Major companies in the US (Boston, New York, Silicon Valley, and Western Europe) can’t get enough talented IT people to fill up their openings. Over the last 5 years, developers’ salaries have continued to go up and this is happening because the number of resourceful people is going down.

Outsourcing has become a ‘new normal’ than it was ever before. Pre-Covid, companies used to prefer in-house dedicated teams for outsourcing their work but now they are equally okay with having offshore, freelance, and remote dedicated development teams.

One obvious reason is you cut short on your valuable time as there is no need for long interviews for software engineers, technical support, and QA as a general rule of thumb, rather you just evaluate a software development vendor.

In this blog post, we will explain how to hire a dedicated development team and how such a team works. Also, we’ll be sharing why dedicated development is the ultimate best solution especially if you have a long-term project in hand.

What is a dedicated development team model in software development?

A dedicated development team model is the one where a sole team is working on a client’s project full-time and the client is given direct access to each dedicated software developer.

A client may find a dedicated development team model the most expensive type of contract but still, it’s a cost-effective solution if we compare it with hiring local teams from the US and Europe.

When you should choose a dedicated team model?

A long-term collaboration project with complex features for development. If a client has an intention for taking control over the development team and has plans for business expansion.

Choose a dedicated team when you want:

• Quick scaling of your project. Speed up the development to meet time deadlines.
• Don’t want to distract your in-house team. ‘Time-to-market’ a product is easy.
• A sought-after expertise.
• More time to focus on vital business activities
• Complex project handling in a professional manner.

Dedicated development team structure

Project manager – acts as a bridge between the client and the development team.

Business Analyst – analyze business requirements, do his market research, look into competitors, builds a value proposition and lists down the technical requirements for end-product/software.

Team Lead – responsible for keeping the team on track, ensures technical realization of the product/software.

UX designer – prepares a design/ layout with usability in mind.

Front-end and back-end developers – front-end developer prepares the front skin of the software whereas the backend developer is responsible for building software structure.

Full-stack developer – works on the front-end and back-end of the application.

QA – assures software runs smoothly without any bugs or errors.

A step-by-step guide on hiring a dedicated development team

Step 1: Use software service aggregators like Clutch, Upwork, GoodFirms

You may not know where to outsource development, in such a case go to software service aggregators like Clutch, UpWork, GoodFirms, Manifest, and more. Typically when you search for a dedicated team on Google, these aggregators appear with their results.

Few important things that you can check right away are:

-Website – UX and services (a broken or slow speed website leaves a bad impression)

-Company size (either a small, mid-size or enterprise-level company, will help you in budgeting)

-Past projects (type of work the company had done in the past)

-Look into the numbers of years of experience (read about section)

Step 2: Read client reviews

Clutch, UpWork and Good Firms have client reviews section. Professional companies are very much concerned about getting positive reviews from their clients.

If you are reading positive reviews from some company’s profile on Clutch, this is one go-to sign that you can get the services from that company.

Step 3: Look into the company’s portfolio

Thoroughly check the types of services/products they have worked on, also the industries. This would give you an idea if they can work on your niche project.

You can hardly rely on some company that didn’t work on your niche project.

Step 4: Team members, go through their skillset

Luckily, we are living in a social media world where you can check almost anyone on their social profiles. LinkedIn is one such good source. You put the full name and designation, and you will get the required information.

See if you are provided with the right information about the resource they are putting in the dedicated team. Tally provided resumes with their Linkedin profiles and see if there are any red flags.

Step 5: Conduct interviews, list of general interview questions

Till this step, you are quite aware of the company and you can approach now with your set of interview questions. You can add/edit more hard questions in order to better assess.

Step 6: Settle cost – an overview of dedicated team costing in the world

It’s important. Ask for the company’s rate for providing a dedicated team and ask who would be included like front-end developer, backend developer, UX designer, QA engineers, etc.

We recommend get a quote from various companies and see from where you are getting value for your money.

Step 7: Ask for project management tools for transparency (Trello, Jira)

When you are paying high for a dedicated team, we recommend paying attention to transparency. You can either manage yourself, seek weekly/ monthly updates, or hire a project manager.

You can use any one of these two tools for project transparency.

Jira – a tool that helps in managing projects, track bugs, and measure efficiency. Intended for developers and agile projects. It’s available as a web and desktop app. You can change the functional appearance of the service you want.

Trello – an online project management tool. Popular amongst small companies and startups. It has kanban boards and greatly helps in aligning work tasks.

Step 8: Sign NDA agreement before asking for services

Usually, the last step in onboarding is signing a contract. A valid NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) should have full comprehension of services, price, payment, delivery procedure and the team who is going to handle the project.

We do admit that the development process is uncertain and most of the time there are unforeseen situations that can force the service provider to extend the given time frame. However, don’t worry, the contract can be renewed at any time.

Step 9: Discovery workshop

It’s an initial planning phase of a digital project/product where a full scope is defined along with the expectations and to-the-point user story.

Why you should conduct a discovery workshop?

How to conduct a discovery workshop?

There could be various models/methods you can use.

Method 1 – mapping on successful product

Pack of index cards is used in 4 different colors to map them as rules. A summary of acceptance and rejection is made where all team agrees to examples (successful products) of acceptance criteria.

Method 2 – OOPSI mapping

Outcomes, outputs, processes, scenarios, inputs. Index cards in different colors are used for building relationships between outputs and use cases.

Method 3 – Feature mapping

Again here you use the index cards but with a different approach. The team picks up the story from the backlog you prepared, identifies the active actors, breaks the story into tasks and map those workable tasks in specific examples.

Step 10: Provide product requirement (PRD) and functional specifications documents

Don’t confuse this step with NDA signing. The product requirement or functional specification documents are the ones better to be prepared after a thorough workshop. This gives a safe passage to development. Also, brings certainty about how much time and money you possibly have to spend.

What is a functional specification document?

A formal document that lists down the product’s intended behavior with respect to user interactions in detail and it’s meant for software developers to seek guidance while working on the product/ service.

• Following should be part of the functional specification document:
• Project scope (features/tasks, deliverables, costs, deadlines)
• Risks /considerations (which could affect the functional product design)
• Product overview (how an app will solve a specific problem)
• Use cases (in context of user action)
• Requirements (core features of the product)
• Configuration (what steps will be taken for product configuration such as user account setup)
• Non-functional requirements (features that are not core)
• Error reporting (how a product will handle exceptions/errors)

Functional specifications formats

• Business requirements document (BRD)
• System requirements specifications
• Functional requirements document (FRD)

Confused? How to write a System Requirement Specification (SRS)? Reach our Business team, we can help you.

Final verdict

Many software development vendors can offer you a dedicated development team from their technical staff. There is no need to go through a rigorous process of recruitment. If you hire a dedicated team, you stay on a low budget keeping office rent, taxes, software, and hardware costs in mind.

Phaedra Solutions is a software development company offering a dedicated development team model for the last 8 years for companies of different verticals and sizes.

Why consider Phaedra for hiring a dedicated team?

• Strong technical expertise across 6 industries.
• On-demand team scaling.
• Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) on request.
• Direct access to developers.
• No need to conduct lengthy interviews or bear training expenses.
• Agile working methodology. You can pick and choose from our talent pool.

We assemble dedicated teams in less than half the time and less than half the cost in the US or European countries or wherever you want.

Unable to make up your mind? Set up a free consultation call.

‍