Dedicated Software Development Teams
Today, more and more companies choose a dedicated team as a model of cooperation with their employees. But what are the reasons behind this?
According to the research, 35% of businesses outsource their IT services to let their in-house experts focus more on high-priority tasks, 24% of companies want to get a boost in productivity while 18% are searching for professional help.
Outsource to Dedicated Software Development Teams
One day, your growing business might face a need to expand your team. At this point, you get at a crossroads: you can hire in-house employees or outsource your services to an effective dedicated software development team.
By hiring a dedicated team, you can expand your team with various experts very fast:
- UX/UI Designers
- Front- and Back-end developers
- DevOps
- Project Managers
- Quality Assurance specialists
- Support experts
What is a Dedicated Development Team?
A dedicated development team is a cooperation model when you hire an outsourced development team that collaborates with you long-term. This is a very common collaboration method along with fixed-price and time & material ones.
What is so important about this cooperation model?
When you hire a dedicated dev team, you select experts that best fit your business goals. This team is similar to an in-house team but you don’t need to bother about recruiting, taxes, benefits, or other team-related issues. Their main aim is to work on high-level business issues, and the outsourcing development provider will take care of the rest.
Why Hire a Dedicated Software Development Team?
Now that you know what a dedicated team is, let’s find out whether this model fits all businesses. Here are some of the best use cases of it:
Early-stage startups
When you have just launched a startup and want to grow, you should definitely think of hiring a dedicated team. By outsourcing, you can expand your team very fast, save lots of money on a hiring process, plus get your products built quite fast. Besides, when you hire a dedicated team, you free the time of the in-house team for more crucial business tasks.
Projects with vague requirements
If you have a product that needs a discovery stage, a dedicated team can help you a lot with this. As you know, the discovery stage is a very important period for the whole development process and it can take months to test and interview employees. Having a dedicated team allows you to focus on the discovery stage while also saving your money and time.
Long-term projects
A dedicated team model best suits long-term projects with scaling potential. It also allows you to fully unveil the potential of your complex project as you have a seasoned team of experts through the whole journey of its development. You can also be assured that a dedicated team will stay with you till your project ends.
Benefits of Dedicated Teams
Many famous companies like WhatApp, Apple, Oracle, Amazon, and American Express choose a dedicated team model to help them out. So, what are the benefits of choosing it? Here are some of the most obvious ones:
Setting priorities
When you get full control over your team, you can easily change the priorities of the project so that it better fits business goals. Plus, this won’t influence the quality of work or the final delivery.
Flexible team
If your projects often change requirements, you can easily scale your team so it better fits your needs. Besides, firing your in-house employees can harm your reputation, and with a dedicated team, you won’t face such an issue
Large talent pool
When you opt for an outsourcing company, you get access to a larger talent pool of professionals. This is extremely helpful when you need some unique expertise or senior level of knowledge.
Full control
Managing a dedicated team is very similar to managing your in-house team as you get direct communication with your team without any third-party intermediaries. This will give you full control of your team and an understanding of the scope of work and daily progress.
Well-established processes
You can hire one specialist, get a full team of experts with different areas of expertise, or get some additional services.
Cost efficiency
You can significantly cut your costs on recruiting process and salary budget.
Comparing Dedicated Team Model to
Many times, the dedicated team model is confused with a fixed-price one. However, both these models suit completely different business requirements. Here are some of their main differences:
Fixed-price model
The client pays an agreed sum of money, no matter if the job is done or hours worked.
Better suits short-term projects with clearly defined requirements (for example, MVPs).
There is a high risk of overpaying as you can’t forecast the scope of work and time needed. You pay the rate stated in the contract even if the work is not delivered.
It is a better fit if there won’t be any future changes in the project.
Dedicated team model
Each of the team members has a set hourly fee. The clients pay depending on the team size.
Better suits complex long-term projects with vague or often changing requirements.
You pay only for the hours performed by each of the team members.
You get full freedom and can add changes to the project throughout the whole development process.
Another popular cooperation model is called Time&Material. Here are some of the differences between these two models:
Time&Material
The client pays for the actual time and effort that a team spends on development. It is hard to estimate the final budget.
It does not guarantee that you will work with the same team throughout the whole development process. If the team doesn’t have enough work, it can be assigned to another project.
Better suits medium- and long-term projects.
Dedicated team model
Predictable and transparent budgeting. The client pays monthly, depending on the team size.
With an exclusively dedicated team, you will work with the same team through the whole development process.
Better suits long-term projects.
How to Hire a Dedicated Software Development Team?
1
Write your goals, budget, and requirements
The first step is to organize the hiring and the whole development process. That is extremely helpful because when you know what you need to get in the end, you won’t face any difficulties with your dedicated team.
2
Choose a model of cooperation
The next move is choosing which cooperation model better suits you and your business needs. At this stage, you should consider whether you need a complete team or just several experts for certain tasks. If you have already developed a product, you should also think of a support team to maintain it.
3
Find and interview potential teams
Next, you need to start a search for a team. You can find a dedicated team yourself on social media or rating websites like Clutch, or hire a special company that offers outsourced software development services. You can also ask for references from your partners or colleagues as they may already work with a skilled dedicated team.
No matter which option you choose, you then need to carefully study the team’s experience, expertise, projects they worked on, and the results they achieved.
And once you select the best fit for you, you need to start interviewing them. During the interview, try to ask as many questions as you can to better understand their level of competency and expertise.
4
Start your dedicated software development team
When you have chosen the right team, it is time to start working on the project. The first thing that you have to keep in mind when working with a dedicated team is regular and direct communication with them. This will allow you to get better control over the whole development process. So, often get in touch with them, approve tasks, and discuss all the critical issues.
5
Set KPI
Do not forget about Key Performance Indicators or simply KPIs as they will clearly determine how well your dedicated team is working. Besides, the process of achieving business goals directly relies on these indicators. That is why you should choose the right indicators and calculate them correctly to assess the effectiveness of each team member. Conduct the KPI calculation twice a month — at the beginning and end to monitor the work effectively.
Ready to start your project?
How to Manage a Dedicated Software Development Team?
Unfortunately, hiring a dedicated team won’t guarantee success. That is why you need to know how to effectively manage them. Here are our pieces of advice on how to do it:
One software for work and communication
You need to get software that makes it easy to collaborate and organize. A project management tool like Jira or Asana will help you a lot as they allow each member of the team to see their tasks as well as get a full picture of the project and its goals. Besides, it makes work together and communication much easier no matter whether your employees work remotely or in-person.Using it, managers can easily structure, assign as well as schedule and prioritize tasks for a certain project. Plus, all the team members can take advantage of the filters to view their assignments.
Practice active communication
Each member of the team expects their leader to be genuinely interested in the team's well-being. That is why it is essential to conduct weekly one-on-one meetings, but not very frequently, so that they won’t look like micromanagement. During them, you can ask questions about the challenges or suggestions for improvement.
Clearly state your goals
It is paramount to communicate your expectations and project goals that align with your business goals. Make everything clear about the target market, the profit you expect to get, growth rates, etc. It is also important to clear out the long- and short-term goals so that your products launch timely and there will be sustainable growth over time.
Establish a clear organizational structure
Being a leader means having profound organizational skills. When implementing operational management, you always need to clarify the distribution and method of work. You should also understand each employee’s organization so that you can effectively coordinate staff through the process of agile and strategic management. For this purpose, you can use weekly meetings to set the goals that a team should adhere to.
Be aware of workloads
Do you know the most popular reason why many software development projects fail? It’s the wrong team size. When your team is too small and the workload is excessive, your developers can easily burn out. On the contrary, if you have too many employees, this would only waste your money and resources.How to find a balance? You can ask your team for honest feedback on the current state of the workload and the realisticity of the deadlines. If it is too much, you can always hire more employees or adjust the time needed for project completion.
Dedicated Software Development Team: Why Agilie is the Best Option?
Agilie is your go-to option if you are looking to hire a reliable dedicated team to outsource your software development services. And here are some of the reasons why:
Industries where we can help
Fintech
Financial platforms for optimizing risk control, unleashing the power of Big Data with ML tools and analytical implements.
Media
Media platforms for an active product demo, local and national audience reach, and specific targeting of the audience.
Marketplace & eCom
Development of safe places for selling and buying operations, high security standards, convenience of operations, and outstanding shopping experience.
Real estate
Custom real estate software to streamline your daily activities, improve your clients’ satisfaction, and level up your profits.
Transportation & Logistics
Custom software for warehousing, vehicle handling, and optimization of the supply chain.
Healthcare
HIPAA-compliant software for billing, virtual doctor’s appointments, handling of medical data, assisting patients, and sharing files.
Pharmacy
Cloud software for inventory and stock replenishment, handling of the multiple prescription flows, improving pharmaceutical products turnover ratio and revenue.
Internet of Things
Solutions to automate routine tasks, improve production rate, and better understand clients’ needs.
How we can help
By choosing Agilie, you will:
- Get access to a large tech talent pool from anywhere in the world
- Reduce time spent on the recruitment process
- Save money
- Enjoy the flexibility in terms of the team size and its members
- Get dedicated and reliable full-time engineers
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FAQ
From dedicated teams to case-by-case qualified software engineers, we deliver custom software development services for startups, medium-scale businesses, and big corporations.
1
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2
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3
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