Are you ready to build a mobile app? You need a team of experienced professionals to make it happen. Here at Surf, we have mobile apps development team for more than a decade, giving us an edge when it comes to creating a successful development team. Forming an effective team for a new project can be a daunting task — many elements must be considered, and an unorganized team can quickly lead to failure. In this article, we will discuss the structure of a typical app development team and the number of specialists required. We will also provide an estimate of the cost so that you can get your project off the ground with ease.
Requirement
The size and make-up of a mobile apps development team will depend on the complexity of the app being designed. However, certain roles are essential for any medium to large-scale project.
Developers are responsible for creating the app’s architecture and coding it. If developing for both iOS and Android, developers should be experienced with both Kotlin and Swift. For projects which use a cross-platform framework (Flutter, React Native, Ionic) experience with these platforms and the coding languages they use is essential. Depending on the app’s size and complexity, two developers may be sufficient. If data storage and payment processing are needed, then a Backend Developer is necessary.
A Quality Assurance Engineer evaluates the app’s quality and tests it manually and automatically. Familiarity with testing tools such as Robotium, Selenium and TestComplete is essential.
The Project Manager is the leader of the development team who communicates with the client and ensures the app is delivered within budget and on time. They must be able to work collaboratively and have excellent soft skills to ensure transparent communication between team members, other departments and the client. Knowledge of Agile management methodology and experience with management software such as Asana, TeamGantt and Confluence is also important.
UX/UI Designers are integral to the success of a mobile app development team. They are responsible for creating the visual design of the app, its look and feel, and how it is experienced by the user. Designers create wireframes to illustrate the layout of the user interface, and graphical prototypes of the app to provide an understanding of the app’s design. For this, UX/UI designers need to have excellent visual communication skills and analytical abilities, which can be used to conduct user surveys and usability tests. Popular software used by these professionals include Invision Studio, Sketch, Proto.io, Webflow, Balsamiq, and Axure.
The development process for any mobile app involves four main stages. Each stage involves different team members and at the end of each of them, a tangible result in the form of a prototype or a completed product is produced.
At the start of the project, the project manager, client and business analyst (if there is one) come together to analyze the market, identify the audience of the app, goals and desired features. The UI/UX designer can help illustrate the concept by creating screen mockups, UI wireframes and user flows. After this, a lo-fi prototype is presented to the team to showcase the key features, but without the design and content.
The next step is to conduct research with focus groups to further refine the concept and design the user interface. Developers and QA engineers become more involved at this stage. The outcome of this phase is a high-fidelity interactive prototype which is tested by users to assess the convenience of each component and user flow.
The development phase is when the developers create all the features of the app. After this, it will be a minimum viable product, with less capabilities than the original concept.
The testing and improvement stage is when data from testers is collected and analyzed. This is when elements and screens are redesigned, bugs are fixed, and integrations are improved. This requires the involvement of developers and QA engineers, who improve the code, perform tests and fix errors. The final result is a fully functional app ready for public release.
