Experienced Team vs. Beginners Team

There are lots of specialists on the market that have different qualifications. This qualification defines the experience and complexity of the projects a person can work with. The following article explains some traits of the teams built of people with different qualifications and gives general recommendations on how to work them.

Experienced Team

Every member of the experienced team already has multiple projects on his CV. These may be projects from different areas, implemented for multiple clients, often all over the world. Such people's important trait is that they know the standard workflows, used multiple development approaches (waterfall, agile, lean), and aware of how to build a project from scratch.

Experienced teams know how to use different frameworks; they have built tens of integrations and can address pretty much any technical issue.

These people often know project management flows too. Consequently, they require only minor supervision from the Project Manager's side and sometimes can even substitute him.

Finally, such a team has high-quality standards, gives reasonable estimates, and does the job on time.

It looks like a perfect team to work with, isn't it? Well, it has its price — literally in this case. Such teams are expensive (or even very expensive) because each team member can professionally perform every task without requiring external help.

Beginners Team

Beginners team is the opposite of experienced team in almost all aspects. Most team members have only a little experience in one area, know just one or two tools they used before, and need external help to build a project.

Such a team may need additional time to get familiar with new technology, framework, or integration. Typical technical issues will take more time compared to an experienced team.

Beginners team almost always requires constant attention from the Project Manager to set the process, track tasks, collect feedback and organize communication with a customer. Such a team often requires Project Lead or Technical Lead — an experienced person who can explain how to build a project, supervise the technical processes, and help solve unusual issues.

Finally, the quality of the solution made by this team will be average, and estimates may not be met.

The catch here is the same as for the experienced team — the team of beginners is cheap, and by a significant margin. In many cases, the cost of such a team is several times lower than the experienced team. So, the customer may prefer to sacrifice the quality and employ two beginners team instead of the experienced team, and such an approach will be financially justified.

Which One Is Better?

There is no definitive answer to this question — it depends on the project's size and complexity, financial resources, time limitation, risks, and some other factors.

The beginners team is better when the project is not that big or complicated, it is not urgent, and overall risks are average or below average. However, the finances may be the issue, so it is crucial to keep expenses low.

The experienced team is better if you have an unstable project environment — lots of unclear requirements, the project is big or complicated, and time is an issue. Consequently, the risks are high, so it should be quite expensive to work on such a project.

There is always a balanced approach — 50/50 or something like that. However, it is crucial to understand how exactly beginners and experienced developers will interact with each other and work on the same task or project.

So, when the project scope, limitations, and risks are evaluated and defined, the Project Manager can pick the best team suitable for implementing this project to achieve the expected results.