The web development team roles every stakeholder should understand (2023)

When you need to build a website or launch a new marketing campaign, there are actually two ways to make this happen: form (or expand) your in-house team or outsource the development. In any case, for effective decision-making, you have to understand what’s going on, who all these people are, and what additional skills you need on your team to complete the project.

To do this effectively, it’s helpful to know the basics of web developmentprocesses as well as the specialists who are responsible for carrying out each task. This way, you’ll be able to address arising issues as well as communicate with your team more effectively throughout the entire process.

That’s what this article is going to help you with. After reading it, you’ll be more knowledgeable about the entire website development process, the specialists taking part in it, and how to find the right members for your team (or the right people to outsource work to)!

Take your pick

If you decide to expand your in-house team, things are a little simpler—just define what specific skills you’re looking for and hire someone who has them. For example, if you have a strong front-end developer but setting deadlines is a struggle, you may want to look for a project manager to join the team.

Things can get a bit more complicated if you collaborate with a freelancer or hire out a creative agency. The outside hires mean more management duties. Also, this requires a well-thought-out onboarding strategy in order for both parties could collaborate effectively.

So how do you know which option is right for you: hire internally or outsource the work? Before you settle on an answer, let’s move on to team structure. Here’s a typical one:

• User Interface Designer and User Experience Designer (UI/UX)
• Developer
• Quality Assurance Engineer (QA)
• Project Manager (PM)
• Requirement Analyst (RA)

Along with the technical team, many companies focus on promoting their digital products (especially in the eCommerce sphere) as it helps to stay afloat and generate more customers. For this reason, you’ll also need marketers that work closely with the development team. Here are several of the most demanded marketing specialists on the market right now:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Marketing Strategist
• Content Specialist

Now that you know who the key players are, let’s dive into each of these roles a little further.

Development team roles and structure

Requirement analyst

This is one of the first people you’re going to communicate with if your choice fell on outsourcing work to creative agency, because their main duty is working with customers. Requirement analysts would work with you to figure out your needs, gather project requirements, and draw up technical specifications that would be used by their developers in order to define the timeframe they need to implement your project.

In general, these specialists help large teams optimize and speed up their work, so not every in-house team needs this role directly on their team.

Project manager

Project managers make sure your project is delivered timely and it corresponds to your vision and requirements. In case something goes wrong, they mitigate and fix arising issues. Project managers hired to work in-house can collaborate with the rest of the team face-to-face, while if you outsource this role to an agency, the entire management process is controlled remotely.

This specialist spends their working time ensuring each stage of development goes according to plan and all the timeframes and requirements are met. For this reason, project managers read the technical documentation. After that, they draw up a project plan and split it into stages, usually called sprints (periods of time allocated to complete a specific work). However, this process may differ depending on what methodology your team sticks to.

As soon as all the preparations are done, project managers proceed to their main duties: monitoring the entire process of development and coordinating actions of other team members.

UI/UX designer

Design is something enormously important for any digital experience. As a rule, small and medium-sized companies with in-house teams don’t hire two separate specialists for UI and UX design. Instead, they focus on designers who are aware of both these processes. Larger companies separate the two and often hire a dedicated specialist for each of them.

UX design

During this stage, which is in charge of product-use convenience, a designer evaluates the requirements of the project and researches the target audience. This way, the designer finds out what problems users currently have and considers how to solve them in design. In most cases, this stage results in a wireframe of a project which is a skeletal model of design.

UI design

When the UX design stage is completed, the designer can start with the UI design that’s in charge of the product visual look. It’s all about colors, fonts, icons, and other elements combined together. This stage results in the final design of your product (prototype) performed in a specialized software. It can be static or animated and is created based on the research as well as the wireframe from the UX stage.

Again, a UI/UX designer creates the product’s design from scratch. However, you may need other design specialists to address all your requirements, such as graphic or motion designers.

QA engineer

QA engineers find bugs, draw up bug reports for developers, and ensure the product’s interface looks just as designed.

Each company and team have their own approach to testing. Talking about outsourcing companies, the process commonly starts from the analysis of project requirements. This is needed to create a testing plan.

Generally, QA engineers participate in a project from the very beginning to its release. Developers send them each version of the product they’ve built (one version is equal to one sprint if a company follows this methodology). They also check conformity with various requirements applying automation tests and a variety of other methods.

As soon as bugs in one or another product’s version are found, they create a bug report for developers who have to solve those issues. After developers report they’ve fixed everything, they conduct a retesting to make sure there are no new bugs and the previous ones are completely fixed.

As said, they also examine the product’s interface. This includes the check of fonts, colors, and every other element on the website to be complied with the initial design. QA engineers may also report on usability issues and suggest solutions to make the product more convenient.

Web developer

This specialist will turn those colorful pictures with product’s design into a full-featured website. Just like with design, the development phase is also split into several stages.

Front-end

This is everything you saw on a prototype at the end of the design stage but couldn’t launch in a browser. It’s the client-side of your web site which customers perceive visually and can interact with. So, all these buttons, forms, and other visual elements are the front-end part. They are built with the help of code in order for the browser to read it and recreate on the screen.

Back-end

The back-end powers all features those buttons and forms have to perform. For example, a registration button may look great but it won’t perform its main function without back-end code behind it.

Let’s now consider the types of developers who are in charge of these stages.

Front-end developers

They turn your prototype into a working website. They create the client-side of the site and make sure the product looks great on any device as well as works stable on any browser.

Back-end developers

They create the server-side of the website to breathe life into the functionality. Also, these specialists may be involved in database creation and CMS development. There is a myriad of programming languages for this purpose.

Full-stack developers

These developers can deal with both front-end and back-end.

So, this team can build your web product from scratch but if you want to promote it, you should be aware of the marketing team as well.

Structure of marketing team

Again, the structure of this team fully depends on your needs and budget. Underneath, we’ve listed several specialists that can work with the rest of the development team to drive more customers and increasing the engagement rate.

Marketing strategist

Roughly speaking, this is a head of your marketing team. This specialist creates the marketing strategy tailored to your company’s goals.

Their duties also include managing the marketing team, analyzing performance, and monitoring the implementation of set business goals through strategy.

SEO specialist

The demand for SEO specialists has raised as they help to attract the right customers to your website. Their main duties are:

• Searching for keywords
• Analyzing traffic and metrics
• Conducting competitive analysis
• Optimizing website for search engines
• Working together with designers and content specialists

All this may vary depending on a specialist’s expertise as well as the project.

Content specialist

These specialists work with text and create written content corresponding to your brand voice. They collaborate with SEO specialists to optimize their writing for search engines like Google. Content specialists are hired to fill the website with written information, create a content strategy, and write blog posts.

So, these are the core professionals that can help you create and promote your web product. However, remember that you may require other specialists to meet certain needs of your project. The best way to define what specialists you really need is to consult with professionals in this sphere.

Know any other roles you deem vital to a successful design project? Let us know in the comments!