The Dedicated Team Model represents a dependable and cost-effective strategy for outsourcing either the entirety or specific components of your product development. It is suitable for diverse project types, ranging from the expansion of extensive web platforms to the inception of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). If you are contemplating this approach and wish to assess its suitability for your project, this guide is designed to assist you.
Within this article, we aim to navigate you through:
The dedicated team model entails engaging a collective of remote specialists whom you enlist to develop and design a new system or participate in your existing project. These specialists are formally employed by your technology vendor and typically focus solely on your project. Generally, the structure of a dedicated development team encompasses various roles such as UX/UI designers, project managers, business analysts, frontend and backend developers, data scientists, as well as QA and DevOps professionals. This composition can be adjusted based on evolving project requirements and phases.
In contrast to the staff augmentation strategy, which involves supplementing existing talent in a technology department to address skill gaps or expand the team, the dedicated software development team model adopts a more comprehensive and business-centric approach. As implied by its name, this team is exclusively committed to a single client and operates with a singular set of business objectives—specifically, your business objectives.
Furthermore, this approach is often more time-efficient when contrasted with the process of hiring an in-house team locally. Typically, it requires less time for a vendor to assemble a cross-functional team utilizing their resources than for a company to undergo the entire process of recruiting, onboarding, and training a complete in-house team.
The primary rationale behind outsourcing a software development team is cost-efficiency, and this advantage operates on two distinct levels.
Firstly, there exists a considerable disparity in rates and salary expectations across various locations, even when considering top-tier engineers. If your operations are situated in regions where the rates for skilled tech talent are notably high (such as the US, UK, Western Europe, or Australia), the potential for cost reduction is significant—up to three times—by entrusting projects to dedicated development teams in established outsourcing locations like Poland or Lithuania.
Secondly, this approach enables a reduction in legal and administrative costs. Your vendor assumes responsibility for all employment-related expenses, encompassing employee benefits, infrastructure, equipment, licenses, as well as office and workspace setup.
The dedicated team model offers significant advantages through its clear and transparent pricing structure. Normally, you pay a consistent amount over a chosen period, such as monthly, to encompass both the team's salaries and the provider's fees. The cost is foreseeable, contingent on factors like team composition, tech stack, and project complexity. Typically, it is linked to the provider's rates and established at the initiation of the collaboration. The provider's fee covers infrastructure costs.
Flexibility stands out as a significant advantage when establishing a dedicated team with a technology partner. This aspect is particularly appealing to companies that may lack an internal tech team or direct access to skilled talent initially. Interestingly, clients often find themselves uncertain about the specific specialists required.
From the project's inception, a vendor, having thoroughly analyzed project requirements and objectives, proposes an optimal dedicated project team structure—comprising roles like a project manager, UX/UI designer, frontend developer, backend developer, and a QA specialist. While this serves as a solid foundation, the dynamic nature of projects may necessitate new expertise or additional manpower. In such scenarios, the service provider can efficiently tap into their resources, swiftly expanding the team. For instance, if there's a sudden need to enlist .NET developers to bolster your backend team, your vendor can identify suitable candidates within weeks, a significantly shorter timeframe compared to the months typically spent on in-house hiring processes for quality candidates.
This is another reason why many companies lacking both technological expertise and experience in managing IT projects opt for this model. A vendor not only has the capability to assemble a comprehensive full-stack team but also assumes the role of leading and coordinating every aspect of the project. In practical terms, dedicated product teams can take charge of a project from its conceptual stage, make technology selections, formulate an effective development strategy, execute it, and ultimately deliver a fully functional product.
These advantages of dedicated project teams hold true even for companies equipped with project management capabilities on their end, seeking greater control over progress and overall implementation. It is not uncommon, for instance, to have a product team and tech leadership on the client's side while incorporating a project manager or Scrum master into the dedicated team.
One of the foremost advantages of a dedicated project team lies in its adaptability regarding processes and communication. It's noteworthy that when collaborating with a vendor with established market experience, you can anticipate the team already having time-tested processes and standards in place. Importantly, this doesn't imply these settings will be imposed on you.
On the contrary, your service provider will devise a communication framework and process tailored to align seamlessly with your practices and requirements. Given that your dedicated team operates largely autonomously, with a substantial portion of communication managed by a project manager or Scrum master, potential communication challenges are minimized, even when working across different time zones.
Although we highlight it towards the end, undeniably, one of the most compelling benefits of a dedicated development team from a business standpoint, particularly for long-term projects, is their strong focus.
Typically, a dedicated team is exclusively dedicated to your project. Consequently, a fully committed team gains a profound understanding of your business and domain, acquiring in-depth knowledge of the market, competition, and technologies. This deep understanding significantly influences performance, speed, and the overall strategic direction of the product.
Similar to any other outsourcing approach, this model has its inherent drawbacks. In addition to the typical challenges arising from remote work friction or communication delays, there are specific disadvantages associated with the dedicated team model that should be carefully considered before choosing this approach. Let's explore them.
Naturally, establishing and cultivating a proficient team from scratch takes more time compared to adding a specialist to an existing team. Moreover, it demands effort on your part, particularly in the initial stages, to facilitate knowledge transfer and ensure that your remote team comprehensively understands your business and goals. However, despite the challenges associated with creating a dedicated team, the invested effort ultimately yields valuable returns.
While outstaffing provides a high level of flexibility, allowing rapid scaling of development resources, the dedicated team model is also flexible, especially when collaborating with an adaptable partner capable of promptly adjusting to changing needs. However, it's important to note that a dedicated team operates as a cohesive unit, and significant changes in team composition or headcount may necessitate more time and adjustments compared to the agility offered by outstaffing.
Having explored both the advantages and disadvantages of a dedicated project team, let's now delve into the types of projects that derive the greatest benefits from this collaborative model, as well as situations where it is advisable to steer clear of this approach.
We have previously highlighted various use cases while discussing the advantages of the dedicated team model. Let's now examine in greater detail when dedicated project teams prove most effective and the underlying reasons for their success.
This methodology is well-suited for extensive and scalable projects characterized by continuous evolution and the potential for indefinite duration. If you are engaged in the development of a SaaS platform or large-scale web applications that demand consistent support, ongoing enhancements, and the addition of new features, leveraging the advantages of dedicated teams is highly advantageous. Given that such projects typically extend over a considerable timeframe, even opting for partial outsourcing to a dedicated team can yield substantial long-term cost savings.
For companies facing constraints in terms of affordability or time to recruit developers locally, a dedicated team serves as a practical alternative to establishing an in-house team. On average, the process of assembling and organizing a web development team locally may take over three months, in contrast to the potential timeframe of up to one month provided by a vendor. Additionally, this approach helps minimize expenses associated with recruiting, onboarding, and infrastructure setup.
The dedicated development team model proves effective for non-tech executives and companies without experience in managing and leading software projects. In such scenarios, tech partners establish a dedicated software development team structure and incorporate specialists who can effectively lead and coordinate the entire process. This encompasses roles such as Project Managers (PMs), Product Owners (POs), Scrum Masters, and senior tech specialists who can provide strategic insights for complex software projects, such as cloud migration or implementing microservices architecture.
While the dedicated development team offers numerous advantages, it is not a universal solution. There are instances where this strategy may not surpass the benefits of an in-house team, and in other scenarios, it may not yield significant savings when compared to alternative outsourcing strategies. Here are a few examples:
If you are contemplating this collaboration model and are prepared to take the first step, what are the initial actions to undertake and what expectations should you have from your vendor?
Here's a brief overview of the process of engaging a dedicated team, drawing from our extensive decade-long experience as an IT service provider.
Step 1: Evaluate Requirements
The initial step upon receiving a request and discussing a project concept is to assess its potential and feasibility. As a technology provider, it is crucial to determine if an idea can be implemented within a specified timeframe and, if so, to identify the necessary steps to bring it to fruition. To gather all the essential information, we engage in a series of Q&A sessions with the client, gathering requirements, understanding limitations, and elucidating primary objectives.
Step 2: Determine Scope and Required Resources
During this phase, we involve Business Analysts (BAs), project managers, and leading tech specialists to assess resources, outline scope and timeline, analyze potential risks, and formulate the optimal team composition.
Step 3: Set up the team
Upon receiving the green light, the team setup process commences in accordance with the project schedule and roadmap. Typically, we can initiate activities from the research and design phase within a mere 2 weeks, and assemble a fundamental cross-functional team in as little as 1 month.
Step 4: Flexible Scaling Based on Demand
In the course of dynamic projects characterized by evolving requirements and scope, adjustments to the team composition are often necessary. This may involve the addition of specialized skills and the enlistment of new specialists to address ongoing requirements. Depending on the precise needs, we either leverage existing engineers on board or conduct interviews and recruit new talent tailored to the project's requirements.
The composition of an outsourced dedicated development team is influenced by factors such as project phase, scope, tech stack, volume, management model, and overall development strategy. Typically, an established technology provider can configure a team with diverse competencies and roles. Depending on project specifics and requirements for dedicated developers, the team structure may encompass the following roles:
Business:
Design:
Management:
Architecture:
Engineering:
Big Data:
Quality Assurance:
Infrastructure:
Frontetica stands as a reputable technology provider for numerous companies. Through years of collaboration with enterprise-level brands and promising startups, we have refined a robust approach to establishing dependable and high-performing dedicated software teams.
Our entire team undergoes specialized training to maintain a keen focus on our client's business goals. We operate with a deep awareness of both short-term and long-term business objectives, enabling us to propose optimal solutions, carefully select technologies, and customize strategies that maximize business value.
Swift time-to-market holds paramount importance for numerous projects. We adhere to a pragmatic philosophy, emphasizing the importance of setting realistic expectations and consistently ensuring timely delivery, prioritizing reliability over overpromising.
The pillars of trust between a client and a vendor are built upon high-quality output and seamless deliveries. To uphold this trust, we cultivate a culture of technical excellence and meticulous design precision among our specialists, ensuring that it reflects in the overall quality of the software we construct.
In summary, the dedicated teams model serves as a viable alternative to an in-house software team, offering a cost-efficient solution for companies seeking long-term tech partnerships and a proven strategy for outsourcing end-to-end software product development.
If you are in need of a dedicated team of developers and are considering hiring a nearshore outsourcing web development firm, reach out to our team. We are a versatile, cross-functional full-stack software development company with extensive expertise in various domains, including web development (offering services with React.js, Angular development services, .NET development services, Java development services, etc.), mobile app development (iOS and Android), IoT software development, and big data development.
