What is a dedicated team?
A dedicated team is the outcome of a partnership between a client and
software services provider, in which the latter gathers a team of skilled
professionals that works exclusively on a client’s software development
project. In other words, it is a remote team that helps you to deliver
a high-quality product.
Dedicated team models are usually more suitable for long-term projects
with unsettled specifications and scope. The dedicated team quickly adjusts
to the client’s needs and can be managed as an in-house team while removing
the time-consuming recruitment process and related spending.
The dedicated team can consist of many different specialists, here are
some of the key roles:
- Business analysts are responsible for defining key business goals, tracking
progress and making sure everything is designed to reach those goals.
- Project managers manage the communication between the client and team,
responsible for distributing tasks within the team.
- Designers are responsible for creating a mockup of the product that will
be easy to use by both owner and users.
- Developers take care of the technical part of the project - writing code
for new systems and software. Front-end developers are in charge of those
elements that users interact with, while back-end developers take care
of the parts that are out of users view.
- Quality assurance (QA) specialists are responsible for testing a product
and ensuring it works seamlessly and corresponds to all the initial requirements.
3 main steps in building dedicated team
The client describes the main aim and all the demands, including preferred
technologies, qualifications and experience of desired specialists.
Taking all clients’ requirements, the service provider prepares the list
of most suitable candidates by analyzing their technical expertise and
soft skills. Then the client is conducting the final interview to make
sure the professionals meet all the requirements.
Once the team is gathered, both parties agree on the management process
and the dedicated team is ready to start.
Key advantages and disadvantages of dedicated team
The dedicated team has many undeniable benefits, however, there are still
some drawbacks. Let’s take a closer look at the positive and negative sides
of this model to understand it better.
- Cost-efficiency. When hiring a dedicated team, it eliminates the
need to conduct on-site hiring and training of new workers and significantly
reduces expenses. Specialists that are located in different countries can
have a lower hourly rate, thus you can save up costs without compromising
product’s quality.
- A wide talent pool. It is sometimes hard and even impossible to
find experts locally and when you manage to hire all the individuals with
the right experience it doesn’t mean that they will make a great team.
Dedicated team model offers you the access to a wide talent pool that can
work together as a team.
- Focused approach. When you hire a dedicated team, its main priority
is your project, and they will work only on the tasks concerning your product.
Meanwhile, you can focus on your core business processes.
- Scalability. You can reconfigure the team at any stage of the process.
For example, if you currently require a few more specialists to get the
product to market quicker, it will be easy to add a few specialists to
the group. The same applies if you have to reduce the amount of involved
specialists due to your current needs.
- Ukraine. However, some countries have a perfect time zone. For example,
choosing a dedicated team in Ukraine grants seamless communication with
all European countries, because the time difference usually is only 1 or
2 hours. Moreover, Ukraine’s working hours overlap even with the United
States or Australia, providing a possibility to work simultaneously from
4 to 5 hours a day.
- Communication barriers. With the remote team, it can be hard sometimes
to have effective communication. It is related to the fact that most of
the conversations happen through emails, calls or other online communication
tools, which are less productive as face-to-face discussions. The difference
in time zones is also one of the drawbacks that makes real-time communication
nearly impossible.
- Lengthy hiring and onboarding process. Clients are usually involved
as much as possible in the recruitment process, because all the tech experts
should be approved by them. It also may take time for external teams to
adopt working approaches of the client.
Key takeaways
There’s no one size fits all approach to hiring a dedicated team. But
one thing is clear, only reliable software development providers will help
you to get the most out of the external team.
We at CodeLions will gladly help you to analyze all the perks the dedicated
team can bring to your project. We will help you to reduce your project’s
time to market and deliver a high quality product. Contact us today!