Building a successful development team

When you look at your development teams, what drives their success? Building your development team is like Lego. You need the pieces to fit together perfectly while encouraging creativity and growth.

I believe there is no one size fits all to reaching success within your teams though. It all boils down to the character of who you bring on board and who you keep around.

Do they fit your companies culture? Do they bring the drive and motivation to keep your team heading forwards?

In this article, we look at just a few factors that make for a successful team to get you thinking.

Defining your development team culture

Most successful companies today have a set of core values that make up their workforce. These drive the culture amongst teams and These are usually summarized within a companies mission statement.

Let’s take Microsoft’s as an example.

Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more

microsoft

While this plays a key role in publicly stating the companies intentions to the world, it’s key in driving the success within their teams. When your team members are focused on a shared vision, you can begin to build a positive and successful culture.

In the biological sense, culture is linked to growth. In order to grow, your team will need to accept and adapt to change.

Inviting change in your development team will allow you all to grow and mature with time. Accepting the diversity in your team members’ ideas and approaches to the development work will drive you forward as one.

Harnessing unique potential

When your development team starts to grow, you’ll start to uncover the unique skills within your members. I like to think of these as core competencies, things that they do best.

If you don’t know what makes your team tick, you can tease this out with regular 1-1 meetings. Explore what your team really enjoys working on and tailor their skills to available work.

Don’t forget to be inclusive. Where your development team have the drive but lack the skill, look for opportunities for upskilling.

Positioning your team to perform with their best capabilities will unlock the maximum value they can add to projects. It will also keep them happy, another win for a successful team!

Building trust

A team is only as strong as each member in it and you have to work together to move forward as one.

Micromanagement and uncontrolled egos have the worst, most damaging, and demoralizing effect on development teams. It affects the retention of team members, productivity, and can ultimately damage people’s mental state.

Building trust with your development teams will guide them to perform to the best of their abilities. Being truly open will allow your developers to experience both success and failure. It will allow them to grow and mature, becoming the best possible version of themselves.

What factors do you think make a successful development team?

In my opinion, there is no magic checklist you can take and start implementing with your team. What makes them successful is what you bring to the table as leaders.

Are you giving your team the freedom to grow? Are you building a positive, motivating culture that is shared across the business?

To be effective in this ever-growing tech industry, we must work towards building this positive culture. With the right culture, success will come naturally.

Want more guidance to getting you on the right track to being a successful technical leader? I recommend grabbing a copy of Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path. It touches on key details for anyone who works in development at whatever level on your journey that you’re at.

If you’re embarking on your journey of team leadership, I also highly recommend reading my previous articles on growing your career towards technical leadership and lessons learned from being a tech lead.

Share in the comments below what factors you think make a successful development team!