You can hear it from just about all the rock-star web developers in the world: it takes a strong, cohesive and coherent team working as a unit to get the best results. So, what does it take to gather and establish a great team of web developers who will create great products and work well across different departments in your organization?
For a start, the secret to creating and maintaining a great team is flexibility, transparency and good vibes. This means finding the best fit on your next hiring round to keep your team motivated and fresh. Here are a few ideas that will have your web development team coding at its best for perfect web business products.
Empower Engineers
The engineering team finds itself at odds with the marketing, business development and management teams in any project - mostly because engineers are treated like order takers and not collaborators. To get the best from your engineering department, make sure they are heard and have input in what they are set to be working on.
You could, for example have development and management teams meet quarterly for planning as well as to iron out work issues. The process should be employee driven, with teams responsible for setting up their own priorities and presenting them to the company's management. Each team in your business should be allowed to share its successes and lessons learnt over the last quarter.
Doing this will help every team prioritize projects and plans, as well as allow the management team to question them and ensure that every group has a plan for success and moving in line with your organization's goals. Empowering your web development team also ensures you will retain your top developer talent. True empowerment, at the end of the day, means that all teams work in an environment where everyone can make a difference and learn a few new things.
Break Down Barriers
If projects within your organization are not tackling problems they should be solving, you might have a matter of walls that require breaking down. You can tackle this issue by targeting two specific areas; technology and inner relationships.
When it comes to technology, you may adopt an API-first culture . This essentially means encouraging your development teams to build APIs that make it easier for other teams to create integrations and take advantage of each other's project.
When it comes to creating better relationships among co-workers, consider investing more in creating and building relationships across your company. This may include running days where members from different organizations work together in a workshop environment. This will help in fostering connections that can be used in facilitating collaboration.
Mix it Up
Another way to foster cohesion and break down barriers among different teams in your organization is by allowing tech colleagues to interact with other members they may not typically work with during their everyday duties. For example, you can have your ecommerce team meet the mobile team. If you have teams spread around the country or the world, use virtual meeting software to have them talking and helping each other out when required.
Get Everyone Out of the Office
How can you always ensure that development team members work well together? How can you keep this team feeling motivated, comfortable around each other and reduce burn out among them? Well, one way of doing this is by getting the team away - far away - from your office.
Even when the team is out of the office, they can still get work done, but the period they spend away from the office can be a huge team building opportunity. It can also be a chance to get the design team, project management, business and development teams on the same page.
