The benefits of hiring a dedicated software development team

Recently we shared with you an article describing the most popular software development outsourcing models. This time we want to focus on one of the preferred options, a dedicated software development team model, to list and describe the benefits one can reap through this type of cooperation. So, without further ado, let’s get down to business.    

Dedicated software development team – the basics   

Let’s start with a quick reminder about this cooperation model. In such a scenario, the outsourcing company provides a complete team consisting of required technical experts and team management (more on that will come) that takes care of ongoing work, process quality and ensures meeting all the set objectives.    

Depending on your needs, a dedicated software development team may work completely on their own and be responsible for the whole project, with your only responsibility being to provide the domain knowledge, business requirements and keeping your finger on the pulse of progress and quality. Moreover, they can be an expansion of your internal development department and take over the part of the project that you lack in-house capabilities for. These two scenarios are the most popular ones, yet as long-term cooperation tends to be most beneficial, it’s not unusual to implement changes during the cooperation lifespan and deploy the external development team to where they could be most beneficial at a particular time.    

What’s worth mentioning is that starting cooperation in a dedicated development team model doesn’t require having any development resources on your own. If you’re starting your journey toward the world of technology, collaboration with a partner that provides skills and expertise, while guiding you through technical intricacies, is a great way of investing limited resources to maximize revenue.    

A dedicated software development team composition  

Before we move to the benefits of hiring an external dedicated development team, let’s rapidly recap roles that it might consist of. The final number of people provided for your team and the roles depend solely on your needs, so that’s something one should discuss with an outsourcing company. What’s more, the team size and composition are flexible and might change throughout the cooperation, but you can find more on that in the latter part of this article.    

Project Manager

Project Managers are responsible for overseeing day-to-day work according to the chosen methodology, ensuring seamless communication, solving all obstacles and keeping your external team motived and focused on the right goal.    

Software Architects and Developers

Usually the largest part of the team, developers don’t require additional clarification. Yet it’s worth mentioning that the best software houses tend to build their teams around battle-tested experts, to let clients rest assured that their expectations will be met.    

QA Engineers

To err is human, so no software development project should be done without the support of QA engineers. Their number and specialization (manual, automation, or even TestOps) might change, depending on the project requirements, yet a team without a skilled QA should never be called complete.    

UX/UI

Specialists who are especially important when the job you’re about to outsource is to craft a product from scratch. Experienced and skilled to translate vision into astonishing and pleasant-to-use designs UX/UI designers ensure that the end-users would have zero problems navigating through your app.   

DevOps

Effective infrastructure plays a vital role in fast and stable software development; thus, the importance of DevOps engineers cannot be omitted. The best software houses can include such experts in dedicated software development teams if their clients don’t employ them internally, to assure that potential infrastructure issues won’t slow down the teams’ work and impact software performance.    

Dedicated software development team benefits

Kickstarting cooperation with a complete external development team results in multiple benefits, some of which are well-known, while some often remain unnoticed. After reading about the basics, now comes the time to list and describe what you will get after signing a deal with a reliable software house. 

One disclaimer before we start – the first benefit of outsourcing that is almost always brought up is cost reduction – which is confirmed by a Deloitte report “Global Outsourcing Survey 2020” – yet what’s important is that cost reduction, or as we prefer, cost effectiveness, is not all about cheaper labor but consists of all the elements listed below. Therefore, we will not list cost-effectiveness as one of the individual benefits, and you should treat it as the final result, which includes all these individual elements.   

Tap into a great talent market

According to the “State of Software Development 2021” report, the biggest challenge in software development is hiring talent. Kickstarting cooperation with a dedicated development team provider is a great way to effectively solve hiring problems – after establishing your needs you may select the best destination and enjoy the benefits of the local talent market – which the provider is responsible for the sourcing and managing of the right people for the job to be done.    

Capacity and effectiveness boost

As stated in the report, the second biggest challenge related to software development is capacity issues (backlog, time-to-market, and so on). While expanding the number of people working on your project helps boost capacity, cooperation with a dedicated software development team positively impacts more aspects. Reliable development companies usually have extensive experience, gained from diverse projects and translated into highly effective processes and ways of working. Thus, including such experts in the work might be like a breath of fresh air, and their unbiased perspective might encourage improvements that ultimately achieve higher efficiency, not only within the external team, but for your whole organization.    

Flexibility

One of the biggest values of outsourcing is flexibility (at the same time the second most popular reason for outsourcing software development according to the previously mentioned Deloitte report) and choosing dedicated software development teams allows one to truly benefit from that. What we mean by flexibility in terms of software development outsourcing is that it gives you the ability to always have a team suitable for the task at hand.  The team composition is highly adjustable, so when, for example, at the beginning of the project the amount of work for the UX/UI specialists is highest, you may ask the software development company to provide more people, and once the design is done, reduce the number of UX/UI specialists to ensure effective use of limited resources. This way you always end with the right number of specialists contracted. 

We can go even a few steps further by adding particular skills required for your projects for a defined number of workdays, instead of hiring people full-time in case of any problems. Imagine having performance issues related to problems with the database – hiring a dedicated software development team would allow you to include a database developer experienced with the chosen database to solve the problem for only the time required to implement required fixes.

Read also: Main areas of software development

Formalities, infrastructure and employee development are not your concern

Your partner-to-be would handle more than hiring and day-to-day management. The outsourcing company is responsible for all the formalities related to their people, providing them with all the necessary equipment and what’s probably most important, ensuring constant development of their skills through competence centers, internal/external training, or funding conference tickets. This not only allows you to save resources but also takes a lot of weight from your internal back-office employees’ shoulders, at the same time allowing you to rest assured that the team you hire will always be up to date with all technical novelties.    

Scalability

While software development is considered a great alternative to growing internal capabilities (and rightly so), when it comes to scalability there’s more to it. Clearly, combining the previously mentioned access to a chosen talent market and the ability to forget about the mundane elements like infrastructure and formalities allow a company to grow faster than in the case of internal hirings, but when the described flexibility is added to a mix you get an enormous competitive edge. Your dedicated development team may both ramp up and ramp down, depending on the current situation, allowing you to either speed things up, handle more challenges or lay low if that’s necessary, while always ensuring constant cost-effectiveness.    

Save time and retain control

While we keep repeating that hiring a dedicated development team is a great way to save time and money, it doesn’t mean that you will lose control. While the day-to-day management and handling of obstacles are the responsibility of the provider, they are always reporting the project progress, status and all the potential issues that might endanger meeting the agreed objectives. Thus, you’re able to always know what’s going on within the project, guide it in the right direction business-wise and make all the strategic decisions knowing the full picture, without losing time on daily team management, problem-solving and so on.   

Knowledge retention

The dedicated development teams’ model is a great foundation for further expenditure to the delivery center, yet even if you decide to stick with it for a long time, you shouldn’t stress about knowledge retention. While some changes within the team are inevitable, statistics indicate the best you can do to retain talent is to choose a company with a low attrition rate, having a complete team working on your projects is perfect for ensuring effective knowledge retention. Once the team is onboarded and they start developing the product they automatically start spreading related knowledge among the team, so even if someone resigns and is replaced, the rest of the team will be able to rapidly introduce new experts.   

Focus on growing your business

Since dedicated development teams come with their own management, such cooperation won’t result in any management overheads on your side. Once the onboarding finishes, and the real work starts, you will cooperate on the level necessary to ensure meeting all the business requirements and goals, while the daily work won’t be your concern, saving you time for growing your business and managing elements that cannot be outsourced.    

Achieve peace of mind

Well, last but not least, cooperation with a reliable software development company in a dedicated development team model should allow you to achieve what we call “peace of mind”. And that’s not related to meditation or similar stress relief methods – the dedicated software development team simply takes a ton of weight off your shoulders which, as we said, allows you to focus on growing your business, but what’s important is that the rest is still being taken care of effectively.

Starting from small unforeseen obstacles, up to the biggest challenges like hiring the required specialists, and later delivering a project in time and quality – cooperation with a dedicated development team gives guarantees that all of your goals will be met, and all potential troubles will be dealt by the outsourcing provider, allowing you to get where you want to be. 

A dedicated team model is a perfect choice for adding what you’re lacking

The listed benefits of hiring a dedicated team clearly illustrate that choosing this alternative to growing internal capabilities shouldn’t be considered a compromise, but rather as a highly effective method of achieving business goals. But to gain all the benefits one should find and choose a reliable software development provider, since not all outsourcing companies are experienced and skilled enough to deliver all of them. How to find such a partner? You can either take a look at the following articles from our blog, focused on the vendor selection process, read our ebook or simply limit the time spent on research and use the contact form below – we’re always happy to share our knowledge and help you find answers.