A Full Guide to Hiring Dedicated Software Development Team for Your Project

Go digital or go home. It’s the slogan for all businesses trying to keep up with the time. Entrepreneurs from various industries tend to digitize their business processes and build digital experiences for customers. Doing this, they raise demand for experienced developers. Fierce competition for talents, lack of skillful engineers, and fat paychecks of in-house developers force entrepreneurs to seek for alternatives. That’s the point where a dedicated software development team changes everything.

According to Statista, the IT outsourcing industry is the primary revenue generator within the IT Services market, accounting for $412 billion in 2022, and is anticipated to achieve $778 billion by 2028. Fair rates for quality software motivate entrepreneurs to pass their projects to dedicated software development teams from other regions.

Let’s find out how to build a software development team (namely a dedicated one) that can make your project better and cut your expenses.

First off, you should understand the whole concept. A dedicated software development team model is a collaboration scheme in which a customer hires a team of technical specialists (developers, designers, testers, and others) from a software vendor to fulfill their projects. This team works exclusively on the customer's tasks and aims to integrate into the customer's internal processes.

In short, a dedicated team for software development is a group of highly skilled professionals that you hire to execute your projects. The mechanism of work is:

1. Defining requirements and budget. Start by specifying your project needs and budget

2. Finding a team. Search for a dedicated development team

3. Discuss project details. Work with the team to clarify project requirements and specifics

4. Team formation. Assemble the dedicated team, exclusively committed to your project

5. Scalability and flexibility. Adapt the team's size to your evolving project requirements

6. Direct collaboration. Cooperate with team members for transparent and efficient development

A dedicated software development team can include a variety of specialists, depending on your project's needs. Here are the typical members of such a team and their roles and responsibilities:

1. Project Manager. Their main job is to manage the project. Project managers develop the project plan, set priorities, and keep track of deadlines and the overall organization of the team.

2. Business Analysts. They help understand business needs and analyze data and requirements to determine the best solutions.

3. Solution Architects. These professionals are responsible for designing the overall architecture of the software product. The Solution architect determines the app's structure and the relationships between its components and makes critical architectural decisions.

4. UI/UX designers. They are responsible for the design and user interface of the software product. The ensign team create user-friendly and attractive user interfaces.

5. Software developers. These are the developers who write the code and create the software. The team may include experts who are proficient in various programming languages (e.g., Java, Python, JavaScript, etc.).

6. QA specialists. Their task is to test the developed software for bugs, errors, and compliance. QA enguneers ensure the quality and reliability of the product.

7. DevOps engineers. They configure infrastructure, deploy apps, and ensure security and scalability.

The software development team structure can vary depending on the project's specific requirements. Feel free to contact our experts to help you assemble a team of pre-assessed experts optimally suited for different tasks and projects.

A dedicated team is the best option when you need a team of tech specialists for specific tasks. It’s often used for side projects and for taking off the load from the core team. Besides, this model comes in handy when a project doesn’t have well-defined requirements.

There are five main points that indicate that you need a dedicated software development team:

Hiring in-house developers may be too expensive for startups and small businesses. Engineers’ salaries are high, while the recruiting process also requires resources. Dedicated software teams are always ready to enter the project and they cost less compared to in-house colleagues.

It takes a lot of time to staff your own team. Even if recruiters search for talents all day long and find candidates with the required experience, they may not suit the company with soft skills or cultural fit. So, if you have strict time limitations, it’s better to find a dedicated software team. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on recruiting, while the hired specialists will get to work at your command.

With a dedicated team model, you can get full control over the specialists you hire. With other outsourcing models, you’ll cooperate with the project managers. On the other hand, a dedicated team approach enables you to work closely with individual team members, fostering a more integrated and collaborative development process. Additionally, you can scale your team up or down as needed, giving you the flexibility to adapt to changing project requirements.

When you hire a dedicated team, you can tap into a wealth of domain-specific knowledge and expertise. These professionals often come with extensive experience in your industry, which can significantly impact the quality and efficiency of your project.

The Cleveroad team has practical experience in developing software solutions for various business domains, including Healthcare, Logistics, Travel, Retail, Media, Education, FinTech, etc

Opting for a dedicated software development team is an excellent choice for long-term projects. When your project stretches over a considerable duration, relying on in-house staff may not be cost-effective, especially considering the high salaries and HR expenses involved. In such cases, a dedicated team offers the advantage of consistent, committed support for your project.

When searching for a dedicated software development team, there are two main points to consider. One of them is your tech partners’ region, and the platform where you search for them.

Let’s discuss these factors in detail.

The software vendor’s region is one of the main cost-driving factors. The price varies according to average developers’ salaries in the region. Here are the most popular outsourcing regions to hire dedicated developers:

• North America
• Africa
• Central and Eastern Europe
• Western Europe
• Asia

Here’s a comparative table of developers’ salaries in different regions:

Mind that these rates are approximate and depend on the country and company you choose.

Developers from North America charge the highest rates among all regions. If you’re looking for the most affordable option, you should pay attention to Asia. Indian developers provide cheap dedicated software development services, but the final product quality is often poor. Central and Eastern European companies are a golden mean in terms of software development. They provide high-quality software for a reasonable price.

With the help of different platforms, you can search for dedicated software development teams, check basic information about the company, and browse through client reviews. The following platforms are the best to help you build an image of your tech partner:

• Clutch. Clutch is a well-known platform that helps businesses to find reliable dedicated software development service providers. The platform hosts over 10,000 IT-oriented companies that provide different kinds of services. Here, you can find mobile app developers, web engineers, designers, and so on. Moreover, this service provides users with company ranking and clients’ reviews.
• GoodFirms. This platform is another option where you can find a dedicated software development team. GoodFirms divides all specialists into different categories, so it’s easy to find a specialist for your project. It also provides a variety of researches on different topics and industries to help you make an informed decision.
• IT Firms. This service provides employers with lists of top companies in different fields and regions. IT firms can be used for initial research to filter out inappropriate options and leave only the best software development companies.

After all the steps you’ve already done, it’s time to get in touch with the team and discuss your project. This stage is the best moment to realize whether this company can fulfill your expectations and build a unique product. Let’s deconstruct this process into parts and review each of them.

It is essential to outline your business demands in detail at this stage. This includes a clear understanding of what product you plan to develop, what users’ problem it aims to solve, who your target audience is, and how you see the competitive landscape in your industry. This homework is necessary to find the right dedicated software engineering team you need for accomplishing specific project tasks for your product success.

When planning a budget while hiring a team, it is important to allocate funds, prevent budget overruns, and stay within your financial limits. Effective budget planning includes estimating how much you can allocate to development. Remember that the budget should include developer salaries and other additional costs such as software licenses, preparatory stages, and further software support. Budget planning will help you guide your search for a dedicated software team, as you can narrow down the list of candidates to those who fit into your budget.

Once you have defined precise requirements and planned budget, you can start searching for a dedicated software engineering team. Select partners based on their experience, reputation, and specialization in your industry. Evaluate portfolios and read reviews and ratings on specialized platforms like Clutch. Assess the team’s hard and soft skills and resources to ensure they’re managed to fulfill your project. It can be quite difficult to assess the technical skills of the team, so you can apply for IT consulting services and experts will help you to select a team with the right set of skills and expertise.

During the initial contact, you should clearly explain your project requirements. Based on the information you give, the company will assemble a dedicated software development team. Depending on the number of specialists you need, the time for organizing a team varies.

For example, if you need several developers, the company can allocate them immediately. However, if you need a team of 20 engineers with different skills and experience, it takes more time.

It’s possible that the company doesn’t have so many vacant developers at the moment. In this case, your tech partner may headhunt, interview, and hire new developers to assemble a dedicated software development team for you in the shortest terms. Even though it seems like the process may be slow, it’s still faster and cheaper than hiring developers on your own. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about new working places, hardware, and on-boarding processes.

When the company informs you that the team is assembled, you can ask for members’ CVs and interview each of them personally. However, if you don’t have tech expertise, you can hire an independent tech consultant. Still, we’ve created a list of questions for interviewing software specialists:

• Hard skills of Node.js programmers
• Hard skills of JavaScript programmers
• Hire Angular.js developer
• Hire front end developers
• Android app programmers for hire
• iOS app developer for hire
• Hire Flutter developers

At this stage, when you already have a budget and a dedicated software development team, you should focus on the critical aspects of your project and agree them with the team:

• Collaboration model. Decide which collaboration model is best for your project. You can personally manage and oversee the development process, or you can hand over the management to a dedicated project manager. Alternatively, you can choose to outsource by entering into an agreement with a reputable third-party IT vendor. In this case, the vendor assembles a dedicated team for your project and takes full responsibility for its management.
• Choosing a platform and technology stack. Discuss with the team which platform (e.g., web, mobile, desktop) your product will be developed on. The solution architect will help you clarify the technologies and tools used (e.g., development stack, databases, frameworks). The team must be experienced in the selected technologies.
• Functions and features. Define the functional and non-functional requirements for your product. This includes defining what your product should do and its features. The team will break the project into development phases and prioritize the features of your application.
• Timeline. Discuss the project timeline with your team. Determine the time frame for each phase and the overall project completion date. This will help you ensure that development is on track.
• Budget and cost. Clarify budget constraints and agree on a payment model. Depending on the collaboration model you choose, determine what costs will be included in the price of services.

Discussing these aspects with your dedicated software team will ensure a clearer understanding of product requirements, transparent expectations, and increased likelihood of project success.

Finally, you should organize a stable communication between your dedicated software development team and an in-house team. First of all, your in-house team should understand that dedicated developers are their colleagues, so they should treat remote developers on an equal footing. If in-house developers feel superior, there are chances that a dedicated team will feel left out, and it may affect the cooperation quality.

Moreover, take care of the communication channels. If some questions arise from your dedicated software team, there should be an easy way to contact an in-house employee who can clarify the issues. From our experience, we can recommend Slack for team cooperation. It’s a straightforward app for corporate communication with rich functionality.

Besides, you have to introduce senior staff from both sides and explain how they will distribute the workload. It’s vital to divide the tasks properly so that every employee knows their responsibilities and doesn’t take another employee's load.

Cleveroad has been providing dedicated development team services for more than 11 years. During this period, our specialists have completed many successful projects. To show you our expertise, here are some of our cases.

Our client, an investment company from Saudi Arabia, applied to our dedicated development team services to assemble a team with expertise in building a micro-investment platform for the Middle Eastern market.

To address the client's business needs, we quickly formed a dedicated software team of 8 people, including a Senior Flutter developer and other experts with experience developing FinTech solutions. The agility and Cleveroad’s experience in gathering the suited team allowed the customer to get a custom financial software within the budget and time restraints. Including FinTech software engineers allowed the client to ensure the solution fully complies with the country-specific SAMA regulations.

Another of our clients, a Danish movie rental services provider, required an outstaff team to create a video-on-demand platform. The customizer needed an outstaff team to accomplish the goal.

First, we conducted a thorough project analysis, encompassing code and tech stack reviews and consultations with the client’s Tech Leads and Account Managers to address the project's requirements. After, , we assembled a software dedicated team with the requisite experience and proficiency level. The outstaff team was under the complete management of the client's company. Cleveroad's specialists seamlessly integrated into an ongoing project, resolving all project-related challenges and ultimately delivering a successful solution aligned with the client's business needs.

Here’s our client’s review about their successful cooperation with the Cleveroad dedicated team:

Finally, it’s time to discuss organizational issues. There are different aspects of managing the dedicated software development teams. But with the right tools and approach, the workflow won’t be much different from in-house work.

If you’re going to manage the team via the vendor’s project managers, conference calls are the key to successful cooperation. The project manager will control the work of the dedicated software development team, deliver your requirements to engineers, and inform you about the project condition. When hiring a team, make sure that the vendor’s project managers have strong English skills, because they are the ones that will always keep in touch with you.

On the other hand, if you’ve decided to manage the team on your own, you’ll contact the senior employees from your team. Let’s assume that you’ve hired several specialists from Android, QA, and the design department. This way, you’ll keep in touch with every responsible employee from each department to stay on top of the project condition. This approach takes more time and effort, so we recommend hiring a project manager that will provide you with all the necessary information faster.

Today’s market offers various tools to organize your employees' workflow and make all processes transparent. As we’ve mentioned before, Slack is one of the best tools for communication between employees. It provides your employees with all the possible features they may need. Video and audio calls, text chats, sharing images, channels, and synchronization with Google services will help your employees to cooperate effectively and solve issues faster.

Our next collaboration tools are Jira and Trello. These tools help dedicated software development teams to implement agile software development methodology. Now, project managers can break one large task into several smaller tasks and assign them to developers. Engineers can find their tasks on Kanban boards and track the time spent on each task. With access to Jira, you can track the daily activity of each developer and see the changes in your project.

As for document management, Google’s G Suite will be more than enough. Google provides an all-in-one solution for creating presentations, collaborative work on documents, creating tables, and storage for created files.

The cost of hiring dedicated software development teams can vary depending on a number of factors, such as the team's geographical location, the skill level of specialists, and the terms of cooperation. Below, we examine the main aspects of determining price and cost optimization.

One of the most significant factors affecting the cost of hiring a dedicated team for software development is the company's geographical location. Depending on your location, you can engage with onshore, nearshore, or offshore developers, leading to significant variations in rates.

Let’s take a quick look at the location-based cooperation model:

• Onshore development (national teams). Teams located in the same country as you tend to have higher rates due to similar time zones and ease of communication. For example, if a US company hires a dedicated development team in the USA, this would be onshore outsourcing.
• Nearshore development (teams in neighboring countries). This model means that a company hires a team located in close geographical proximity. Nearshore software development offers more competitive rates while maintaining close geographic and cultural ties.For example, if a US company hires a development team in Western Europe, this would be nearshore outsourcing.
• Offshore development (teams in remote countries).Offshore means that a company hires a team located in a remote geographic location, usually with significant time-zone differences. Remote teams typically offer the lowest prices, but challenges can arise due to time zone differences and cultural sensitivities. For example, if a US company hires a development team in Central, Eastern Europe or Asia, this would be offshore outsourcing.

Also, the price of hiring dedicated software teams depends on the experience and skills of the developers. Specialists with higher qualifications usually get higher salaries. However, hiring and maintaining in-house employees requires even more costs. For example, average salaries of technical specialists in the US are:

• Full-stack developers: $60,000 - $150,000+ annually
• Mobile developers: $60,000 - $150,000+ annually
• QA specialists: $50,000 - $120,000+ annually
• UI/UX designers: $50,000 - $120,000+ annually

Apart from this, in-house team requires additional expenses such as taxes, sick leave, workplace rent, software license, etc.

On the other hand, dedicated teams can be more cost-effective since they reduce administrative costs associated with offices, hardware, software, and other infrastructure costs. Additionally, with a dedicated team, you can quickly scale your team based on project needs, which allows you to optimize costs. You pay only for the work actually done, rather than having to maintain a permanent staff regardless of project size. These factors provide significant savings for your business.

Moreover, given their hourly rates, you can choose a dedicated software development team from any country. This way, you can find the most suitable option for your budget. To simplify your search, we have collected the rates of major IT professionals in popular outsourcing regions:

Cleveroad is a software development company located in the CEE region, Estonia. Since 2011, we have been helping startups, small, medium and large businesses to digitize workflows and provide a competitive advantage by creating custom software. Our team has hands-on experience in various business domains, such as Healthcare, FinTech, Logistics, Media, Travel, Education, Retail, etc.

How do our dedicated software development services work? We employ a multi-step assembly process to form the optimal dedicated team that aligns with your project’s needs.

1. Requirement gathering. We initiate meetings with you to elucidate project intricacies, define team prerequisites, outline an initial work schedule, and address various organizational considerations.

2. Team formation. We curate a team of developers according to your specified criteria. Subsequently, you can conduct interviews and select individuals with expertise you'd like to have on your dedicated development team.

3. Onboarding and development. Our dedicated team of developers delves into the project, examines project documentation,, gets to know the task scope and deadlines, and proceeds with the development phase.

4. Scalability. The dedicated team can be flexibly adjusted depending on your project's evolving requirements. As the project nears completion, the number of developers can be downsized. Conversely, if the scope of tasks expands, you can augment your team accordingly.

Our company has delivered more than 170 successful projects, both for startups and enterprises. Check our portfolio to learn more about our projects and find ideas for your software concept.