Building a Team and Procedures For Your Digital Ventures Firm 

Creating an organization able to craft engaging digital ventures requires a focused and multifaceted effort. Any successful digital agency requires a team of forward-looking and technically component professionals. At the same time, this team needs the direction provided by well-considered procedures covering all functional areas of modern software development in addition to business operations.

So any new technical team needs a sense of direction, but also the autonomy supporting a culture of creativity and digital excellence. In fact, it’s a process that simply doesn’t happen overnight. Employing managerial talent experienced in building startups is another critical necessity to foster success.

With an eye towards helping your digital ventures firm build a talented team and structure, here are a few insights on the process.

Defining a Software Development Methodology and Company Culture

Any new digital agency needs a vision and company culture. They eventually serve as a roadmap to success. The process of creating a vision and defining a culture plays an important role in subsequently crafting the policies and procedures required for any effective software development organization. Additionally, the talented technology professionals your organization needs for success tend to be attracted to creative businesses that boast a well-defined approach.

The number of successful digital agency firms that operate in a disorganized fashion remains close to zero. Using a modern software development methodology also matters. In an industry where teamwork and collaboration are more important than ever, leveraging Agile or one of its many offshoots remains a wise choice. These methodologies provide the client interaction and flexibility to quickly build compelling digital ventures without wasting revenue and resources.  

The Challenge of Attracting Technology Talent to a Startup 

Attracting talented, in-demand software engineers remains a challenge for any emerging digital agency. We already mentioned the need to have an established culture, sharply-defined procedures, and a modern software development methodology. Selling this story to potential candidates as a startup is a challenging process. 

Try to find qualified candidates with experience in the challenges you’ll face at your current and future growth stages. If you plan on focusing on serving clients in a specific industry sector, remember your technical employees also need a keen understanding of that business domain. This knowledge helps when interacting with clients as well as their design and programming efforts. 

Additionally, you need to provide sufficient professional development opportunities for your employees. These include training opportunities in the latest technologies as well as tuition reimbursement as a benefit. It’s an approach that helps attract talent to your company as well as making it easier to retain your best employees. 

Provide Your Team With State of The Art Tools 

The modern software engineer wants to use the latest tools to empower their architectural, design, collaborative, and coding efforts. Don’t skimp on spending when it comes to IDEs and other software development platforms. Even state of the art project management tools matter. 

For a PM platform, try to find something that project managers, developers, and even clients want to use. We leverage Monday.com here at NineTwoThree after using both Basecamp and Trello. Needless to say our clients never became comfortable with the latter two platforms, but everyone loves Monday.com. We even modified our procedures to be compatible with the modern style of project management facilitated by this innovative platform. It also provides managerial and collaborative support for a variety of business functions, including sales, marketing, creative, coding, recruiting, and more.  

Offering the chance to work with the latest technology innovations also makes it easier to attract and retain software engineering talent. This approach becomes natural when you build a company culture that champions innovation. It gives your technical team, business analysts, and managers the chance to learn and build rewarding careers. 

Use Project Successes to Generate Additional Business 

Once your project team is built and your company boasts the policies, practices, and procedures for success, it becomes time to craft successful digital ventures. These initial project successes help build a feedback loop of continuous improvement. It’s a scenario where as your digital agency’s reputation grows it becomes easier to generate new business. 

In fact, when your agency becomes highly profitable, leverage those earnings to fund new startups based on innovative ideas generated by your team. It’s another form of positive feedback that leads to additional growth and success for the entire organization. Expect your HR team to struggle handling the massive amount of résumés from software engineers who want to work with your organization!

If you are interested in building your own digital agency, check out our helpful and informative Digital Venture Studio Playbook laden with useful advice for emerging startups. We cover some of the topics mentioned in this post, as well as many other beneficial insights on what you need to know. Also consider connecting with us to discuss partnering on your next great idea!