Advanced technology and innovations are the driving forces behind thriving businesses. That is why businesses have to adopt modern solutions to solve modern problems and beat the competitive market. Agile development is a strategy that enables businesses to hire experts to manage specific tasks in a professional manner, ensuring the timely delivery of scalable and highly secure projects. But then, how can you get an agile development team and streamline your project development processes? This guide explores all the insights you need to know about hiring expert agile developers, the benefits, tips, plus many other insights.

What is agile development?

Agile development of a project development approach or method that prioritizes breaking a project into manageable phases to embrace flexibility, continuous improvement, and streamlined team collaboration.

Agile developers, in this case, are software development experts who follow agile development approaches. They aim at products that are adaptable to changes, embracing a collaborative working environment and embracing an iterative development approach.

They release software components in sections as they rely on customer feedback to modify and enhance the functionality and performance of software solutions.

A complete agile team is made up of the following personnel:

• Product owner – they highlight the core issues end users are facing, hence highlighting the importance of adopting agile methodology.
• Project managers – also known as scrum masters, are in charge of managing agile project development, ensuring the teams collaborate seamlessly to achieve a common goal.
• Business analysts – these are professionals who analyze possible risks that can impact your business and suggest preventive measures in advance. However, not all agile projects require a business analyst.
• Project development team – better known as agile teams, these are experts in charge of different roles in agile development. They are backend developers, frontend developers, UX programmers, testers, and QA analysts.
• Stakeholders – while stakeholders don’t play core roles in agile project development, they contribute to making the final decisions that impact the overall product after development.

Types of Agile Development Team Structures

As you plan to hire agile developers, it is essential to understand the different structures in agile teams. This will help you decide on the appropriate team idea for your business needs. The different agile development team structures include the following:

Generalist – this is an agile development team made up of experts who handle different tasks in a project. These are highly experienced professionals in the product development field, and are flexible enough to take or interchange the roles among the teams.

Domain specialists– these are agile teams that specialize in a pre-defined domain. They handle a specific task in project development and cannot perform other tasks that don’t align with their area of specialization.

Hybrid– the hybrid agile development team structure comprises domain specialists and generalists. Here, the domain specialists handle their area of specialization in a project while generalists handle other tasks, thus streamlining and accelerating project development.

Why hire agile developers? Benefits of hiring agile developers

While there are many other approaches to embrace in project development, one may wonder why they should choose agile. Below are some of the benefits you enjoy once you hire agile developers:

• Faster time-to-market

Deploying a product in the market faster helps in many ways, especially when targeting early adopters. This helps you beat the competitive market, especially when your product falls under stiff competitive niches.

Hiring agile developers is a perfect way to accelerate product deployment to the market. In this case, agile developers emphasize speed and adaptability, which are the core of agile development.

By prioritizing speed and adaptability, agile developers collaborate seamlessly, ensuring they handle different aspects of the project on the go, thus deploying the product to the market faster without compromising quality. This enables businesses to take advantage of the competitive market and attract early product adopters.

• Customer satisfaction

Agile developers embrace the iterative approach during product development. This makes it easy for agile teams to collect customer feedback and develop the product in relation to what end users need. This enhances user satisfaction once the product has been launched, thus enhancing productivity.

What’s more, agile developers prioritize product features by ensuring they include features that are relevant to what users need. This enhances overall customer satisfaction once the product is deployed to the market.

• Reduced risks

Every business or rather new products come with associated risks and uncertainties. The business can either thrive or fumble because of a number of reasons. Hiring agile developers is the best way to minimize such risks from happening, especially once the product has been launched.

Agile developers embrace an iterative development approach where they evaluate and strategize effective risk management strategies in all phases of software product development. Again, the iterative development method embraced by agile developers enables the teams to continuously identify and fix any issues to enhance the system’s stability.

Adequate Flexibility – When you hire Agile developers, the entire development process is divided into multiple teeny-tiny components that can also be tested and reviewed by the clients.

• Great product quality

By adopting an iterative product development approach, agile developers ensure they perform proper testing after every sprint. This makes it easy to identify and address any bottlenecks in the product early enough. Again, after every sprint, the stakeholders give their reviews on the completed sprint, thus enabling agile developers to adjust the product where necessary to align with the initial objectives. This continuous testing and modification done in sprints ensures the final product deployed is of high quality.

• Enhanced flexibility and adaptability

Hiring agile developers means hiring experts with adequate experience. This makes work easier for product owners, especially when they lack adequate tech skills and experience. The agile developers, as long as they have the original idea from the client, will work on it until the software solution starts to take shape. At this point, agile developers can include features and functionalities that are relevant to the objectives of such a project. This level of flexibility does not limit agile developers from adjusting the original features and functionalities. The goal is to produce a product that meets user preferences and the set business goals.

• Better collaboration

Agile developers prioritize seamless collaboration with other teams, ensuring they share the project’s progress, required changes, and any necessary modifications to ensure the final product aligns with the set goals and objectives.

Of course, proper collaboration among agile developers accelerates the product development process while maintaining a high product quality.

• Faster hiring process

Hiring agile developers is a streamlined and faster process. This makes it easy for

When to hire Agile developers

Not all projects are ideal for agile developers. Below are some of the instances when you should consider hiring agile developers and enjoy the many benefits of agile development:

• When you have several teams handling the same project
• When handling a project with unclear requirements and needs regular changes and modifications
• When you rely on customer feedback during product development
• When handling a complex project that requires tech experts

Step-by-step hiring Agile developers

Once you define the need to hire agile developers, follow the steps below to ensure you get the best agile developers within the shortest timeline who will guarantee quality work:

Make your selections and begin onboarding your new team members.

• Define your project needs

Start the process by redefining what your project needs in terms of goals, deadlines, project scope, type of project, and your set budget.

These are the parameters that will guide you as you narrow down choosing the best agile developers for your project.

• Define the type of agile developers for your project

Next, think of the type of agile developers you need to employ. Would you rather go for freelancers or hire employees? Does your project need full-time, part-time, or freelance agile developers? These are some of the clues that will guide you in selecting the best agile developers for your project.

Note: agile development prioritizes team collaboration. In this case, consider selecting agile developers who have collaborated on other projects before. This will guarantee your project’s success.

• Write a detailed job post

Once you have defined your project’s parameters and the type of agile developers you want you can now start the search process, and this will require you to draft a comprehensive job post to attract the right agile developers.

In your job post, include the project description, duties & responsibilities, preferred qualification, hiring method, and project timeline (for freelancers).

• Determine where to hire agile developers

With a comprehensive job description in place, you can post it on different platforms, depending on where you want to source your agile developers from.

Job boards, outsourcing agencies, freelance marketplaces, and professional networks are some of the reliable sources you can find your agile developers. You can consider hiring developers from Aalpha Information Systems based on your project needs.

Do a proper analysis of each platform, highlighting the benefits and limitations of each then select the ideal platform to get your agile team. Some of the guiding tips you can use here include the following:

• Your set budget
• Urgency or how soon you need agile developers
• Risks associated

• Shortlist the qualified agile developers

Based on the sites or platforms you have selected, choose the most qualified candidates and shortlist them, ready for screening and eliminating processes.

• Conduct interviews

Now, start the screening process as you eliminate the candidates. This will allow you to settle for a perfect match in the end. While assessing coding and other tech aspects is crucial, don’t forget about evaluating soft skills. The candidate will be working with other teams, hence the need to embrace good communication and collaborative skills.

Make sure you structure questions, leaving gaps so that the candidate can complete them. This will help you evaluate the candidate’s communication skills understand their capabilities, and their approaches towards solving problems.

Of course, a sharp and experienced agile developer will notice incomplete questions and hence request all the details to give accurate answers. These are some of the ways you will learn and evaluate the candidate’s proficiency, hence an easy way to eliminate some of the candidates.

Examples of questions to ask agile developers are as follows:

Explain the agile development concept and why you embrace it – while this may seem a basic question, it entails a lot. The candidate should be able to explain their understanding of the agile approach & the benefits it will bring to your project. When dealing with a professional agile developer, you may end up learning even more concepts that you didn’t know.

Describe how you’ve collaborated with other teams on different projects, including the challenges you experienced– this question will help you unleash how experienced the candidates are. What’s more, you will learn about common challenges they might face handling your project and how they will solve such issues.

Complete this phase by comparing every candidate’s score and settling on the most qualified candidate who can accomplish the core objectives of your project.

• Hire and onboard your new agile developers

Finally, sign the paperwork, then onboard the new agile developers by introducing them to the company’s culture and other teams.

Make sure you emphasize the important agile development core concepts of effective collaboration, streamlined communication, and problem-solving skills.

With these steps complete, you have successfully hired agile developers who will contribute largely to the success of your business.

Conclusion

Businesses are changing and adopting modern solutions at a rapid rate. As an entrepreneur, hiring expert agile developers is one of the best strategies to keep up with the changing business environments.

Agile developers, in this case, will deliver your project in a timely manner, ensuring the delivered product is adaptable to changes. That is why you should plan for a thorough screening process to ensure you hire agile developers who have adequate tech skills and can adapt to the changing business field to tap into the industry trends. This will ensure your business remains competitive & viable in the market for long.

Hiring expert agile developers FAQs

Where can I hire expert agile developers?

Before you think of where to source expert agile developers, define the type of agile developers you want. It can be full-time developers, freelancers, or dedicated developers.

You can source your ideal candidates from different platforms. Software development companies such as Aalpha Information Systems India offer the best agile development services tailored to meet your set business objectives.

Again, you can source for freelance agile developers from renowned platforms like Aalpha, Upwork, Toptal, Hired, and among many other platforms.

All you need is to do in-depth research to understand the benefits & challenges of using each platform and select one that best suits your business needs.

What are some of the challenges I should expect from hiring agile developers?

While hiring agile teams may seem like a streamlined process, there are some challenges you should know so that you can prepare in advance on how to overcome them.
Such challenges include maintaining a collaborative team, handling rapid delivery, keeping effective communication, and finding the right agile developers with the needed skills.

Solution: you can overcome all these challenges by planning effectively. Define your core business needs, then identify the reasons why you need agile developers, know the type of agile developers you want, and then create an action plan on how to hire and onboard the agile developers.

How much does it cost to hire agile developers?

The cost of hiring agile developers varies based on a number of reasons. For instance, project timelines impact the costs of hiring agile developers. If you need developers on full-time employment or on a contractual basis, the pricing and costs will differ widely.

Again, the nature and complexity of your project contribute to the overall costs of hiring agile developers. Of course, an extensive and complex project will cost more.

Developer location and experience too, contribute to the costs of hiring agile developers. Of course, a highly experienced agile developer has what it takes to deliver the project in a timely manner and with top notch quality, thus more costs. Again, an agile developer located in countries such as Canada, the USA, & the UK is likely to cost more compared to agile developers from Ukraine, India, and Africa. This is due to the different living standards of different regions.

What are some of the interview questions I should ask agile developers during the screening session?

As you screen your agile development candidates, you will need to ask relevant questions that will help you choose the best fit for your project. The questions should include a mix of technical aspects and soft skills capabilities. Some of the sample questions to ask in this case include the following:

• What is your general understanding of the agile approach?
• Highlight some challenges agile teams experience and possible solutions
• Highlight some limitations of an agile approach
• What is your understanding of iterative development?
• What’s your understanding of the product roadmap?
• Why is communication vital in agile development?

What skills should I look for in expert agile developers?

Agile developers require a wide range of skills to carry out proper agile project development, including tech skills and soft skills. Below are the skills you should look out for when hiring expert agile developers:

• Coding skills
• Agile architecture
• Customer-centered focus
• Good collaborative or team workmanship skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Creating user stories
• Agile project management
• Good communication
• Self-organization

Back to You!

Want to hire agile developers at affordable rates for your projects, our software development company – Aalpha information systems can help. Get in touch with us, and we’ll assist you in finding the right talent.