structure allows you to deal with individual units of sub-teams in a big team. The sub-team works on particular elements that combine with various elements to make the complete web application. It is utilized to divide a big project into a few small parts while boosting visibility and responsibility.

Agile Software Development Team – Roles and Responsibilities 

Most individuals think that the agile development team has only engineers. But, it’s wrong, an agile team can include other professionals like designers, etc.

Various agile methods might have different views on team roles as well as responsibilities. For instance, Scrum, which is an agile development methodology, comprises three roles in its development team’s structure. These are:

1. Product Owner

The product owner is the person who focuses on the overall direction of the product. They represent the proficient stakeholders in meetings. They know and give the stakeholders’ requirements of the project to the development team. Things such as defining the product as well as its related features.

The product owner performs different functions in an agile team while meeting his agile responsibilities. These are:

• They specify the client’s goals.
• They eliminate the communication barrier between stakeholders/clients/ and the rest of the team.
• They are the decision-maker
• They prioritize which jobs are required to be done first.

What makes a good product owner?

There are common qualities they require to have to outshine in their agile role:

• They should be available to both the proficient team and various stakeholders.
• A product owner should be authorized and allowed to make decisions on behalf of the client.
• They must be a good communicator and convey their points evidently and accurately.
• Knowledge of Production: The product owner must have the know-how of technical problems the project will face. 
• They must have an idea of the business vision, which involves the market, product, and target user.

Agile Responsibilities/Duties

• Explain product backlog items. 
• Prioritize backlog items that match the business vision.
• Make sure that the development team members exchange the common know-how of the product backlog items’ scope and requirements.
• Plans and manages releases.
• Make sure that the product development gives good value to the stakeholders.
• Participates in agile meetings

3. Scrum Master

Scrum Master is sometimes considered as the Project Manager or a Team Lead. Scrum masters have the ability to manage or supervise the daily operations of the development team.  As servant leaders, whose key purpose is to ensure the ideal working conditions for their members of the team and ensure that they accomplish the organization’s goals as per the agile principles.

Also, they serve various functions within a development team like:

• Servant Leader
• Shield
• Agile Advocate
• Coach and Motivator

Relationship Manager

• Policing 

What makes a good scrum master?

• Even though there are no firm skills required to become a scrum master, there are certain common features that all proficient scrum masters share.
• They must have a good network of people with who they can get in touch for assistance or resources.
• Scrum masters should have a quality of convincing.
• They must be focused on team performance.
• The scrum master must be team-oriented rather than self-centred.

Agile Responsibilities/Duties

• Help product owners with backlog grooming.
• Assist companies to adopt and apply an agile methodology, e.g., Scrum.
• Make sure that team members stick to their agile method’s principles.
• Make team members self-organizing and cross-functional.
• Applying changes to increase productivity and collaboration.
• Sustain and manage their development team’s morale and performance.

3. Development Team 

The development team is formed of people with every necessary skill needed to turn a project concept into a valuable and verifiable product. It’s a self-organizing and cross-functional group of individuals dedicated to working towards the same goal, that is developing, delivering and maintaining your software product.

What makes a good development team?

• The development team can work without the need for direct management. They must know the ideal method to achieve their assigned tasks.
• The team must have every required skill required to successfully turn an idea into a successful product. It’s not a team with just a single specialty.
• Every team member’s work is with any related position or title. They just work on their assignment as everyone holds the responsibility for the team’s entire performance.
• Every member of a development team should be accountable as well as responsible to one another.
• The development team members should not be necessarily changed or rotated more often. Rather, a team’s members should be constant and do few changes in personnel. If you failed to do so, your team’s chemistry will never get mature and they will completely display their performance potential as new members require some time to get familiarised with work, processes, and colleagues.
• Your development team members must work in the same physical location. This could be one office where all members of the team can interact as well as collaborate face-to-face. Teams working remotely sometimes face late communications. Colocation boosts team collaboration, communication, and productivity.

Agile Responsibilities/Duties

• Work and complete all their tasks within the given time or sprints.
• Know the requirements given by the product owner.
• Become a part of agile meetings like Daily Scrum.
• Follow and stick to their framework’s/ method’s principles.
• Clearly report the progress of their tasks at the daily scrum.

Do You want to know how our Agile Software Development Team Works?

Agile methods allow the team to work together in a transparent fashion. Working with an agile software development team is a great idea in the long run that reduces development time as well as a cost but with high quality. They deliver faster but better results. By now, you should have a perfect idea of what to look for when planning to outsource your IT projects.