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The dedicated team model – pros and cons

Feb 02, 2023

12 minutes read

What is the dedicated team model?

‍You can hire specialists using the dedicated team model if you need software developers, project and product managers, designers, QA engineers, or business analysts. It is the collaboration mode, which belongs to the most popular and is widely used in software development for remote collaboration with a client. This model differs from the time & material (T&M) or the fixed price (FP) models. Working with a dedicated development team is the best choice for growing startups and well-established companies. 

A dedicated software development team refers to the long-term collaboration between a service provider (a dedicated development team) and a client (an outsourcing company). The dedicated team is usually managed from the customer side, but sometimes a service provider’s project manager is assigned to coordinate the communication process. 

All dedicated team members usually work remotely, full-time, exclusively for the project, and report directly to the customer. This business model is best suited for projects without strictly defined scopes or requirements.

Working with a dedicated team allows customers to improve the client’s business processes and significantly reduce a product’s time to market. The dedicated developer’s team is a separate unit with its framework and management, not an extension of the customer’s team. The dedicated team is less dependent on the customer than teams in other models.

The dedicated team model has a very transparent and straightforward pricing system: monthly payments depend on the team size. The price comprises members’ salaries + service provider’s fees, which include administrative overheads.

A dedicated team services are the best option for projects without a strictly defined scope. It also means that requirements can be changed during the development process. The main benefit of this model for the customer is the possibility to hire a team with the necessary expertise that can seamlessly work as your own.

The following points can explain what is essential for the dedicated team model:

  • The customer has to define the main goals of the project and the number of required employees with specific tech skills.
  • The provider hires a dedicated team that can meet the project requirements. 
  • The dedicated team and the client agree on the project requirements and workload for a certain period.
  • The client has complete control over the project and team during the work. The dedicated team is concentrated on providing the best results.

Dedicated project team structure 

Below you will find more detailed descriptions of each team-player:

  • Front-end developers have to define, implement and test the elements of the developed software. They focus on functionality and interface. 
  • Back-end developers focus on business rule implementation logic of web services and the data store and work on specific server components of multi-tier software. 
  • QA engineers assess the quality of technical design documents and specifications to ensure relevant, timely, and suitable assistance.
  • UX/UI designers create the user interface based on usability.
  • DevOps engineers work with a team to facilitate better coordination among development, testing, and other operations.
  • Business analysts build the bridge between software and business processes, delivering data-driven recommendations, determining requirements, and reporting to stakeholders and executives.
  • Project managers are responsible for the planning, initiation, monitoring, design, execution, and finalizing of a complete project.

Further, we’ll describe the pros and cons of working with a dedicated team and define the critical reasons for hiring a dedicated team for the project.

Advantages of a dedicated team

Cost-effectiveness

Cost efficiency is a significant advantage of working with a dedicated team. 

Gathering a team that will be 100% fitting for the project can be a laborious process that takes a lot of time and effort and can be rather stressful for the project’s budget.

Hiring a qualified team of experts is a viable solution that saves time and money by reducing HR costs and slashing the overheads that would be involved if you hire new employees. In this case, you can avoid the organizational work, keep the money for other vital processes such as technology research and business analysis, and have more time to focus on the project. 

With a dedicated team of services, you can get the necessary work done. The product’s quality will be not compromised.

Hiring a dedicated team instead of gathering a team on your own is significantly less costly, mainly if the team is located in another country with lower development costs. According to PayScale, a senior software engineer in the US charges between $64 and $100/hour. In East Europe, developers’ hourly rates are $25-37/hour.

Task-focused approach and adaptability

A focused approach is one of the most excellent dedicated project team’s advantages. Increased immersion into the project generates much more inventive and diverse insights into the possible solutions and gives an additional focus on the thing. 

There are also other pros. The team can add some new features to the developed software at any time according to the changed project’s requirements and needs, ensuring the project’s faster completion and better results.

A dedicated team model of cooperation means the opportunity to focus on the project and increase adaptability. The customer can reconfigure the team at each moment in case the needs and requirements of the project change.

Technology application, market performance, budget constraints, and other factors can be necessary at some moment and need a quick reaction. The dedicated team model simplifies this issue due to improved development turnaround.

Any agile-based process can ensure it too, but working with the dedicated team allows the customer to pay attention to nuances, consider the best fitting, and have more opportunities to test different options.

The dedicated team is entirely focused on one development project, which helps provide the best results for a client within one project.

Transparent and effective controlling

Dedicated teams use task management and time-tracking solutions. All information can be accessed by the customer at any time. It allows the customer and the developers’ team to be in contact and make the management process transparent and effective.

Regular communication via messengers and daily reports will also contribute to transparent management.

The client controls dedicated team members’ motivation, selection, and management. 

Relevant expertise and experience

Outsourcing the project to the dedicated software development team means acquiring professionals with the necessary expertise and skills. The customer works with engineers who have developed projects with similar functionality. They can consider the tiniest details you could have missed and give you helpful advice.

They have already established a routine for delegating tasks and creating polished workflows. If the project starts from scratch, the customer won’t have to deal with conflicts that may arise. It is highly beneficial too.

Tight cooperation

Narrowing the perspective is one of the biggest challenges of long-term projects. The ability to see the big picture depends on involvement in the proceedings. 

The customer and team members work closely together to obtain visible results and achieve a common goal. They communicate daily, participate in brainstorming to improve workflows and long-term planning, assess the process’s weak and strong points.

This approach is indispensable for overcoming project-related challenges and for the timely solving of unexpected issues.

The dedicated team model allows tight collaboration between the client and the team and within the group of developers. It helps to more efficient long-term planning. The team members are also more involved in contributing to the project, allowing for brainstorming solutions, refining workflows, and assessing the process’s strong and weak points.

The team and the client are constantly trying to solve the issues and challenges. Brainstorm sessions between the owner and the software team are expected to get visible results and work more efficiently.

Fast-paced development cycle

One more advantage of dedicated team models is fast development. The dedicated team can speed things up considerably by quickly adapting to new requirements and bringing their experience and expertise.

The process can proceed quicker than working with other team models because of the focused development team and more hands-on approach from the client.

A dedicated team model is a perfect option for projects that constantly change the requirements according to market performance or technological progress.

Flexibility in changing requirements of the project

If the customer constantly needs to make changes to the project’s development plan, the dedicated model is a great option. Compared to the fixed-price model that applies Waterfall as a standard operation approach, one of the main benefits of dedicated teams is agility. The dedicated team is always open to iterations in the project scope

Continuous integration

The project has to evolve constantly to succeed in big-time. New features must be added, and the existing ones have to be refined. 

The dedicated project team structure can remain the same with no need to set up another team to support the thing or to scale the team; just shift the whole project to another stage.  

The optimization of the product is another crucial process. This requirement is essential in maintaining and growing the product due to evolving technologies.

Summing up the essential advantages of the dedicated team model:

  • A predictable and defined budget.
  • Focusing on tasks and fully dedicated to the particular project.
  • Complete control over the management of the team.
  • Deep understanding of the client’s project and business goals.
  • Continuous communication.
  • Continuous integration. 
  • Improved development speed.
  • Project requirements can be changed all the time.

Disadvantages of dedicated teams

The dedicated team model in outsourcing will perfectly suit a dynamic project with changing requirements and tasks but a defined end goal. Dedicated team model looks like an affordable all-purpose development approach, but it has also disadvantages.

Remote management issues

Controlling a remote team is not easy. It requires a high level of dedication and experience from the project manager, product owner, or technical lead that will manage the project. 

Low efficiency for short-term projects

For big longtime projects that constantly evolve, whose requirements are flexible and change frequently, it is effective to hire a dedicated development team. Working on the same project for some time allows the team to grow together. 

Double-check that the dedicated team model is what you need before selecting such a model. For example, if your project is long-term, but the requirements are final, and the goals are clearly defined, there may be better ways than choosing the dedicated team.

Working in different time zones

Different time zones may become a serious problem if an offshore company is involved. But if the team applies agile development principles, this problem can be solved easily.

However, this problem will never arise if the dedicated team is located in the same country as your customer’s company.

The dedicated development team model has not only advantages but also disadvantages. Stay informed about those disadvantages before hiring a dedicated development team.

It might take some time to hire the right team

If the customer needs to be more involved in selecting the right developers, the recruiting might take more time.

Knowing all the pros and cons of working with the dedicated developers’ team is important. The most crucial thing about this model is that the team will be fully focused on the project to achieve the client’s goals, but the customer has to be deeply involved in all working processes simultaneously.

Why Outsource your software development project?

Whether the project is an established business or a startup doesn’t matter. The dedicated team model can be the best option for both of them. Below, we’ll describe some working scenarios to help with the right decision.

In the following cases hiring a dedicated team can be the optimal way:

  • A startup that needs to be quickly created and looks for the development team to work from scratch. Hiring a remote software development team is usually less expensive than hiring a local team. When hiring a remote team, the customer saves time for hiring and doesn’t spend money for renting a workspace.
  • A tech company that needs to find experienced developers.
  • A tech company that needs new technology expertise.
  • A tech company that operates on one or several big projects and needs to extend the team of developers.

Reasons to hire a dedicated software development team

We’ve analyzed advantages and disadvantages of the dedicated project team’s. To help the customer with the right decision, we have created a checklist. If the answer to most of the statements below is ‘yes’, working with a dedicated team model can be viable.

  • Do the employees of the customer have the required experience and expertise? If not, help from the outside is needed.
  • Is it a large project? If the project is large with multiple tasks and requirements, it may be difficult for the employees to bring it to a successful conclusion.
  • Is it a long-term project? Large-scale projects are the most common use case for dedicated teams. In case of limited time and luck of experienced employees, a dedicated team will help to take care of the development process and boost it.
  • Does the customer need a great deal of flexibility? The dedicated development team structure is built in a way that gives the project the flexibility to evolve constantly. An unexpected change of priorities often happens, especially for startups. A dedicated team helps to add new features or even redesign the project completely time-efficient and reach objectives before the deadline. The quality will not be compromised as well.
  • Does the customer wish to have control over the resources? With a dedicated model, the customer gains complete management control over the project and the team running it. Dedicated teams are usually more cost-efficient than in-house developers, so it is an excellent option to hire a dedicated team if the budget is tight.
  • Does the customer need more control over the day-to-day process? If the customer is a control freak or wish not to stay in the dark about how the project is going on, it will be possible to obtain this information from progress-tracking tools used by the team and from daily reports.

Dedicated teams – how we can help?

Cooperation with a dedicated team usually has the following stages: discovery, team setup, and development. Let’s explore each step in more detail.

The discovery phase 

During the discovery phase, which is the beginning stage of the potential collaboration with a dedicated team, usually happens the following:

  • defining the scope of the project
  • identifying a needed number of developers 
  • understanding the expertise in a particular field and the team’s skillset 
  • determining the costs of development

After defining the project scope, and the other requirements, the customer and development company proceed to the next phase – the set up of the team.

The team set up phase 

This phase allows both sides to decide on forming a partnership and the contract terms. The development company signes the contract and sets-up a dedicated team. The client works with the dedicated delivery manager, who keeps the client and the team unified, and oversees the project timeline.

In case of a need for additional recruiting, the client will work with a dedicated recruiter to find developers and organize interviews with potential candidates.

Experienced candidates will be found from the available employees of the company’s pool. 

Development

The development process begins after the first team member is assigned to the project. The development company facilitates operational tasks, assigns issues to the hired dedicated development team, organizes a work environment, and taxes. Each team member has to attend regular face-to-face meetings with an HR manager to sustain a high level of employee motivation and retention.

What is dedicated project team structure?

Each dedicated project team structure includes the following key players who work on the project: Front-end and back-end developers, QA engineers, UX/UI designers, DevOps engineers, Business analysts, project managers. 

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