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Tips for
Startup
Structure
Tips for Startup Structure
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- January 17, 2024
A startup’s organization plays a critical role in its success, especially the development team, which is the basic unit of every IT startup. A poorly thought out organizational structure plan leads to misunderstandings, business cycle downtime, and general inertia. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to invest time and effort in designing an effective startup organizational structure. Elite Dev Squad started as a startup, so we get it. To illustrate this article, we have designed the perfect startup structure framework for young technology-driven startups. Core organizational structure of a startup: At the core of a startup’s organizational structure, there are two important positions: the CEO and the CTO. This role can also be played by stakeholders and founders. These key roles are the leaders of the startup structure. Let’s take a look at the structure of the unit. The development team is divided into four units, each assigned specific responsibilities. We describe these teams and their roles within the startup structure below:
UX Team:
User experience (UX) teams are essential for almost every startup because they focus on creating smart, customer-centric, and aesthetically pleasing visual designs to give users the best possible experience. It is important. This team works closely with other departments to finalize the work. The proposed UX team unit model combines the efforts of the following members:
UX designer
Frontend developers
Team leader
Depending on the difficulty of the project discovery task, a UX researcher may be added to the team. Successful companies such as Airbnb and Google have proven that UX research plays a vital role in ensuring positive user experiences and product performance. The talented UX researchers create truly user-centric experiences by analyzing user behavior and providing valuable insights.
Backend Team:
The backend team is responsible for developing the app’s core logic, handling interactions with cloud providers, and facilitating communication with the frontend via API endpoints. Recommended organizational structures for backend teams include:
Team lead
Middle stack developers
Backend engineers
The team lead coordinates the workflow within the unit and supervises the work of backend developers. You may be wondering what role a middle stack developer plays. We believe these will improve the relationship between front-end and back-end developers and act as an intermediate chain. This saves front-end and back-end developers time without burdening them with middle tiers or API endpoints.
DevOps Team in the startup structure:
DevOps teams are integral to the processes and tasks surrounding cloud infrastructure. DevOps allows you to seamlessly integrate new code into your repository before deploying the new version and conducting a thorough code review. Their main goal is to ensure an optimal user experience at their level of responsibility and reduce time to market. Typically for DevOps units:
Team lead
Cloud Architect
Site reliability engineer (SRE)
System administrator
DevOps leaders manage teams, assign roles and responsibilities, and oversee workflows. Cloud architects are responsible for developing and maintaining cloud technology, while SRE specialists ensure that applications and systems run without interruption. System administrators are responsible for cloud management and support.
QA Team:
Quality assurance (QA) teams thoroughly test applications under development to identify and resolve bugs and errors to ensure consistent and reliable operation. The QA team consists of:
QA lead
QA Analyst
Testers
The QA lead manages and monitors the team, sets quality metrics and expectations for the product, and ensures they are met. The leader can also design test plans and distribute tasks among her team members. QA Analysts develop and implement test plans, including manual and automated tests, and design the necessary test documentation and unit tests. Testers perform tests, review system requirements, test scripts, analyze performance, and report to QA analysts and quality assurance officers.
Types of Startup Organizational Structures
Of course, startup organizational structures come in many forms. This depends on many factors such as the type of activity, goals achieved, and business patterns. Let’s explore the five main types:
Functional Structure
In this type of startup structure, a company is divided into departments or teams based on roles such as sales, marketing, IT, finance, human resources, etc. The advantage of this structure is that it improves performance and productivity by organizing resources according to purpose. However, it can create layers of bureaucracy.
Divisional Structure
This structure divides teams or units into larger departments based on geographic or product line criteria. Each department works with managers and teams to focus on a specific product or service line. Department heads establish separate departments for specific product/service lines. This creates a product-based system. For example, an apparel company establishes a product division for women, men, and children. Each of the three lines has its own marketing, sales, design, and customer service teams. Good for product growth, but can be costly due to duplication of effort. If you have different design teams in each department, you risk increasing overall business costs as the fabric supply is split into parts.
Geographic Structure
This type of corporate structure is tied to the geography of the region. Proximity to certain resources helps businesses operate cost-effectively. However, decentralization of large companies may occur, leading to strategic fragmentation. Each local unit can be self-contained without requiring significant effort to coordinate its actions with other units. Companies try to solve this challenge by ensuring a common understanding of the company’s goals and objectives.
Matrix Structure
Originally developed for the space industry, this structure resembles a grid and establishes clear reporting lines between employees and team leaders. Grid facilitates collaboration between team members with similar skills. Employees report to their supervisor and department manager simultaneously. In this way, the operating system and project system overlap, ensuring a high level of flexibility. For example, people with similar skills may be assigned to different units but collaborate on a single project. However, using multiple command lines can cause conflicts. The matrix structure can be easily customized.
Network
This structure requires collaboration with other companies and outsourcing professionals such as contractors and freelancers. Third parties and independent contractors make significant contributions to our activities. Many external similarities can be seen between networks and functional structures. If you are considering using this model, you should consider how much you will rely on third parties. Suppose that most of your development work is done in-house. In this case, integrating a network of freelancers and professionals who do not report directly to management may not be the most sensible solution.
How to Build Your Perfect Startup Structure?
Incorporating the right talent into a startup’s organizational structure requires careful consideration. There are three main options:
Local Team:
The traditional approach of hiring a full-time local development team may seem logical. Employing a full-time local development team allows for quick control and management. This gives you complete control and quick access to your team. However, this approach can be costly due to expenses such as payroll taxes, employee insurance, office space, and supplies. For startups, this is not necessarily the most cost-effective option.
Partial Outsourcing:
In this model, startups identify specific areas to outsource and delegate these tasks, including project management, to external teams. The startup provides the technical specifications and the outsourced team does the rest. Another option in this scenario is to hire remote workers for specific roles through a staffing agency. Remote employees will be part of your team, but will work from the headquarters of the staffing agency that is responsible for hiring them. In this case, the hiring company represents the official employer and handles taxes, payroll, and benefits. This model allows you to hire multiple remote developers and organize them into dedicated development teams.
Full Outsourcing:
Some entrepreneurs choose to outsource completely, prioritizing cost savings by working with professional software development teams overseas. Another option is to hire a technical software development team. Unlike partial staffing, where remote developers are hired for a few key roles, a dedicated team handles all development work. This model is similar to the local team option, but is based overseas and operated from the recruitment agency’s headquarters.
Bottom Line
Choosing the right organizational structure is critical to a startup’s success. Properly delegating roles is critical to streamlining operations and achieving business goals. Let’s say you’ve established your initial startup organizational structure, but are hesitant about further product development steps. So what happens? When navigating the startup world, it can be helpful to seek the advice of experts. Over the past decade, our experts have helped countless startups bring unique digital products to market. As part of our product development strategy sessions, we will provide you with tailored business advice and develop a detailed plan for your product development.
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