Here at eLocal I find myself doing less “web design” and doing more User Interface design, as well as a lot of UX research/design/testing. This has caused me to really step back and see team development in a new perspective. The more interaction I have with our engineers (local, and offshore) the more I understand their world, and how it relates to me as I develop the front end of a lot of our applications, and the more user testing, and UX related research I do the more I have really come to a good understanding of all of the components and effort (individual and team) involved in making a great product (and or website) that is visually appealing, easy to use, and truly beneficial to the end user.

So this is the start of a new series on designing/developing in a team environment and how to take steps to ensure that you and your team are working towards success. Whether you are a team lead/manager or one of the cog’s in a bigger mechanism each role is important and if we can learn what we can contribute to the team we can help insure the success of the products/web sites that we are a part of creating.

The series will be split into four parts:

1) Building a Successful Dev Team

2) Coding In a Team Environment

3) Building Development Team Communication

Hopefully as we look at these (an possibly a couple extra) points we will be able develop a focused pursuit of development team bliss, granted it may not be as easy as it sounds, but developing a solid dev team that works together to accomplish a common goal is instrumental to the success of any design firm, start up, and or top secret missions.