How to Build a Dev Team
Resources for learning to code are everywhere. The only hard part is choosing one. But when it comes to learning how to lead a development team, quality resources are incredibly scarce.
This course fills that gap. It contains all of the lessons I learned while building the dev team at Tighten, a Laravel consultancy known for producing great work, but with an even better reputation as a fantastic place to work.
Progress
Series Info
- Episodes
- 12
- Run Time
- 2h 50m
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Last Updated
- Oct 11, 2025
- Version
- Latest
Series Episodes
- Culture and Environment (3)
Introduction
My name is Matt Stauffer, and I built an incredible team of developers at Tighten. My goal is to teach you how to build or improve your dev team.How to Create a Healthy Developer Culture
In this episode, we’ll cover the key elements of a healthy developer culture. Follow these steps, and you'll be on your way to building a happy and effective team.How to Lay the Groundwork for Developer Productivity
It's unrealistic to expect every developer (or any developer) to be a '10x developer', but there are still ways we can optimize our environments for developer productivity.
- Building Your Team (3)
How to Structure the Positions of a Development Team
Despite the popularity of 'flat' leadership structures, you can't just throw developers into a team and expect everything to go smoothly. In hiring, management, and process definition, everything will work better if you have a plan for the structure of your team.How to Hire Developers
Hiring employees, especially developers, can be a daunting challenge for engineering managers. This episode covers how to write job descriptions, how to interview developers, and more.How to Manage Developers
Once you've got your ideal developers, you now can just code alongside them--right? Nope. Developers are people, and people in an organization need leadership and care, and now it's up to you.
- Workflow and Processes (2)
How to Set Up Code Process on a Development Team
In the wild, developers each define their own process for writing, reviewing, and delivering code. If your team has a defined workflow for code, you'll see reduced friction and increased collaboration among your team members.How to Set Up Task Process on a Development Team
A good developer knows how to take a well-defined task and write the code to satisfy it. But that still requires the team to have well-defined tasks. In this episode, we'll cover how to set up a process to turn vague requirements into actionable tasks.
- Leadership and Operations (4)
How to Manage the Dev Team's Relationship With the Rest of the Organization
Even in development agencies, and especially when the dev team is just a part of a larger organization, the relationship between the dev team and the rest of the company can make or break the happiness and productivity of your devs.How to Estimate Development Work
Estimation is a farce. And it's also necessary for certain situations. How do we bridge that gap?How to Manage a Development Team's Finances
One of the first things a development manager will be asked to do is manage a team, or hire one. And both of these require the need to understand, predict, and manage the finances of a dev team. In this episode, we'll cover the primary costs for a dev team and how to make your team's finances work out given those costs.Common Mistakes We See on Development Teams
Most of this course is about what to do. But sometimes we learn the best from a description of what not to do. In this episode, we'll look at 12 common mistakes we see in development teams.
