How to find the best WordPress developers for you: Part 8 – Size of team

This is the eighth post in a series of posts about “How you can find the best WordPress developers for you“.

Here are links to the content we have covered so far:

Day 1: Experience
Day 2: Expertise
Day 3: Price
Day 4: Standards
Day 5: Communication Skills
Day 6: Timekeeping
Day 7: Location

Today we are looking at how important the size of the development team is that you choose to work on your WordPress project.

8) Size of team

Whilst it’s not a definitive indicator of project success, we know that for some agencies the size of the team they are working with is still an important factor.

There isn’t any difference in the level of competency and professionalism that you get from a one-man band freelancer over a larger development company as this depends on how good each business is at what they do. What you will get from a bigger team is typically a dedicated project manager and cover for sickness and holidays which the freelancer cannot easily provide. You will also get more security in that you are dealing with an established business rather than someone who might be available all of the time.

Freelancers have a different set of advantages as they are often agiler in their approach and will work outside of normal hours to complete projects. You may also find that you get a better level of rapport with a freelancer rather than having to go through a project manager to get to speak to a developer.

Questions to ask:

• How big is your team? – This can important depending on the size of project you are working on. Can a single developer build a massive enterprise level site? Of course, they can. From our experience, small agile teams are the best to work with, as you get the best of both worlds.
• How do you manage projects effectively? – This is the super important question as there is a multitude of ways to manage projects from waterfall to agile sprints. Speak to the developer and find out if they are willing to work using the technology you normally use, whether its Basecamp, Asana or Github. This will make the project a lot easier to manage in the long run.

In the next post in this series, we will look at ‘payment terms‘ and how important they are.