Published on September 25th, 2021 | by Guest

Dedicated Software Development Team. What is it and What Benefits it Can Bring You?

Today’s digitally-driven business landscape urges companies to constantly seek out ways to stay relevant and competitive. One of the biggest conundrums that business executives need to face is whether to develop their upcoming software solution in-house or alternatively find a reliable technical vendor to support them throughout the whole development lifecycle with a dedicated software development team and outsource business projects entirely.

From my experience working in a bespoke software development company focused predominantly on long-term projects, I can say that this approach is beneficial for both the software vendor and the client. Actually, we at Dreamix don’t have clients, we invest in partnerships that last over time. Building a trusting relationship with the software developers over time lays the foundation of mutual support of an in-depth understanding of the business needs. Thanks to this, dedicated teams quite often don’t simply execute orders but also actively contribute during brainstorming sessions with original ideas.

Without further ado, let’s take a closer look at what exactly is a dedicated software development team and why should you consider it for your next software project.

What is a Dedicated Software Development Team?

Basically, if you choose to outsource your project’s software development, you have three main options. The first one is the fixed price (FP) model, used for small projects with a clear scope, straight to the point requirements. In case these start to feel blurry and estimations become hard to pinpoint, you better go with the time and materials model, or T&M, which has a lot in common with the previous one but this time the end price is not fixed. Instead, it depends on the work hours of billable software engineers that are involved in the production.

Finally, we have the model of the dedicated software development team. As the name suggests, these are dev teams that are solely dedicated to a single project with rather flexible scope and budget. This is a good option if you have a well-established in-house development team but need additional capacity to work together on a long-term project. With a dedicated team, your company is offered a flexible way to expand your existing team and steady technical support without the hassle and time pressure that arises when hiring and managing new employees.

Which Projects Need a Dedicated Team?

Although each team’s configuration is quite different depending on the project requirements, usually a dedicated team consists of software developers, QA specialists, UI/UX experts, a Business Analyst (BA), and a Product Owner. When you hire a dedicated software development team, you practically have an extension of your in-house team without any additional administration like taxes, bonuses and social benefits. The best project fit for this model is a long-term one that needs continuous technical development and support during scaling phases. Even tech giants like Apple, Amazon, IBM and Oracle employ dedicated developers to bring additional technical expertise to their projects.

This approach is also perfectly suited for early-stage startups that expect to grow in scope. Expanding a business brings turbulence if not done right, but with a dedicated team on your side, you can bring an additional outside perspective to the project and tackle business challenges together. Another project type that can benefit from the dedicated team model is a project with vague initial requirements. In case you are still on the discovery stage and aren’t quite confident about the product-market fit yet, dedicated developers will be irreplaceable for optimising time-to-market (TTM) and cost-efficiency.

Who is Involved in a Dedicated Development Team?

The usual setup of a dedicated software development team has a clear role division. Developers perform the “heavy lifting” and write code: front-end specialists code all visible elements to end-user and back-end developers concentrate on the database, middleware, web servers and everything that remains hidden. UI and UX designers take care of how the custom software product will look like.

Then, we have a business analyst involved in the project who is responsible for goal setting, business process documentation and in-depth analysis for potential project flaws or opportunities. QA experts are another integral part of a dedicated team as they test software fragments and make sure all software pieces meet the strict business requirements. Finally, we have the Project Manager (PM) whose main focus is to master tasks such as planning, prioritization, delegation and execution as well as to communicate with the client.

The Benefits of a Dedicated Team

Reduced Project Costs

One of the most obvious advantages of the dedicated team model is to save your company valuable financial resources that can be invested in R&D or marketing. The 2020 Global Outsourcing Survey report by Deloitte, lists the top ten reasons to outsource software development. Whereas in 2018 the top reasons were was speeding TTM, faster scaling or securing competitive advantage, the number one reason in 2020 (70% of respondents) is cost reduction due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Agile Software Development

More and more companies switch to agile practices as they bring flexibility and reduce project risks: exactly we need to adapt fast in the ever-changing business environments. One of the key differences between traditional approaches (like the Waterfall method) and the agile philosophy is the way teams are organised and how they collaborate with each other. For a better overview of how the two approaches differ from one another, you can check this BBC’s bitesize comparison of traditional and agile approaches.

Daily Updates on Project’s Progress

While we’re on the subject of agile, let’s cast some light on the regular updates during the development lifecycle if you choose to work with a dedicated software development team.

What usually happens if your outsourcing vendor is an agile company is that you’ll always be up to date thanks to the daily meetings with the dev team, where you can either engage them in the decision-making or discuss the next project focus and short-term goals. This greatly contributes to the project’s transparency.

You Skip Recruiting and HR Operations

Being able to rely on an additional dedicated software development team means that you can forget about long recruitment hassle and internal HR operations like onboarding, social benefits, payroll etc. Modern software development companies like Dreamix have their in-house recruiters and Talents and Culture (T&C) experts. Working with such vendors means that you only pay developers their hourly rates, which automatically frees up your time and energy for core business tasks.

It is the Future

No one could have predicted the vast business consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The whole economic landscape needed to navigate through the unknown, surrounded by lots of uncertainty. One thing that we learned from all this is that we have to future-proof how we do business. Why limit yourself to the technical talent you have around you when you can enjoy a larger talent pool in a different time zone (meaning 24/7 office) with dedicated teams?

Author Biography

Aleksandrina Vasileva is a Content Creator at Dreamix, a custom software development company, and is keen оn innovative technological solutions with a positive impact on our world. Her teaching background, mixed with interests in psychology, drives her to share knowledge. She is an avid reader and an enthusiastic blogger, always looking for the next inspiration.

Cover Image by FreePix

Tags: software development company, software development outsourcing, Software development team, Software testing