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

First off, you should understand the whole concept. A dedicated software development team is a business model that implies hiring tech experts from a vendor to your project. Dedicated teams usually don’t cooperate with the in-house staff and are managed on the customer’s side.

Clients can choose engineers according to their skills and the project’s tech stack. They can manage the hired team on their own or cooperate via the vendor’s project manager.

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 three main points that indicate that you need a dedicated software development team:

• Budget limitations. 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 specialists are always ready to enter the project and they cost less compared to in-house colleagues.
• Time frames. 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.
• Direct management. 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.

Apart from a dedicated software development team, there are other options that can be used in different cases. We’ve outlined the most popular outsourcing models and compared them with a dedicated team.

With the Time and Material model, the client pays for the time spent on the project. The final paycheck depends on the number of hours specialists spend on the task and their hourly rate.

Let’s assume that you’ve signed a contract with a company that charges $50 per hour. If developers spend 400 hours on your project, the cost of your project will be $20,000. But keep in mind that the efforts of business analysts, project managers, and designers cost money too. That’s why the Time and Material model is good when the project has a lot of unknown variables.

Unlike Time and Material, a dedicated software development team model involves paying salaries on a monthly basis. In turn, Time and Materials won’t fit for solving small tasks because outsourcing companies often have a minimal project price and won’t work on a short-term project with this model.

The fixed price model puts all the risks on your tech partner. Before the development, you negotiate on the final price with business analysts and sales representatives. Once you reach the agreement, the price can’t be changed.

This strategy is risky for software development companies because the dedicated software development team may face unpredictable issues during the project. If it happens, developers may spend more time on the project than it was estimated. Thus, the company will bear losses and may even miss the deadline.

It’s important to understand that the Fixed Price model is an option for short-term cooperation and it can’t be applied to a dedicated team model. After signing the contract, you can’t make any changes to the software because they may affect the price and the overall development time. That’s why this option is considered to be the least flexible of all outsourcing models. Still, if you have a small project with a tight budget, this option is the best choice for you. You can understand the software expenses from the very beginning and allocate the rest of the resources as you need.

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
• South America
• Eastern Europe
• Western Europe
• Asia

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. Eastern European companies are a golden mean in terms of software development. They provide high-quality software for a reasonable price.

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

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 companies.

Before contacting a dedicated software development team, you have to take care of several important steps. To hire a team, you have to be well-prepared and understand the requirements for your project. So, let’s go through the hints that make the hiring process easier.

If you’re a startup owner, you should have a clear idea of what your project will look like and what problems it’ll solve. You can’t just hire a dedicated software team and expect them to build high-quality software based on blurry expectations and unclear requirements.

Moreover, for the sake of your own project, you have to analyze your competitors and make your product unique. Don’t make a complete copy of another software. Most likely, your product will be overshadowed by the one that has more users and holds top charts of app stores. Only those products that bring value to users will succeed.

Besides, make inquiries about the company you’re hiring. Use the services listed before to browse through client reviews and check their portfolio to evaluate the expertise. A good dedicated software development team is key to the success of the whole startup. On the other hand, if you’re a well-established company and need a dedicated developer to supplement your existing team, look through their CVs and decide whether their expertise is enough to keep up with the pace of the in-house team.

Depending on the platform, developers will use different tech stacks. So, to find a team that can develop the required software, you should decide on the platforms in advance. The two most common platforms that our developers work for are Android and iOS. Besides, your software can have a web version and different applications for Android/Apple TV, wearable devices, and desktop versions.

Dedicated software development teams use Java/Kotlin for Android and Swift/Objective-C for iOS. Besides, there’s also an option to build a cross-platform app. This development approach can save your resources due to the enhanced development speed. While native developers will finish the Android version, cross-platform developers will have both Android and iOS versions ready. Our engineers prefer to use Flutter for cross-platform development because of the performance and flexibility of this framework.

As a product owner, you have to provide a preliminary feature list to a dedicated software development team. Developers should know what tasks they will face to understand whether they can deliver a quality solution. The initial feature list is approximate and can be changed after the contact with business analysts. After the estimate, the software may appear too expensive, and some of the features will be excluded.

Additionally, business analysts can give you some hints on features. Some of the initial features may be useless for your app, while others can be replaced with ones that take less development time. The main goal of business analysts is to help the product owner to create a plan of the future software that will satisfy the clients’ needs and will fit in the budget frames.

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.

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
• Angular programmers
• Hire front end developers
• Android app programmers for hire
• iOS programmers
• Flutter programmers

When the team is organized, you have to inform members about your business goals and describe your business in detail. Share with them the results of competitor analysis, tell about your target audience, and explain all software-related details. It’s important to keep new members of your team aligned with the others. Remember that even if the dedicated software development team is several time zones away from you, they’re still part of your company. That’s why to get the most out of the cooperation, you have to treat a dedicated team like the part of your in-house team.

An offline meeting is the best opportunity to get to know your team better and understand your company's workflow. A personal meeting helps to establish a strong connection with your dedicated software team and better understand your employees' strengths and weaknesses. On top of that, if you’re satisfied with the team, an offline meeting is the best chance to discuss the aspects of cooperation and sign the contract.

There are several options to arrange a personal meeting. You can visit the partner’s country by yourself or invite them to visit your country. Even if it may be expensive, it will be a worthwhile investment. By the way, Eastern Europe is one of the best outsourcing regions in terms of geographical proximity to other countries. For example, here are the flight costs to Kyiv (one-way ticket):

• Paris, France – from $230
• London, UK – from $244
• Berlin, Germany – from $133
• Washington, DC – from $629
• Seattle, WA – from $746

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.

Finally, it’s time to discuss organizational issues. There are different aspects of managing the work of employees located in different parts of the world. 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.

Here, at Cleveroad, we’ve been gathering outstanding dedicated software development teams for our clients for more than five years now. Our developers are ready for unexpected changes in the development vector and can deliver a quality product in the shortest terms. We have experienced project managers that keep in touch with the client at any time and know how to organize the development process. Our company has delivered more than 150 successful projects, both for startups and enterprises. Check our portfolio to learn more about our projects.