October 10, 2024

Mastering the Dedicated Development Team Model [2024]

Elena Pashkovskaya

Technical copywriter

Outsourcing

How to Hire a Dedicated Development Team [Complete Guide]

Elena Pashkovskaya

Technical copywriter

Outsourcing

How to Hire a Dedicated Development Team [Complete Guide]

With the projected revenue from IT services reaching $1,364.00 bn by the end of 2024, there is a growing demand for software development professionals. Globalization has allowed businesses to search for experts anywhere in the world. Today, we will find out how to find and hire development teams that will be suitable for your project.

Key Takeaways

  • A dedicated development team is a business model when a group of external specialists are assigned to work for one client, providing continuous project support.
  • The dedicated team model works best for projects requiring sustained expertise, long-term commitment, and an in-depth understanding of the client’s business. It fits startups, medium and large companies alike.
  • Among the dedicated team benefits are faster time-to-market, easy scalability, transparent communication, cost-effectiveness, and budget predictability.
  • The challenge is finding a reliable provider and setting effective team management processes, which eventually results in time and budget losses.
  • The costs of hiring a software development team vary based on team size, expertise, location, and skill set. Eastern Europe is among the best destinations, providing optimal price/quality balance.
  • To hire a reliable dedicated software team, thoroughly research potential providers and assess their expertise and communication skills. Check references, and consider a pilot project like MVP development or initially small team involvement with its further scaling.

What Is a Dedicated Development Team

A dedicated software development team is a software development approach or business model when one team is assigned to a particular project for an extended period without sharing with other clients, aiming to deliver quality results within the time frame.

Dedicated team features

  • Long-term collaboration,
  • thorough selection of participants,
  • close cooperation with an in-house team,
  • work aimed exclusively at the project.

Sometimes, a dedicated IT team is taken as outsourcing, but these approaches are different. A dedicated development team becomes an extension of the company, staying in constant close communication and collaboration with both the vendor company and the client specialists, delivering quality results.

When to Hire a Dedicated Team?

Hiring a dedicated development team is suitable for both enterprise companies and startups. Projects can also vary from mobile applications and custom web development to building cloud-based platforms.

Dedicated teams are best when:

  1. You have a growing startup with limited in-house resources. Hiring dedicated developers will help in-house teams focus on more business-oriented tasks.
  2. Large-scale or long-term project. With a task that requires a lot of time and effort and has the potential for future expansion, you may need additional specialists.
  3. Internal assets are limited. Your business has multiple ongoing projects, while your in-house team's capacity is not enough to tackle the workload.
  4. There is a need for narrow expertise. Your project is a complex app, encompasses AI solutions, or needs some custom software development services, but the talents are not available in your area.
  5. You have a project with considerable variance. Dedicated teams can deal with unclear scope and requirements, shape the development process, discover and test ideas, and handle variances for development.

Dedicated Team Benefits

Hiring a dedicated team has numerous benefits for various project types and business needs.

Benefits of a dedicated team include expertise and specialization, flexibility, cost and time efficiency, enhanced collaboration, and competitive advantage.

Cost-effectiveness

It saves on recruitment, training, infrastructure, and operational costs compared to an in-house team.

Flexibility

Easy scaling of the team size up or down as the project needs to evolve without extensive recruitment processes. You can modify the team's size and composition, adjust the timeline and scope of work to fit your time and budget.

Better collaboration

Continuous communication and close collaboration ensure efficient problem-solving and faster issue resolution. Dedicated software engineers have the best conditions for cooperation through having constant feedback from the project managers and stakeholders.

Budget predictability

Choose fixed-cost or time-based contracts to fit your budget and project scope. An explicit cost structure simplifies budgeting and avoids hidden expenses.

Related expertise

The team stays updated on the latest technologies and tools, bringing innovative approaches to your development. You can hire a development team with experience on similar projects without any limitations by the region.

Faster time-to-market

Hiring a dedicated team leads to quicker development cycles and increases launch speeds. All development resources are available from the beginning. You can quickly assemble the right team, including developers, QA, designers, etc., compared to searching for talents in-house. Moreover, the resources are available without a painful recruitment process, saving time and allowing you to start the development process faster.

Eventually, the team works solely on your project, leading to in-depth understanding and optimized solutions.

Challenges

A dedicated software development team's challenges include different time zones, cultural differences, security issues, dependency risk, and difficulty choosing a provider.

Partnering with dedicated teams has its pitfalls, primarily because they are third-party and located offshore. Consider the following: 

Different time zones

Significant time differences can slow development through communication delays and slow response times. Moreover, it hampers meeting scheduling and obstructs swift communication in case of emergency.

Not a one-fit-all solution

Sometimes dedicated teams do not suit the project requirements, e.g, when you have a small, short, well-defined project. Hiring the whole team might be excessive; you can hire freelance developers. It does not apply when your project lacks precise requirements or undergoes frequent changes that make managing a dedicated team challenging. 

Difficulties in choosing the right service provider

When choosing a dedicated development team, remember you rely significantly on their performance, availability, and external factors beyond your control. Partnering with an unreliable team can drain your budget and time. To minimize these risks, select your partner meticulously. Before trusting them with your long-term vision, consider starting with a smaller project or Minimal Viable Product (MVP). This pilot project allows you to assess their technical capabilities, communication style, and overall suitability for your needs.

Knowledge sharing/security

Here's a chance the dedicated team might leverage the knowledge gained to create similar products or services. Another issue might be the risk of disruption of project continuity: when key members leave the team, they may take crucial knowledge with them.

Cultural differences 

Manifesting in various ways, they impact communication, reporting, work styles, corporate values, and project expectations. 

Despite all these points of consideration, no hurdles cannot be overcome. Awareness of all these challenges can help to comprehensively choose the right dedicated development teams. 

Roles in a Dedicated Software Team

Dedicated team structure: software development team consisting of project manager, business analyst, designers, developers, and QA.

Dedicated software development teams include a mix of expertise to function smoothly and deliver successful projects. Here are some key roles you'll typically find in such teams:

  • Project manager: A  specialist responsible for project planning, team management, development process improvement, risk and budget management.
  • Developers: The ones who are responsible for writing code, implementing features, and fixing bugs. Professionals with solid programming skills and knowledge of specific technologies relevant to the project.
  • UI/UX designer: A builder of the user interface and user experience, focusing on usability, accessibility, and aesthetics. They understand how to design web store interfaces that are both functional and enjoyable to use.
  • QA engineer: A dedicated software team member who tests the software to identify and report bugs, ensuring it meets quality standards.
  • DevOps engineer: An expert in bridging the gap between development and operations, automating processes, with development and infrastructure management skills. They ensure smooth deployment and maintenance of the software.
  • Product manager: A specialist with a broad focus on market analysis, competitive research, and go-to-market strategy.
  • Business analyst: An expert in gathering and analyzing requirements with solid communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills. They translate the requirements into technical specifications and ensure everyone understands the needs of the software.
  • Technical lead: A person who provides technical guidance, mentors developers, and helps manage the team's workload.
  • Technical architect: A creator of the overall software architecture, ensuring technical feasibility, scalability, and maintainability. The ones who have deep technical expertise and understand the big picture of the system.

These are just the most common roles in a team, many of them are optional. Your final dedicated team's structure will depend on the type of your project.

How Dedicated Teams Differ From Other Models

A dedicated software development team is suitable for medium—and large-scale projects and has no maintenance costs, but may have cultural differences and be located in a time zone different from the client's.

When you need to hire a development team, it is worth considering various staffing models. Let’s examine the four options, each suitable for the project's needs.

Dedicated development team vs in-house team

In-house teams are common for large-scale projects. Still, in-house teams require more initial investment,maintenance costs, and limit the talent pool — you're restricted to the resources available locally.

Quite the reverse, a dedicated team requires no training, or equipping expenditure and is easily flexible and scalable. The demand for developers, cybersecurity experts, software architecture, AI, and DevOps professionals is surging, creating fierce competition for top talent in these cutting-edge fields. A dedicated development team model allows one to resort to a broader pool of skills and expertise unavailable locally.

Dedicated development team vs fixed price model

The main advantage of the fixed price model is that all scope and budget are known before the project's beginning — and remain unchanged. Unfortunately, the challenges arise from the model's pros: if user expectations or market shifts, initiating changes to the project will be complex. These changes are associated with higher costs and give no flexibility. For a fixed-price model, the resources are planned, and extending the ones involved in your project may be challenging. They might already be assigned to the next client, meaning they won't be available for you.

The fixed price model is suitable for short projects with clearly defined budgets and scopes of work.

With dedicated software development professionals, you will not meet this challenge.

Dedicated development team vs time & material model

The main idea of the time and material method is paying for the time and effort spent. The approach is suitable for web and mobile development and usually includes hourly payments, making it flexible and adaptable. 

While going with projects of limited budgets and offering the possibility to work with selected developers, the method lacks control over the team and development process and can lead to cost overruns. It is better to hire a dedicated development team if you have a long-term project and appreciate direct control and collaboration.

Dedicated development team vs outsourcing

The key difference between the methods lies in the range of services provided: a dedicated team encompasses all stages of the development process and works closely with the client, almost as an in-house team.

In contrast to a software development dedicated team, outsourcing provides less control over specialists and less flexibility while changing project details. Moreover, finding a reliable outsourcing partner with high-quality standards can be challenging. Deloitte survey found that 50% cite talent acquisition as the critical roadblock to their strategic vision.

Costs of Hiring a Software Development Team

By understanding the factors influencing cost and being strategic in your selection, you can find the dedicated software development team that fits your budget and project needs. The costs of hiring a team depend on the following:

Developers' location: the rates can vary depending on the region of service vendor origin. Developers in countries with higher living costs generally charge more;

Team size: bigger teams cost more but optimize communication and efficiency for complex projects. Smaller teams are cheaper but might lack specific expertise;

Expertise level: senior specialists with expert domain experience can significantly impact project success but will likely command a higher cost;

Scope and duration of the project: longer projects might involve discounts or fixed-cost solutions;

Additional services: several services beyond core development, such as project management and ongoing support, can influence the cost of dedicated software developers.

You can analyze specialized B2B agencies that connect businesses with software developers to find the best dedicated development team for hire. They will also help to figure out the cost of such a team. Another way is to use unique outsourcing calculators available online or go directly to the services provider for a consultation. You can also get a free consultation from the service provider. NEKLO offers to discuss your project for free and delivers non-binding estimates. 

Dedicated Team: Where to Build One?

There are three main regions for which dedicated development teams are needed: Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southern Asia, and Asia-Pacific. The average hourly rate and level of proficiency may vary.

Sometimes, building an in-house development team is a costly option. With a global market's rapid development, take the opportunity to hire dedicated software development teams from abroad. Where to look for the professionals?

Eastern Europe 

Countries: Poland, Ukraine, Romania

Average hourly rate: $30-$80

The region provides the experts with high-quality competencies and high English proficiency. Close cultural values with Western countries make this choice preferable to other options. Nevertheless, Eastern European teams may seem expensive compared to those in the Asia-Pacific region.

Latin America

Countries: Argentina, Brazil

Average hourly rate: $40-$80

This region's professionals boast good knowledge of English and a wide range of services available. Despite these advantages, the teams from this region are still more expensive than the workforce from Southern Asia and Asia-Pacific regions, with some clients reporting the employees' lack of discipline and punctuality.

Southern Asia and Asia-Pacific

Countries: India, Vietnam, Philippines

Average hourly rate: $20-$40

There is a large number of specialists from this part of the world who work at lower rates compared to the abovementioned solutions. The problems may arise from substantial cultural differences, hampering communication.

The best strategy for hiring dedicated software engineers is to balance cost, benefits, and disadvantages with particular attention to the level of expertise and relevant experience.

How to Choose Your Dedicated Development Team?

When you need a skilled team tailored to your business needs in no time, the variety of options available on the market can appear staggering. Currently, there are 64 offers for outsourcing and staff augmentation at Clutch, while Techreviewer boasts 326 firms found on the same request. Choosing the right one can be challenging!

Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development According to CEOs: easier scaling, time and cost-efficiency, increased productivity, access to advanced technologies.

Here’s a quick guide on how to hire dedicated developers wisely.

  1. Define the scope of work and list project requirements: determine what product you want to create, the technology stack required, budget, deadlines, etc.;
  2. Conduct market research: search for suitable vendors using specialized platforms, customer reviews, and general company info. Take a look at their portfolio;
  3. Set the selection criteria: what professionals you are looking for, how many members do you need in the team, what are their qualifications and expertise level, etc.;
  4. Interview candidates via phone call technical interviews: conduct hard and soft skills checks;
  5. Launch your team: establish communication and reporting processes, organize an effective workflow;
  6. Prepare a list of necessary documents: project requirements, development methodology, non-disclosure agreement, team roles and responsibilities, etc. The documents act as roadmaps and guides, preventing confusion and misalignment and setting clear expectations for everyone involved.

Client and Contractor Responsibilities

With the two parties involved in the dedicated software development process, it is necessary to know precisely about the split of responsibilities between the client and the contractor. Usually, they are divided in such a way:

The Client:

  • Provides project scope
  • Measures team effectiveness
  • Includes guidance on initiatives and high-level workstreams
  • Manages communication
  • Introduces company culture
  • Provides necessary access to environments

The Contractor:

  • Carries out workforce hiring
  • Conducts team building
  • Manages the office
  • Responsible for employee payroll and benefits
  • Provides IT infrastructure
  • Does necessary paperwork

Final thoughts: what to ask and pay attention to when hiring a development team? A good professional is responsible, skilled, self-motivated, to-the-point communication, committed to the goal, and problem solver.

By understanding these key factors and preparing thoroughly, you can decide to hire a dedicated development team and build a successful collaborative partnership to achieve your project goals.

Why is NEKLO The Right Choice?

We want to introduce you to our dedicated software development team building process, our principles, and the technologies we use to provide high-quality services.

How we build the team

Building a successful, dedicated development team requires careful planning and consideration. The process consists of the following steps:

Collecting requirements: the first step of hiring dedicated developers is gathering and analyzing your requirements, which allows us to plan the team's structure with precise tech expertise.

Assembling team: we conduct interviews and skills assessments, as well as check soft skills, such as communication, cooperation, and problem-solving abilities.

Ensuring data security: we provide your data security by legally binding documentation, such as a Non-disclosure agreement, Security policy, and Master Services Agreement.

Coordinating with the client: with our client-centric approach that considers their specific needs and objectives, we continue tailoring the team structure, skills, and processes to the project requirements till the contractor approves the team's composition and members.

Providing support: our dedicated team offers comprehensive support of the codebase and infrastructure developed, meaning you will be supported if some issues arise.

With NEKLO, you can be sure your project will be delivered in due time and form. We deliver well-versed teams to tackle your project and achieve success.

Principles

NEKLO's dedicated team building ensures predictable and transparent pricing, a proactive approach, clear communication, stable teams, PM expertise, and determined security.

In our work, we stick to the principles that set a benchmark for all our activities to fulfill your request to hire dedicated development teams. They are:

  • Predictable and transparent pricing
  • Proactive problem-solving
  • Determined security and confidentiality
  • Clear communication
  • Stable teams
  • PM experience

Being guided by these principles, we are building transparent communication and efficient workflows, connecting clients with thoroughly selected IT experts, and going over expectations.

Onboarding time

How long does it take to hire a dedicated team? The average delivery time to build a dedicated software development team is 2-4 weeks. NEKLO can reduce this time to 1 week in case of urgent need.

Every vendor needs time to check out the client's requirements for the team and select the best experts to make a precise fit for the project ahead.

Tech stack

Technologies & frameworks our dedicated teams are skilled in:

Programming languages: Java, PHP, Swift, Objective C, Kotlin, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, etc.

Technologies: SQL, Node.js, GraphQL, Flutter, Angular, Elastic Search, Microservice, AWS, HTML, CSS, etc.

Domains: E-commerce, Healthcare, FinTech & Banking, Logistics, Education, Real Estate, Manufacturing, Travel & Hospitality.

Platforms:

E-commerce: Magento (Adobe Commerce), Shopify

Mobile: iOS, Android, cross-platform, PWA, Wearable App development

Dedicated Team Use Case Example

NEKLO is proud to showcase the Salesmsg project delivered by a dedicated software development team of 35 experts. The client, a US-based private company, wanted a fully functional business messaging platform. The goal was to redesign the existing solution, change servers, and deliver comprehensive testing and third-party integrations.

NEKLO dedicated development team delivered business messaging platform.

Our dedicated software development team, consisting of 35 specialists, provided a secure, large-scale tool for businesses to engage with customers via two-way texting and multimedia messaging. The team also delivered:

  • Database optimization.
  • Embodied performance analytics and geo-targeting.
  • Introduced ISO/IEC 27001 certification and STIR/SHAKEN compliance.

How do we handle differences in time zones? First of all, we figure out how often the client wants to communicate with the team: daily calls, weekly meetings, and the number of discussions per week. Then, we adjust working schedules so that part of our team members' office time coincides with the office time of our client, allowing effective and convenient communication. It is a pleasure waking up knowing that part of the work you were discussing in the evening is done by the morning by your offshore team.

FAQ

Do I have a choice about who is on the team?

Sure! You can interview the candidates after NEKLO selects them. If you want to hire dedicated developers, the final word is yours. There is also an option to run technical interviews if necessary.

Is it possible to organize effective communication if the client and a team are in different time zones? How do NEKLO handle it?

It is possible to establish effective communication between the client and the team even with the substantial time difference. After discussing preferred communication styles, frequency, and tools, we set individual working schedules and the team's preferred working hours under your needs and requirements.

What is the optimal size of a development team?

The optimal size of the team will entirely depend on your project's business requirements and scope. The dedicated team's average size ranges between 3 and 15 people.

Conclusion

Dedicated software teams can become valuable to your business with their high-level proficiency, flexibility and scalability, and faster time-to-market.

Consider hiring the NEKLO development team to gain the best results for your project. You can schedule a free consultation with our experts if you have any considerations. They will analyze your case and give the best possible solutions for your business.