African tech startups raised $83 million across 31 disclosed deals in January 2024. A year earlier, in January 2023, the figures stood at a staggering $545.1 million.
The startups that raise these funds have some things in common, including a great product. Great Software Development teams build great products, remember. But what does it take to build a successful software development team that delivers great products in Africa?
Building a successful Software Development team is not always as easy as you think. In fact, building anything in Africa presents its inconveniences, struggles, and grit-demanding obstacles.
An ineffective Software development team or a team that finds it difficult to sync with themselves or the project requirement can spell the failure of the project they are building.
But despite all these obstacles, some software development teams have thrived and are still thriving.
In this article, Tribesquare looks into how to build and manage successful software engineering teams in Africa.
What is a Software Development Team?
Think of a software development team as a superhero squad, each with unique powers, coming together to create amazing software.
These teams include the talents and experts collaborating to design, develop, test, and maintain software products, systems, and projects.
This project may be a single product of a parent company, for example, Instagram of Meta. It can also be a product that serves as the sole offering of a start-up, just like most Software-as-a-Service products.
Important Roles in a Software Development Team
The most critical roles in a software development team and the specific functions typically assigned to them include:
Project Manager
The project manager oversees the project timeline, manages resources, and coordinates communication between team members to ensure the project stays on track.
A project manager oversees the Technical aspects of a business project. They plan and develop the project idea.
Project Managers oversee all products in the business, unlike the product manager, who supervises a single product of a business.
Duties of a project manager include:
Project managers initiate the project and set tasks, goals, objectives, and deadlines for the team and its members.
They map out the strategic plan of the project.
They provide the Software development team with the necessary resources to deliver the project.
They monitor the efficiency and performance of team members through meetings and performance management.
They check out key milestones and measure the results achieved.
Product Manager
Product Managers define what the product should be, who it’s for, and why it matters. They focus on the product’s vision, strategy, and roadmap.
In small businesses, the product manager can also serve as the business line manager to save costs.
The duties of a product manager include:
Creating a roadmap from conception to launch of a product.
Ensuring that the roadmap and plans are executed as scheduled.
Defining the features and requirements of a product.
Technical Leads
Like the captains of football teams, these tech gurus guide the team, making key decisions and ensuring the tech side of things stays sharp.
The Technical Lead may also be one of the senior developers in the team and act as a liaison between the development team and the project manager.
The duties of the Technical lead include:
They are directly responsible for the technical aspects of a project.
They lead and guide the software developers to complete their tasks.
The technical lead stipulates the coding standards and best practices and ensures adherence by other team members.
Developers
These are the core technical members of the software development team. They are the talents who write the codes that run the products.
They are directly answerable to the technical lead and are deeply engaged in technical duties. The developers may be front-end or back-end developers. Sometimes, they can be full-stack developers with front-end and back-end development expertise.
Developers perform the following functions in a Software Development Team:
They write the codes.
They update and release new features.
UI/UX Designers
They are like the architects of a Software development team. They craft beautiful, user-friendly interfaces that make interacting with software a breeze.
User Interface (UI) Design concerns the appearance and layout of a product, while User Experience (UX) concerns the behavior and flow of the product.
Their duties include:
They design the visual part of the products that the developers build
They create user experiences that align with project requirements and best practices.
Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer
The QA Engineer is primarily responsible for ensuring that a software product is up to par and is in line with the stipulated requirements.
Armed with trusty magnifying glasses, they hunt down and squash bugs, ensuring the software is as flawless as possible.
Their duties include:
Certifying that developers met the requirements and defined standards for a product.
Guiding the developers through the generally acceptable quality assurance processes throughout the product.
Business Analyst
The business analyst ensures that software development and the final product align with a company’s business goals. In other words, they ensure that the solution the business envisions is precisely delivered.
Strategies for Building and Managing Successful Software Development Teams in Africa
‘I’ve learned over the years that, when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.’ — Steve Jobs
- Start with an Efficient Hiring Process:
Building a successful Software Development team begins from the hiring stage. The team members you onboard significantly impact the success or failure of your software development team.
Conduct transparent recruitment and target the candidates who most closely fit your eligibility criteria.
Having the right onboarding strategy is key to unlocking success. Here are some strategies to adopt:
Draft a comprehensive job description that clearly explains the requirements and responsibilities of every role.
State the tasks due for each role and their objectives.
Hire people who have proven expertise and experience in their niche.
Hire people who meet the eligibility criteria and are passionate about the role.
Ensure new hires understand and internalize the organizational culture.
Attributes to Look for When Hiring a Software Development Team
Here are a few attributes to look out for while hiring members of your software development team:
- Expertise/Expertise: You must hire experts with enough knowledge in your domain to bring your concept to life using codes.
If you’re building a FinTech Product, you should hire people who have spent time in Fintech companies. The experience they bring would be invaluable to your business.
- Portfolio: A candidate’s portfolio shows the previous projects they have executed. A portfolio is an important proof of knowledge in Software development and should not be overlooked in the hiring process.
Through their portfolio, you can see what products they have worked on, what clients they served, and their satisfaction levels.
These details help you decide on the ideal talent to bring to your team.
- Solution-Oriented/Problem-Solving Mindset: Software development is not just about writing codes. Instead, a software development team’s primary task is to solve problems using code.
Hence, you must hire critical thinkers who have an eye for solutions and are eager to solve problems in the most optimal way possible.
- The Right Environment and Tools:
Once you have assembled your team, the next strategy for building a successful software development team in Africa is to provide a conducive working environment.
Whether the team you are looking to build is in-house, remote, or hybrid, it is essential that they have the space, time, and tools needed to accomplish their tasks efficiently.
In Africa, sustainable power is often a problem, and, unfortunately, we are forced to seek alternative solutions, such as generators or inverters. Helping your team overcome the electricity challenge will go a long way in improving their efficiency.
- Invest in education and further skill development:
Develop an educational curriculum for your Software Engineers/developers. This education should adequately cater to personal growth, emotional development, and communication skills.
Here are a few tips to achieve this:
Partner with consulting firms to help your employees acquire more skills, like soft skills.
Sponsor further skill acquisition for your top talents.
- Set Key Performance Indicators to Track Performance and Progress:
“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.” Pearson’s Law
Define appropriate Key Performance indicators as benchmarks to track your employees’ work and progress.
To get it right with KPIs, adopt the following approaches:
Set goals, including project completion, product standards, and customer satisfaction.
Define metrics in hard numbers, such as development duration, code review time, bug resolution time, etc.
Share KPI results regularly with team members.
Reward high performers and constructively encourage those who lag to improve.
- Encourage Adequate Communication:
Actively listen to your team members to understand the status of the tasks they are working on and whether they are facing any challenges.
Encourage questions and offer honest and constructive feedback.
Use surveys and meetings as tools to collect feedback from employees and invest efforts in implementing the recommendations from such surveys.
These will help you establish meaningful relationships with your software developers.
- Make Adequate Budgeting:
You must make an adequate budget for each project you execute. Work with the development team and your Financial Officer to determine the project’s cost. Describe how the funds will be spent and what they will be spent on. Lastly, provisions for overflows should be made in case of emergencies that may arise during the course of the project.
- Avoid Burnout:
While it is good to encourage your team members to give their absolute best, it is not ideal to stretch them beyond their limits.
Remember, this is Africa. There is already enough stress. Give your team more time for projects, more constructive criticism, and fewer diminishing verbal attacks.
Stretching your team members above their mental and physical bandwidth will definitely lead to burnout in the long term.
- Do not Micromanage your Team members:
Do not impose excessive control over your team members. Instead, set standards and allow them the flexibility to bring their ideas and improve within the set guidelines.
- Do not Add Extra Team members as a Quick Fix:
While adding extra hands as a quick fix in a software development team may seem logical, it doesn’t always yield any better results.
This is because the work would then be divided into too many small parts, which would, in turn, delay the project.
If a new team member is really needed, follow the organization’s recruitment processes and guidelines. There’s no rush!
- Create a Healthy Work-Life Balance:
Your software development team members also have a life to live outside the work environment.
If their work tasks do not give them the freedom to take care of their personal lives, this will definitely lead to dissatisfaction and burnout, which in turn affect team performance.
And finally;
- Consider Outsourcing Your Team Management / Work with an Extended Team:
‘Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think. Refocusing your resources on hiring better will have a higher return than almost any training program you can develop.’
Laszlo Bock, Co-founder and CEO of Humu and Author of Work Rules
One thing that tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Apple have in common is their extensive use of outsourcing for their projects.
Outsourcing teams has become a growing way of team management. This simply means hiring a third-party team to serve as your partner in building your products and businesses.
This model is preferable because of its advantages which include:
The extended teams include experienced Software developers and other team members who have the expertise you need to build your products.
It saves money and time, as you do not need to go through the back-and-forth of hiring every team member.
It also gives you the freedom to focus on other aspects of your business.
You get access to top international talents even if you do not have the ability to manage such big talents internally.
It saves you the hassles of team management and allows you to focus on other critical areas like sales and fundraising.
You can extend your team capacity by getting a fully set-up and co-managed full-time team at Tribesquare.
Tribesquare teams include hand-picked experts who can guarantee your business stability and effective management while you retain control of your products and processes.
If you need help with team management or building software development and technical teams, contact_ Tribesquare_. Let us eliminate your team-building and management headaches.
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