Laravel Developers - How to Build an Effective Laravel Engineering Team

Here is a short guide on how to build an effective Laravel engineering team for your business using the best practices.

18:01 16 August 2021

Are you thinking of building an effective engineering team in PHP? Have you introspected the idea to hire developers for PHP frameworks like Laravel? Are you still struggling to find out the perfect expert Laravel developers for your business requirements? Then, we can help you. Here is a short guide on how to build an effective Laravel engineering team for your business using the best practices.

 

What is the Laravel PHP framework, and why it became so popular among web developers?

Laravel is an open-source and free PHP framework attempting to provide a more advanced alternative. Taylor Otwell created and launched it in 2011. Laravel is quick and easy to use, providing a faster-developing experience. This PHP framework is mostly based on the architectural patterns of Symfony and became popular after the release of version three that included several features. 

 

Some of the most famous websites are built on PHP. More than 6.9 million sites on the web are running on PHP. Some websites like CNBC, Tumblr, Tesla, Slack, and some Fortune 500 companies run their projects on PHP.

 

Among the various PHP frameworks available in the market, Laravel is preferred by many PHP developers because it allows web development from scratch. Some of its other benefits are:

 

1) Authorization Approach- Laravel has made implementing the authentication method a lot simpler. Almost everything is wonderfully configured. Moreover, this PHP framework provides a simple way to authorize resource logic and control access over projects.

 

2) Artisan- It is a built-in tool of Laravel which all the Laravel developers use to interact with the command line that handles and builds the project. It provides helpful commands that make the development process faster. Tasks like database migration, making the model view controller, and population of test data is a few examples of these processes. 

 

3) Database migration- Database migration with Laravel is easy. It comes with version control of the software database, therefore, Laravel developers need not recreate the database for every version.

 

Laravel has many other benefits like security, good caching performance, and the availability of object-oriented libraries that make it popular. 

 

What makes up the Laravel ecosystem? 

Laravel has much more to offer other than the framework itself. It also provides optional packages and a development environment to help with the project. Here is a quick overview of the Laravel ecosystem:

 

1. Lumen: Lumen is a micro-framework by Laravel that is stunningly fast. It is built for microservices that allow Laravel developers to effortlessly write superfast services. The foundation of Lumen is similar to Laravel and consists of similar components. 

 

Though Laravel Lumen features all the convenience and power of the main framework, it sacrifices some configuration features, like it is incompatible with cashier and scout (additional Laravel libraries). Laravel Lumen on a whole is beneficial for the development of smaller components supporting the core project.

 

2. Forge: Laravel forge is one of the tools developed to streamline server management. It provides a simple control panel to the Laravel developers allowing an easy configuration of domains and subdomains, creating multiple sites on a server, or managing SSL certificates. 

 

Using Laravel Forge, the developer can deploy unlimited PHP applications on Amazon, Vultr, Digitalocean, etc. As per the official team of Laravel Forge, they are globally managing over 265,310 applications. The monthly subscription of Laravel Forge costs ranges from $12 to $39, depending on the requirements.

 

3. Nova: Laravel Nova is an elegantly designed administration panel of Laravel that enhances the developer’s productivity. This application is highly customizable and looks impressive and trendy. It is a single-page product that provides intelligent out-of-the-box configuration options.

 

The configuration of Laravel Nova is powered by simple PHP classes, hence, it does not store the configuration settings in the database. Though the technical feature of Laravel Nova is robust, it is user-friendly and makes resource management easy. The tool can be purchased for $99 by a solo developer and for $199 for software development teams.

 

4. Vapor: Powered by AWS, Laravel Vapor is a serverless future for Laravel. It is a robust platform that allows developers to manage the complete Laravel application infrastructure. 

 

The feature of Laravel Vapor includes quick rollback, cloud storage facility to directly upload the files on S3, and an easily scalable cache system. Laravel Vapor can also keep a track of the application’s health monitoring a variety of metrics like databases, caches, and applications.

 

5. Envoyer: Laravel Envoyer is a brand-new way to deploy PHP and Laravel applications with zero downtime. PHP deployment, it provides a fully functional application to the clients. Laravel Envoyer makes sure that the clients of the software projects never hit the maintenance page, even if Laravel developers get an error when updating the composer. The price of Laravel Envoyer lies between $10-$50, depending on the number of projects you want to manage.

 

What skills should a good Laravel developer have?

Now, let us move on to find the skills that expert Laravel developers must possess. To hire Laravel developers for your team in a software development company, the candidate must have:

 

• Web Development Skills: An expert Laravel developer must have experience in a lot of programming languages. They must have solid know-how in languages like CSS, jQuery, NodeJS HTML, and JavaScript to pull off the project.
  
  
• Database Management Skills: This one is one of the most expected skills from a Laravel developer. The programmers must have a good hold on relational database queries and management systems like Microsoft SQL, MySQL, and Oracle 12c.
  
  
• Understanding OOP and MVC: It is a fact that Laravel is on MVC architecture, making the start of the project easier for a PHP developer. Also, all frameworks and techniques of Laravel are object-oriented. So the programmers must be aware of classes, objects, methods, traits, etc. 
  
  
• Knowledge of Project Management Frameworks: Having an understanding of project management frameworks is a lot beneficial for programmers. It leads to successful outputs by focusing on all the necessary processes, tools, and tasks to build the project from the beginning. Some of these frameworks are Agile and Waterfall. This skill is necessary if the Laravel developer will be working with other team members.
  
  
• Soft Skills: Lastly, the Laravel developer must also know how to work in a group, provide new ideas and willingly listen to other developers’ ideas. The developer must be able to accept criticism and should attempt to do things better. He/she must also have great communication skills and should be self-reliant.

 

How should an effective Laravel engineering team be structured?

• Selecting Your Team: To build an effective Laravel engineering team, you must structure them properly. Selecting a Laravel web developer based on their talent, skills, and abilities is necessary, but they should not have to be an expert to be a member of any team. What matters is that Laravel developers should be most qualified for your specific Laravel project. Having a developers team with different sets of skills and experience is better than having all the developers with the same skill sets. Also, the final call should be taken considering the candidates who can get along with each other and work together as a team. 
  
  
• Setting Clear Goals: Set clear goals for your experts’ developer team as a whole and a member within the team. The goals must be explicit and mutually attainable by all the candidates of the Laravel developers team.  It should be in the teams' interest, and the goals must be designed accordingly. Try building an expert developer team for your software company that works with a common aim and everyone working towards the final goal of the business.
  
  
• Achievable Early Goals: Set small and easily attainable goals while your Laravel developers team is still settling down in the company. It will help in building team spirit and enthusiasm. Make goals that boost the morale of the Laravel developer, and later you can set challenging goals. It will persist long in the future as things get difficult. 
  
  
• Communication: Communication plays an important role in any software development business. You or the project managers should make sure that everyone in your Laravel developers team is aware of what is happening. Knowing their goals and the objective will help them connect with the developers' team better. Also, any delay or problem in one area should be communicated to all the people in the developers' team who might get affected by it. 

 

Though these guidelines do not guarantee a successful and fully functional Laravel developers team, it may take you a long way to creating the perfect one for your business. On the contrary, if you do not follow them, the chances of failure are more.

 

Where to find the best Laravel developers?

If you are on the way to hire Laravel developers, you must know the best ways to search for such talent. Let us have a look at these:

 

• Contact recruitment agencies or hire Contractors: This is an instant solution to hire a Laravel developer for your team. Contact any partner recruitment agency or jobs consultants and provide them with the basic details like how much experience should the Laravel developers have, how many experts do you want to hire, what are the project requirements and your budget. The consultants will take care of all the things that lie in the between until the selected Laravel developer joins your experts' team. You must also note that this process to hire a Laravel developer is hefty on your pocket as they work on a partnership basis. Your development company will have to give up to 25% of the new Laravel developers' yearly salary to the recruiting agency.
  
  
• Hire the Candidate yourself: This can be done in 2 ways:
  
  
1. Look for talent in the market: Also known as the outbound method, this talent recruiting method involves sharing knowledge of your software business to people by attending various conferences, summits, workshops, and seminars. It also allows you to create a larger network and showcase your company on a huge platform.
   
   
2. Publishing ads to hire Laravel developers: This method is also known as an inbound method that involves sharing job information on a potential talent network about candidates you want to hire. The Laravel experts will reach you to give an interview. You can either post about this job opening in the Laravel Development section on various Jobs' portals like monster.com, indeed.com, and LinkedIn. Or you can post it on the career page of your own software business. Lastly, you can post it on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to hire Laravel developers for your software team.

 

3. Hire a Freelance Laravel developer: If you do not want to hire a Laravel developer permanently, you can hire a freelance Laravel developer by putting project requirements on a freelance company website like UpWork, Freelance, Glassdoor, Toptal, etc. When you hire a freelance developer, it solves a lot of problems of your project like the tight budget, schedule, or once in a while requirement. You can also hire a developer having many years of experience from this pool of talent networks.

 

How to verify the skills of Laravel developers before hiring?

 

Here are the three most popular testing methods that you can use to verify the skills of a Laravel developer:

 

• Prescreening: HR managers of your software company can take care of the pre-screening process where they can visit several public profiles of expert Laravel developers on websites like Linkedin, StackOverflow, and Github to understand the Laravel developers' background, skills, talent, and experience.
  
  
• Automated Testing: This is one of the simplest ways to screen and hire Laravel developers or PHP developers. Online platforms like Tests4Geeks, Codility, and TestDome offer a variety of software tests to choose from. The Laravel developers will have to take the test and a result will be made available to you. It will help you evaluate the skills of Laravel developers easily.
  
  
• Live Coding: This method helped you in evaluating several components like the ability of Laravel developers to collaborate and communicate with the people in your existing developers' team, their experience, and problem-solving method. Adding a Laravel developer or a PHP developer to the hiring team who has a decent amount of knowledge is an ideal way to evaluate the candidate’s work.

 

In which projects Laravel works best?

 

Not every framework is perfect for every scenario. Hence, it is necessary to understand where Laravel will work best for your web development project. 

 

• You must understand the complexity of your clients' web development projects. If it is way too complex, you are on a tight budget, and the process of the project should start from scratch, then using Laravel is the best thing. 
  
  
• If the clients do not need a back end for the website to make any changes, then Laravel is perfect for development. If they want to have a back end, then the Laravel developer will have to create a back end increasing the teams' efforts. The Laravel developers will also have to work on the user experience. In such cases, the company or Laravel developer should consider using CMS like WordPress or Joomla.
  
  
• The Laravel developer must evaluate and understand any plugin required for developing a functionality. CMS like WordPress and Joomla might not have the plugin that fits the clients' requirements perfectly. In such a case, Laravel seems to be one of the perfect web solutions that provide Laravel developers with an option to build everything with ease.

 

Summary

After reading this article, you must have surely gained an idea of how to hire Laravel developers based on their experience, your company culture, and the customers' requirements from your business. You can hire Laravel developers full-time or hire expert freelance developers as per your budget. The end goal of this Laravel developer hiring process should be to satisfy your needs, provide a solution to customers’ problems and hire an expert who understands your company culture.