How to Choose a Dedicated Development Team for Custom Software Project – The Ultimate Guide for Businesses 2024

There is a dedicated software development team behind every outstanding project. Suffice it to say that the capacities of your in-house development team can sometimes be not enough for a complicated project you are working on, and you may need access to a greater talent pool by hiring outsourcing dedicated developers. Now, because of the covid, many businesses work remotely anyway while transferring many services to outsourcing companies to keep afloat. So, all this contributes to the growing necessity to hire a software development team. Today, we will give an overview of what a dedicated development team is, how to hire dedicated developers and the main benefits and challenges of the process. Let’s get started!

So, what is a dedicated development team?

A dedicated team is a group of experienced professionals that accomplishes certain project tasks. This group is now a part of the in-house developers’ team, so they cooperate to get brilliant results. Who is usually a part of a dedicated team? Back-end and front-end developers, DevOps, UX/UI engineers, a project manager, business analysts, and other members.

In what cases may you decide to go for a dedicated software development team?

1. 1. when you want your in-house team to focus on the main business tasks;
2. 2. when there is a lack of competence in your team for fulfilling certain duties;
3. 3. when there is a need to scale up your business;
4. 4. when too many projects are coming in and you need more capacities;
5. 5. when the fulfilling of your project’s tasks is too time-consuming for your in-house team

What are the benefits of dedicated developers?

• Price. When recruiting an outsourcing team you don’t have to spend money on the hiring process, taxes, rent and other additional costs that in-house development can be associated with. You can find an outsourcing team with the best price-quality ratio that will be able to achieve outstanding results;
• Unwavering focus. The team members are only focused on your specific tasks and don’t have to divide their attention between different chores;
• Expertise. You work with a team that already has experience in similar tasks and similar industries, so you don’t have to worry about achieving the best results;
• Scalability. You can easily scale up and down your team, if you need to go to new markets and increase your business in size or vice versa cut down expenses and make a team smaller;
• Clear communication. A trustworthy dedicated team will have no problems with day-to-day informing you about their results and progress via modern up-to-date apps. So you will have a clear understanding of how your project is going on.

Are there any challenges with this approach?

• Cultural misfit. Hiring developers from a country very different from your own mentality can lead to the language barrier, misunderstandings and an irresponsible approach towards work. It’s better to look for smth close to your own culture and check your team’s command of English beforehand.
• Security issues. It’s always nerve-wracking to trust someone with confidential information about your business processes, system and data. It can be smart to sign an NDA and a Non-Compete clause to be on the safe side.
• Temporary cooperation. Usually, you hire a dedicated team for a short period of time just for fulfilling specific tasks your project needs. Hiring new teams each time for different projects you are working on can be time- and energy-consuming. Maybe, it can be useful to consider the idea of hiring developers for a few projects and a longer period of time.

What are the approaches to hiring a dedicated team?

1. 1. A complete remote development team. You describe all your demands, and an outsourcing team provides you with a list of candidates. You can interview them and choose the most suitable ones. All members are from the same company, and you get their unwavering attention in regard to your project requirements. Besides, it’s easy to have transparent communication as you work directly with the project manager who is in control of the team. The level of collaboration is very high as all your project members are from the same company and can better communicate with each other;

2. 2. Extension to your in-house developers. You choose this approach when your in-house team doesn’t have enough capacities to perform certain tasks your project needs or requires supplementary competence from an outsourcing team’s specialists. So, you can hire a few experienced engineers from a remote team. These experts will work together with your in-house development team. By choosing this approach, you can get access to an international talent pool as you are not limited by your country. And this enables you to fill any skill gap you need.

3. 3. Hybrid approach. A complete offshore web development team +  Account/Project manager in your location – By using the hybrid approach you have a person with whom you can discuss all details and requirements. And this person will later control how your outsourcing development team carries them out. You get face-to-face communication and experts to bring top results to your project.

Where to find and how to evaluate your dedicated team?

When choosing the best dedicated team, you can check out these platforms: GitHub, Upwork, Clutch, StackOverflow, ITFirms, or just use Google. The main thing to keep in mind is narrowing your search and putting down the specific requirements your project needs.

There are a few steps to evaluate your team:

First things first, you should check out your team’s expertise in the relevant sphere and industry. Apart from that, you can ask for references from the company’s other customers to find out whether the team is trustworthy and experienced enough.

Before starting the cooperation with a team, you can carry out interviews to check the team’s skills and command of English. You can ask them to solve some tricky engineering problems to understand whether they will be able to cope with the duties of your project.

How to set up a dedicated team?

1. 1. Express your requirements. Tell the software development company about the solutions your company needs. Also, tell them just general information about yourself so that they know which specialist will present a better technical and cultural fit.
2. 2. Interview your potential engineers. You get an opportunity to interview the experts only after they are approved by your vendor. This allows you to understand whether your vendor has managed to choose the best professionals that suit your needs and whether they’ve analyzed all your requirements.
3. 3. Set up a team. After the interviews, you have a clear picture in your head of the candidates that will perform certain duties your project requires. If your vendor has great experience of working with many companies, you can be provided with ready-made documents to sign and start your cooperation.
4. 4. Receive updates. You can demand updates as often as you need to ensure that everything is done to get brilliant results.
5. 5. Set clear communication means. For example, you can use Jira to manage the project, Slack – for day-to-day communication, Zoom/Teams – for video calls, etc.
6. 6. Continue your control over the projects. Do not make the mistake of collaboration stopping after you’ve informed your team about your requirements. If you don’t have time to always be in connection with them, make sure you know about their progress at the end of each small part of the project.

To wrap it all up, hiring an outsourcing development team can be a good idea no matter whether you have your own in-house team and just want to expand it with a few outsourcing experts or you simply want to outsource all your company’s services. Each approach has its pros and cons, consequently, it can be useful to learn more about the potential pitfalls of hiring a dedicated software development team to make sure you can avoid all the negative sides and get top-notch results by working with remote engineers.