What is a dedicated team?
A dedicated software development team is a group of remote technical specialists who can reinforce your in-house team by contributing their expertise to your project. As a rule, these are two to five experts who work tightly with your office developers and are directly managed by your team lead.
In most cases, the members of your dedicated development team work on your project full-time, 40 hours a week. They are de facto, a part of your team, as they participate in all work meetings and agile rituals, including sync-ups, daily stand-ups, planning, and retrospectives. De jure, though, they are the employees of your IT vendor.
The search, hiring, and onboarding of a DDT is a full-fledged business service that is provided by outstaffing IT companies. In contrast to traditional IT outsourcing with customer-vendor relations, outstaffing is more of a strategic partnership where every party cares about the development and success of the other.
Comparing dedicated development teams to fixed-bid outsourcing
Here’s a fast comparison of the main differences between DDT and fixed-bid outsourcing.
| Dedicated development team | Fixed-bid outsourcing | |
| Relations | The relations between the IT outstaffing vendor and a customer are more of a partnership, in which both parties are interested in the strategic development of each other. | Traditional relations between the IT vendor and a customer, where all requirements for the final project, price, deadlines, and conditions of cooperation are regulated by the contract. |
| Price | Working with a dedicated development team is considered one of the most affordable ways to get the necessary technical expertise and achieve a competitive advantage. Prices for outstaffing services can be ten times lower than the services of traditional outsourcing. | Outsourcing IT companies with fixed bids abide by strict contract terms and have to take into account all possible risks before setting a price. For this reason, fixed-bid outsourcing is usually the most expensive IT service. |
| Quantity of people on the project | The average quantity of tech talents hired by a customer for one project is two to five experts with a particular specialization. | Traditionally, to develop and deploy a project from A to Z, an outsourcing company offers its client to hire a team of 10-12 people: developers, QA engineers, analysts, designers, and managers. |
| Agility | High agility of cooperation. The IT vendor reacts promptly to any changes on behalf of the customer. Remote members of the dedicated team maintain a level of agility, adopted by the in-house team. | Low agility of cooperation. As all the requirements for the project are pre-described, a customer can’t expect amendments in the development required by the changes in analysis, on the market, clients’ responses, etc. |
| Involvement in the project | Maximum involvement thanks to cross-functional teams and understanding of what happens with the project in all aspects, from marketing and design to deployment and sales. | Low involvement due to the lack of context. Little to no participation of the customer in the process of development can lead to poor understanding by the team of what is going on in sales, marketing, and strategic development of the project. |
When hiring a dedicated development team should be your first choice?
DDT is not a one-size-fits-all business solution. However, in many cases, this model becomes the best choice. Here are just some of such situations:
- You need an affordable way to add innovations to your project and gain a competitive advantage.
- You can’t find a specialist with a particular skill set in your city and ready to broaden your search to the whole world.
- You have an in-house team of developers which you want to reinforce with experienced tech talents.
- The requirements of your project are constantly changing so you need maximum agility from your development team.
- You want all your employees, including the remote ones, to be a part of your corporate culture and share your values.
Summing up
Hiring a dedicated team from a trustworthy outstaffing company, like MWDN, is a way to boost technical expertise in your project at an affordable price. With the help of a reliable IT vendor, you can dramatically reinforce your in-house team and gain an advantage over your competitors. Another particularity of working with DDT is that these are partnership relations, so your IT vendor is deeply involved in the development process and cares about your strategic success.