Hire Dedicated Development Team in 2023: The Ultimate Guide

A dedicated development team refers to a cooperation model with a software architecture vendor, in which the client is provided with software development specialists on a long-term basis. It is formed based on the objectives, demands, and requirements of the customer. Dedicated development team is great for performing large, long-term projects with frequently changing requirements. It is quite flexible focusing on the scope of work and tasks, costs and resources, as well as prioritizing the development team itself.

The key value of this model is enhanced concentration, resulting in increased speed and quality of the outcome. Challenges like team members being stretched too thin or overworked are not a concern since the team's sole objective is focused on the project.

Forming a dedicated team can be done in two ways:

• The separate full-service team is established, comprising all necessary employees, such as a business analyst, frontend software architect, and more.
• The customer can hire a dedicated development team to complement their existing employees with external experts.

However, it's essential to note that dedicated teams typically do not cooperate with in-house programmers and are managed on the customer's side. Once the project is completed, the cooperation concludes.

What IT specialists can you hire as members of your dedicated team? There are a bunch of specialists, from developers to UI/UX designers.

Here’s a list of talents you can hire and their responsibilities:

Frontend web developers

Frontend or client-side development is the process of converting data into the graphical interface to let users interact with the product. Such developers tend to work with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, JavaScript Frameworks and Libraries, etc.

Backend developers

Backend of the project is where developers build the business logic. It consists of a server, an application, and a database. Backend developers usually have experience in JavaScript (Node.js), Python, PHP, C#, Java, etc. and MongoDB and SQL databases.

Mobile developers

There are two main operating systems — iOS and Android. Developers should know different programming languages to create apps — Swift, Objective-C (iOS) and Kotlin, Java (Android). Nowadays, mobile devices are integral part of the society life which makes services of such specialists highly demanded. Apart from this, the great solution allowing to build a cross-platform solution at reduced costs is Flutter development services.

UI/UX designers

Design is vital for your app success. UI/UX designers create screens and their conditions and hand over the design to developers. They tend to use Sketch and InVision. The designing part is vital for the dedicated development team success since it determines the entire user experience as well as the delivered satisfaction rate.

QA specialists

Quality assurance services focus on releasing bug-free products. QA engineers perform manual and automated tests to find flaws and inform developers about them. Therefore, the final product operates smoother, correctly, and efficiently.

DevOps engineers

Outsourced DevOps specialists within a dedicated development team are responsible for identifying the right tools, set processes, and automate the code flow from development to production. This increases the performance efficiency and streamlines the project completion.

Business analysts

The main task of business analysts is to study the client's business in order to improve internal processes and change the course of development to a more productive one. Their tasks are to identify acute business problems and find solutions that will help eliminate them Also, the business analyst collects the customer's requirements and draws up the terms of reference for the development team, proposes a solution to the customer's problem.

Of course, it’s not a full list of IT specialists you can hire. The choice always depends on your project requirements and business goals. Among the additional specialists that can be useful in various software development cases are:

• Project Manager. Their main responsibility in dedicated development team is to supervise the development process and provide reports on the work done. An extremely useful specialist if you do not have the good technical knowledge to control development on your own.
• Data Scientists. They Design data modeling processes to create algorithms and predictive models and perform custom analysis.
• Solutions Architect. This specialist is responsible for evaluating the existing technical solutions of the business, designing and developing new technological solutions, and integrating them into work processes.

Dedicated teams development is relevant for a range of specific cases; let’s observe them.

When you are in the process of developing and launching a new product, having a dedicated team of developers can significantly expedite the development process. These professionals can focus solely on the product's development, ensuring its timely release with high-quality features and functionalities. The dedicated team's expertise and concentration on the project can lead to a more successful product launch.

For projects that require ongoing maintenance, updates, and enhancements, a hiring dedicated development team is an ideal choice. Instead of relying on a fixed-term contract or constantly changing freelance developers, a dedicated team can stay with you throughout the project's lifecycle. They will have a deep understanding of the codebase and can handle regular updates and improvements efficiently.

Even companies with limited budgets can benefit from hiring a dedicated developers team. Outsourcing development to a dedicated team, often located in regions with competitive rates, can be a cost-effective solution. With this approach, you gain access to a skilled development team without the overhead costs associated with hiring in-house staff.

When your company experiences rapid growth or an increase in project demands, you can hire dedicated developers team to scale up your development efforts quickly and effectively. These teams are usually flexible and can be easily expanded to accommodate your growing needs.

In some cases, you might need highly specialized expertise to work on a particular project or technology. A dedicated development team can be assembled with members who have the specific skills and experience needed for your project. This way, you can ensure that your project is handled by the right professionals who understand the intricacies of the technology stack involved.

There are several points to consider when you hire dedicated team. You need to pay attention to their location because it affects the price. Also, it’s better to consider the platform you can use to find the required specialists.

There are several popular destinations to hire dedicated teams:

• North America
• South America
• Western Europe
• Central Europe
• Asia and India
• Australia

However, the price and qualification depend on the region. For example, companies from North America charge the highest rates. On the contrary, Asian software development companies have the lowest rates, but their customer service is often questionable.

Here’s a brief overview of dedicated development team’s rates by members for various regions:

There are a bunch of platforms where you can find a dedicated team.

The IT services outsourcing market size is expected to reach $531 billion by 2022. This market growth is associated with the consequences of the pandemic when businesses need to continue to provide their processes with new software products, and they turn to outsource companies for their development. As a result, Exploding Topics has pointed out that hiring dedicated development team has become a popular practice for businesses of all sizes, with 92% of G2000 companies and 37% of small businesses outsourcing projects to external providers.

There are several examples of companies that have cooperated with dedicated development teams and outsourced their tasks to outsource vendor:

• Google. This giant outsources parts of its projects like IT management and backend development to reduce expenses.
• Slack has outsourced the development of their mobile app and marketing website. A dedicated team created the project’s MVP.
• Expensify cooperated with an outsourcing company to develop a backend part of the project.
• Alibaba. This Chinese public commerce giant has outsourced the design of its website as well as some of the tasks associated with the development of the Alibaba platform.
• WhatsApp. The development of the iOS version of the popular messenger was completely outsourced to a dedicated development team.
• GitHub. The largest web service for hosting IT projects has put a significant portion of the backend website development in the hands of the dedicated development team.

Hiring dedicated team requires some preparation. Below you can find tips that can make the hiring process more comfortable and profitable.

The initial step is outlining the specific skills, expertise, and experience you need from the dedicated development team. Identify the technologies, programming languages, and frameworks required for your project. Define the project scope, timelines, and objectives to convey the expectations clearly to potential partners.

The initial stage from which the whole process begins is the search and selection of a worthy vendor who provides the services of a dedicated development team. You should go through several steps that will allow you to choose the right partner for your technical tasks.

Step 1. Do the market research

Market research is one of the main stages of finding dedicated development teams for product creation. We advise you to start your search from specialized sites such as Clutch, GoodFirms, IT Firms, which are aggregators of information about development vendors from all over the world. You need to check the companies that have the required expertise. Also, it’s good to study how many years they’re in business as the longer they are in the market, the higher the chances that the vendor is experienced and expert in software development.

Another vital factor to consider is the company’s growth. In most cases, good service providers tend to scale their business. As a result, the number of employees is growing. You can look at the number of branches of the company, in which countries they are located and the approximate number of employees of the company. This information is often also available on specialized sites for finding IT partners.

Step 2. Study the company’s reviews

On sites such as Clutch, GoodFirms, IT Firms, you can always find a section with reviews of other clients on the services of companies, and they should be carefully studied to avoid mistakes. You should understand how the cooperation between clients and the IT vendor went, what difficulties arose during product development (if any) and what general impressions the cooperation brought. This will give you a complete picture of what an IT partner is and whether it is worth contacting for help.

Review platforms tend to verify customers’ feedback, so you can be sure that all the comments are valid.

Step 3. Look through the previous projects

Every reliable vendor has a portfolio with previous works. You can look through the released tech products on the company’s website. By the way, you’re welcome to study Cleveroad’s portfolio.

Portfolio research is an extremely important process as it will help you understand what the company is doing and whether it has the necessary expertise to complete your task. After all, it would be bizarre to contact a vendor to develop a medical CRM system if before that company was engaged in developing travel applications.

Initiate interviews with the shortlisted outsourcing vendors or individual team members. Conduct technical interviews to evaluate their proficiency in the required technologies. Ask about their problem-solving skills, coding practices, and their approach to handling challenges.

Depending on the complexity of your project, consider conducting a technical assessment as part of the interview process. This could be a coding test, a practical challenge, or a review of their previous work samples. It helps to validate the candidates' proficiency in handling real-world scenarios. Besides, understand how the dedicated development team handles project management. Inquire about their preferred methodologies (Agile, Scrum, etc.), tools they use for project tracking, and how they manage deadlines and deliverables.

How to protect your project idea? It’s better to sign an NDA agreement before discussing the project.

NDA agreement covers such aspects of the development process as the procedure of data collection, transfer, access, and more. This agreement signed by the vendor obliges him to keep secret not only dedicated development team but also the customer's ideas, industry field and other information that can harm if it falls into the wrong hands.

Also, software development companies should follow the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if they are developing a product that will somehow use the personal data of EU residents. In addition, do not forget that the company of your choice must be fully ISO/IEC 27001. This establishes the requirements for an information security management system to demonstrate the organization's ability to protect its information resources. This compliance guarantees that the business data you transfer to the vendor for software development will be protected.

Having a dedicated development team for hire, you have to pay attention to the company’s transparency. You can manage the team yourself or hire a project manager. In both cases, you need to use project management tools.

Management transparency is an important factor of interaction with the dedicated development team, and project management systems help to ensure it. In our humble opinion, the great tools that help bring team and project management to the next level are Jira and Trello. Jira is a flexible platform primarily designed for developers and agile projects, enabling efficient project and task management, as well as bug tracking.

Trello, popular among small companies and startups, utilizes kanban boards to organize work effectively, following the Japanese methodology.

When all the conditions are negotiated, it’s time to begin the process of the dedicated development teams onboarding. Team onboarding is a vital process that bridges the gap between your project and the newly assembled dedicated development team. It aims to ensure a seamless integration of the team members into your project's workflow while clarifying expectations, roles, and responsibilities.

By contributing time and effort in a comprehensive team onboarding process, you set the stage for a successful partnership with the dedicated development team. Effective onboarding ensures seamless collaboration, clarifies expectations, and enhances the team's ability to deliver high-quality results in line with your project's objectives.

The interview is a critical stage in which you must deeply evaluate the skills of the developers. Therefore, the interview process includes various communication channels that are involved in different stages of communication. Therefore, we will consider several of the most basic interviewing methods so that you can choose the most suitable for you.

Phone Call

The first meeting is all about sharing your expectations, business goals, and project requirements. Also, you can ask about the developers’ CVs, skill level, and more.

During the phone call, you need to arrange a time for a video interview to test the candidates’ skill level. You can send some practical tasks to solve.

The first phone call takes 20-30 minutes. This time is enough to draw up the first impression of the candidate.

Video interview

During this interview, you need to test the candidates’ hard and soft skills.

Hard skills are vital for a dedicated development team's job. They include the demanded knowledge and experience to create tech products. It’s common to list these skills in the job description.

It’s impossible to test the developers’ hard skills without a technical background. So, you need to cooperate with a consultant for technical assessments

There are files with interview questions for developers with diverse expertise:

• Hard skills of Node.js programmers
• Hard skills of JavaScript programmers
• Hire Angular.js developer
• Frontend programmers
• Hire Android developer
• iPhone app developer for hire
• Flutter app developers for hire

To cooperate with the team effectively, the candidate should have good soft skills. Springer Link has investigated 400 job advertisements for tech experts from 33 countries, out of which 64% ask for soft skills.

There’s a PDF file with interview questions to ask a dedicated development team for hire.

You need to check the following soft skills:

• Communication skills
• Creativity
• Conflict management
• Work in a team
• Adaptability
• Dedication

Signing documents

The last step is signing a contract to start the development process.

A valid contract should contain the following data: full name of the services, price, payment, and delivery procedure. You also need to sign an NDA agreement (if you haven’t yet) to protect your project idea. Even though the dedicated team development process is unpredictable and various unforeseen circumstances can shift the agreed time frame, you should not worry about it. The contract can be renewed at any time if necessary.

Cleveroad is a software development company providing dedicated team services for more than 11 years for companies of various industries and sizes. We have an extensive staff of specialists who are ready to integrate your company into your work processes and provide their experience in the development and design of software for business.

Turning to Cleveroad, you get:

• Agile-oriented team of more than 100 highly qualified specialists, experienced in a broad spectrum of domains, like medicine, fintech, logistics, e-commerce, and e-learning, fitting in your project
• Scaling capacity of the team depending on your product requirements, adapting the number of specialists as required
• Transparency and accountability so that you are always on track within the current status of the project through regular reporting and communication with the entire team
• Seamless integration into the client's team of professionals already set to work, to save time on hiring and training new employees, as well as guaranteeing risk mitigation

Let us demonstrate how you can benefit from the cooperation with Cleveroad dedicated team in practice:

Our US-based client, a mental healthcare provider, needed us to create a custom online consultation platform integrated with their existing SaaS solution (Kareo EHR system). They required a telemedicine platform for psychiatric care and therapy, including one-time appointments with practitioners via chat, and support for referral management. The client has requested our dedicated development team services to:

• Design a tailored telehealth solution for mental healthcare services, enabling seamless collaboration with partners.
• Create a telehealth platform for streamlined appointment management for patients, physicians, and system admins, eliminating multi-channel communication issues.
• Ensure appointments data synchronization between the existing EHR system and the new software solution.

The Cleveroad dedicated team has researched and picked relevant functionalities for administration, therapists' online consultations, patients' access to mental healthcare services, and partners' progress tracking. Another tech challenge was to ensure the platform is HIPAA compliant to guarantee proper data synchronization and protection of personal data in accordance with US laws and regulations.

Turning to dedicated development team services allowed the client to get robust therapy services software quickly, while also saving resources that would have been spent on maintaining a large in-house team.