How to Build and Manage An Effective Product Development Team

 

Quick Summary: Building an effective product development team is essential to creating successful products. It requires a great deal of organization and assessment to ensure the team is able to work harmoniously together and that every individual‘s strengths are maximized. This blog discusses the steps needed to assemble the product development team; which includes careful planning and assessment, providing the necessary tools and resources, as well as ample communication opportunities between all participants, in order to maximize collaboration during all stages of development, including taking into account the unique skillsets of each member. You will learn how to assemble and manage a product development team, which allows businesses to better position themselves to deliver high-quality products.

At the center of every company, product development is a crucial component that helps it achieve long-term success. No matter what industry you are in, your ability to develop, validate, and launch new products is crucial. A study by the 280 Group showed that optimizing the product development process itself could increase company profits by 34.2%. Dedicated software development teams are often the key to this. This article discusses how to build and manage a product development team that can effectively support you in the product development journey. Let’s dive right in!

The Essential Steps to Build and Manage a Product Development Team

Your product development team needs a solid structure that creates the space where everyone can do what they do best. Get it wrong and your progress will be significantly impeded. Listed below are three structures that might work for your team:

i) Centralized Team Structure

Your dedicated product development team works under one key decision-maker in this setup. You assign your developers to various projects based on their needs as and when needed. Your developers work as mini-agencies. As a result, you benefit from shared knowledge and experiences. Additionally, you achieve a unified approach to product development throughout the organization. A downside is that your team is somewhat isolated from the rest of the company, resulting in misalignment.

ii) Embedded Team Structure

In this structure, individual product developers are integrated into cross-functional teams across the organization. This means that each individual is deeply embedded in specific products which are great for focus, but it does result in some duplicated work because other developers might not know exactly what you’re working on.

iii) Flexible Team Structure

Embedded and centralized approaches are combined here. The developers are still integrated into specific teams, but they also report to a head of product development who aims to unify the approach and align everyone. Flexibility can be very valuable, but it can also cause wires to be crossed when team members aren‘t sure who should report to and who should make the final decision.

Use Tools That Improve Design-Development Team Collaboration

Great software can be an asset for improving collaboration between your design and development teams. Look out for gaps in your processes, and see if there are solutions to help you tighten them up with other technological tools.

Create Product Briefs

Without the right context and guardrails in place, product development can quickly expand beyond its original scope. A comprehensive product brief is one of the best ways to do this. They align everyone‘s expectations and record the direction in which the product is heading.

Organize Regular Meetings

Throughout your product development journey, you should organize regular meetings for your development team to keep everyone informed about what‘s going on. As part of the project management process, these meetings serve as a valuable check and balance to ensure all is on track.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, some core principles for building and managing an effective product development team. Implementing these and focusing on the key action steps will elevate your digital product development to a whole new level. Operationally, few things will deliver a better return on investment than getting your product development team on the same page. We recommend rethinking your processes and implementing these best practices as soon as possible. If you‘re looking for a tool that will help you optimize your product and design development, then check out BrainInventory!