Today’s tech market is hugely affected by a global talent shortage, which means recruiting talented, experienced developers for your project can be extremely challenging, not to mention costly. Even if you do happen to have the right talent in-house, it can be difficult to ensure they remain focused on one project at a time. The fact is that hiring qualified developers with the required skills for your project is almost impossible without compromising on some aspect, or exceeding your budget.
As a result, many businesses are exploring alternatives to save costs yet still meet their business objectives. Hiring a dedicated software development team can give you access to all the specific skills you require and therefore provide a much-needed boost to your in-house developer or IT team. Moreover, it can help you reach your targets without delay.
What is a Software Development Team?
A software development team is a partnership model used to achieve remote collaboration between a team of developers and a client. When you hire a software development team, you’re gaining command of a fully-fledged, well-equipped and highly-qualified team. A software development team typically comprises a range of IT specialists. The exact skill sets you need will depend on your particular development project but may include the following:
- Front-end developers – Creating the customer-facing side of your product by implementing the design of the UX/UI designer and ensuring users can appropriately interact with the platform.
- Back-end developers – Ensuring the code runs smoothly behind the scenes by creating and maintaining the technology necessary for the user-facing application to exist on the server side.
- UX/UI designers – Ensuring your product is user-friendly by collecting, researching and evaluating technical requirements and creating a visual design that appropriately represents all those requirements.
- Product manager– Focusing on product development by defining the needs of your target audience and your company’s business objectives for the product, as well as the implementation and launch features.
- Project manager – Coordinating, managing and overseeing your project, ensuring your project is delivered on time and on budget and communicating with the client and managing expectations.
- Business analyst – Investigating the market environment and identifying opportunities for future solutions as well as creating textual requirements, logic and basic user experience, which is further refined by the designers.
- QA engineers – Improving the process and eliminating product defects by checking the performance of the application and suggesting workflow improvement on code, business logic, or UI design.
What is Meant By a Dedicated Team Model?
A dedicated team model is a team that works remotely on a project to help improve business processes, deliver additional or advanced skill sets and reduce time to market. For many other outsourcing models, the team will be an extension of your team. In this model, on the other hand, the team has its own framework and management systems and is far less dependent on you. Before we look at the dedicated team model, let’s look at the two main alternatives:
- Fixed-price model – With a fixed price, or fixed budget, contract, the payment is irrespective of resources or time. Instead, the project is delivered at a fixed price. It works if there are very clear requirements but, as there is very little control over the development process, it can complicate risk management.
- Time and material model – Instead of paying for an agreed scope and price, this model is based on the amount of time and resources used. It’s a flexible approach, however, it’s not always possible to estimate the amount of time needed and assess the project budget. Delivery times are uncertain and there is no guarantee that you’ll work with the same team throughout the project. If there aren’t enough tasks, some specialists may be appointed to other projects.
How Does a Dedicated Software Development Team Work?
When you hire a dedicated development team, you’ll first need to outline your goals, timeline and scope for the project in question. It helps if you can specify the skills that the dedicated team members need to have and how many developers you think you’ll need to work on your project. The software development company will then pull a team together on your behalf. You then have a choice of whether to onboard the development team directly or to conduct interviews to get a better understanding of their abilities. Once your team is together, the service provider will compile a pricing system, which includes the salaries as well as their fee for the hiring period.
- Outline your business model – Make sure your new team and tech partner understand your business and are invested in what you do.
- Set realistic expectations – State all functional and performance requirements and ensure your team has a clear vision for your project.
- Outline risks – Your development team needs to be aware of the risks you may face so they can come up with problem-solving strategies.
- Confirm communication channels –If you’re going to manage a project with an outsourced team, you need to make sure that communication and management is clearly defined. Schedule meetings in advance to ensure everyone is on the same page throughout the project.
- Confirm project methodology – Ensure there is common ground between your in-house team and developers, arrange combined training where relevant and plan weekly meetings and stand-ups.
Why Outsource Your Project to a Dedicated Development Team?
While you might be able to see the advantages of a dedicated software development team, you may wonder whether outsourcing is really the right choice for you. To help know whether a dedicated team is the answer, consider the following:
- Experience – Ask yourself whether your employees have the required experience and expertise for your project.
- Project Size – Consider whether you have the resources you need to handle the project in question.
- Project length – Think about what other projects might occur over the project duration and whether you’ll be able to work on them simultaneously.
- Flexibility – Consider your ability to adapt and change to meet new requirements and whether your internal resource is too stretched to be agile enough.
- Control – If you are going to outsource, think about how much control you want and whether you want the team to integrate with your internal staff.
- Focus – Ask yourself whether your internal team will be able to focus uniquely on your project and whether that is the best use of their time.
- Costs – Do your maths and work out what it would cost to employ additional staff; a dedicated team can eliminate management and HR expenses and reduce your overheads.
How to Choose a Dedicated Software Development Team
When it comes to hiring a dedicated software development team, you should be able to expect a similar level of professionalism and capability with your external team as with your internal team. Your development team should take the estimation process seriously, be competent, communicate clearly, value business outcomes over writing features and have integrity at all times. To help you choose the right time, you’ll want to look at the following:
- Research – By doing a background check, you can find information on past projects, pricing models and customer profiles and gain a clear understanding of the team’s level of technical skill.
- Portfolio – By taking a look at the company’s portfolio and reviewing examples of previous projects, you can get a good feel for what the team will be capable of delivering.
- References – Feedback is a great indicator of quality; by reaching out to previous clients you can find out if they were satisfied with the specialists, communication, delivery and product development.
- Rates – By finding out about rates and the billing process, you’ll be better placed to budget. However, remember that you shouldn’t compromise on quality or reliability for a low-cost solution.
- Documentation – By identifying and reviewing documentation, you can gain a better understanding of how the team will manage project management, bug tracking, code review, source code management and more.
- Tech stack – By finding out what technologies the team are able to use, you can ensure that they will be able to deliver the solution you need.
- Security protocols – Security is a crucial factor to consider. By discussing the practices they use to avoid security vulnerabilities in software, you can avoid issues later on.
How Can a Dedicated Software Development Team Help Your Business?
You shouldn’t have to let business growth be hampered by a shortage of software developers. Instead, by hiring a dedicated software development team, you can gain an invaluable extension to your existing team, either on a short or long-term basis, or project by project. By finding an experienced team that is committed to keeping up with new trends and following best practices, you can improve workflows, reduce costs, mitigate risk and develop products capable of driving long-term profit.
Further, we provide best in class IT Staff augmentation services. Hire one or more dedicated software developers to bridge the gap of resource deficiency to manage your project tasks as per the changing business demands.
