Tech for Non-tech
Know your team
Previously , we have explored the fundamentals (the basics of tech) and tools (such as tech languages) now it’s time to understand the people from tech. Today, companies are hiring techies like you would buy candy at the store, and why, you ask? Because retaining tech talent has been a daunting task the past couple of years. The attrition rate in IT industry is roughly around 20–25% as of 2022. The tech talent market is hot as of right now, and startups have spoiled the whole game by paying CEO-level packages to premium tech talents. Every industry is becoming tech-centric and getting the right set of tech folks to support your product dream is naturally the highest priority for any company.
Structure (High level)
On a really high level, all tech teams in a functional division set-up can be described in the following way. Depending on the size of the organization and the working culture, there could be more or fewer divisions in teams. For example, if you are running a service-based product, it makes sense to create a customer experience team; as your client base increases, your business analysts or product managers would end up devoting time to customers instead of development.
Each of these functional roles add specific values to your product development lifecycle. If you are a start-up at the inception level, it totally makes sense that your founder is spending time with engineers to get the product out as soon as possible, and you don’t need product managers. However, if you are running a wide-scale project in a MNC, then you might as well have technical product managers, business analysts, and data architects on board to aid evolving a wider vision for the product.
Roles
Now that you know the structure of the team, you should understand the specifics related to their jobs as well. (So that you don’t end up writing edgy emails to the wrong audience :P)
Group 1 — Assess the needs + Develop and prioritize requirements + Monitor and Control the delivery
Product Manager— Business Analyst — Information/System Architect — Scrum Master/Delivery Lead/Project Managers
Group 2 — Implement the requirements + Test the solution + Deploy, Monitor, and Control the technology
Team Leads— Engineering team — QAT (Quality Assurance Test) and UAT (User Acceptance Test) team— Production Support/Infrastructure Management team — Customer Experience team
There is a high degree of interdependence between these stakeholders; each of them needs to do their job well to deliver a piece of product to their customers. In a group, all the job roles overlap to some extent in terms of functions, so it is very normal to see more or fewer divisions in your organization, based on functions (it’s a highly need-based structure. Don’t impose industry standards on your team if it doesn’t work for you).
I think now you will be able to understand why your BA can’t help you if you are unable to log in to your systems, or why your developers can’t help you if you’re not able to understand the system. So, next time onwards make sure you reach out to correct audience for your issues, otherwise you’ll always end up with solution, “Have you tried turning it off and on again ?”.
I have tried my best to explain the team dynamics, but feel free to comment or reach out to me if you have questions, doubts, or comments.
Happy Learning!
