How to Find and Hire a Dedicated Software Development Team

Sometimes hiring just one developer may be challenging, but what if you need to hire a complete software development team? The solution is to work according to the dedicated development team model. Following this cooperation model, you’ll get your own team of developers, each of whom has been carefully selected, taking into account all your requirements, for the period you need. What’s more, it comes out cheaper than hiring your own developers on staff.

But before you hire a special team, you should find answers to the following questions:

• What Projects are the Dedicated Team Model Suitable for?
• When Won’t the Dedicated Team Model Work?
• Where do I Find a Dedicated Team?
• How do I Choose the Company?
• What are the Steps to Hiring a Dedicated Development Team?
• How do I Manage the Dedicated Team?

What Projects are the Dedicated Team Model Suitable for?

Big projects that are expected to grow bigger

You’d better delegate the development process to a dedicated team if your large project is expected to become even bigger. Such an approach helps to gather the team quickly, avoid a tedious recruitment process, and choose the necessary members yourself. Your internal team can take on more important tasks, while the dedicated team takes all the additional ones.

Long-term projects with numerous tasks

As you might have guessed, the dedicated team model is versatile. Refusing to be flexible means missing opportunities and struggling to create stunning projects, especially in such a rapidly evolving industry as IT. It’s okay to adjust requirements throughout the software development lifecycle, as long as you have a reliable team to support you and provide high-quality service.

Projects with fixed and well-planned workflow

Since you have invited an entire dedicated team to develop a project for you, you should constantly keep them busy. They must have a detailed plan with particular tasks; otherwise, you will pay for the time they sit and wait for assignments. This approach is bad for both sides: you waste your money, and the team wastes time they could have devoted to new projects.

Companies that plan to expand

If your business is rapidly growing, you will definitely need to hire more in-house specialists. The dedicated team that has been working on your projects can help you with hiring new developers, because they know the pros and cons of the apps and will thus be able to induct new employees. Moreover, if you are planning to penetrate the market where your dedicated team is located, they can give you some insights into it.

When Won’t the Dedicated Team Model Work?

Limited budget and tight deadlines

As your business grows, the dedicated team grows with you. Your project can sometimes require some functionality be added; you may decide to build a mobile app for your web solution, or vice versa; you may want to change the project manager; or you may feel that some team members are not necessary anymore. Any of these changes are easily made when cooperating with a dedicated team. But if you’ve got a fixed budget, it will damage your flexibility.

Small projects

It seems to be simpler to find remote software developers for short-term and small projects. The dedicated team model is suitable for situations where you know the project will be big, where there are no deadlines, or where you know for certain what team members you need.

The Project Scope is Set

If you have invested a lot of time and effort in creating a complete app development plan, describing its functions, and choosing programming languages and technologies, and if you want your dedicated team to be guided by all this information, a dedicated team will not help you to achieve your goals. In such a case, it’s better to go for the fixed-price model.

You Don’t Trust the Supplier

Any relationship, especially a business one, is built on trust, and collaboration with a dedicated team requires even more trust than other cooperation models. With a fixed-price model, your team gets full instructions, and with the time & material model, you can stop the partnership whenever you feel you don’t get along.

Where do I Find a Dedicated Team?

Now that you know whether the dedicated team model is an appropriate solution for you, the next step is to find it. If you simply enter ‘find a dedicated team,’ you will be faced with too many options to analyze and compare. Try to narrow down your search by going through the following websites:

• Freelance platforms like Upwork, TopTal
• B2B portals like Clutch, GoodFirms
• GitHub or StackOverflow
• LinkedIn

Best Countries to Hire Remote Developers

Software development rates usually vary depending not only on skills and technologies but also on location. Let’s look at the average hourly rates in different countries:

Onshore software development hourly rates

The word ‘onshore’ usually refers to the USA and Western Europe, including the UK, Germany, France, and the Nordic countries. The average software development rates here are high due to higher standards of living and salary levels. They may vary between $50 and $200 per hour, but if you choose a perfect combination of price and quality, the price will be close to $100 per hour. Thus, the price is the biggest disadvantage of onshore outsourcing, combined with the limited talent pool in some developed countries.

Offshore software development hourly rates

India, China, Pakistan, and the Philippines are also popular outsourcing countries, with India being the leading destination. Nevertheless, Indian IT services are criticized for low quality and communication problems.

Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, is another offshore outsourcing location that has joined the list recently. However, they can’t be considered reliable outsourcing locations due to a lack of evidence.

In comparison to onshore development, offshore outsourcing costs much less, varying from $15 to $30 per hour. Still, remember that choosing to outsource to offshore regions doesn’t guarantee the quality of your future product, even if you pay more than the average.

Along with the risk of poor quality, offshore development often comes with a lack of communication and cultural barriers that can damage your business. On the other hand, these regions are popular destinations for outsourcing some minor tasks.

Nearshore development hourly rates

Nearshore countries depend on the region in which your business is located. For US companies, nearshore markets are South America, Mexico, and Canada. For European countries, they are Eastern Europecountries. However, many US startups and companies choose to hire dedicated teams, or even open their next office, in Poland, Georgia, and Ukraine, since they provide quality service at a reasonable cost.

This region offers to hire developers for $20 to $50 per hour, while the average rate is around $35 per hour. Of course, rates may vary from region to region: e.g., Poland is more expensive than Ukraine or Georgia.

How do I Choose the Company?

Choosing the right partner to provide a dedicated team is a time-consuming process. You must search, sort, and select appropriate options, analyze them, and, finally, choose. Software development is like the construction of a house: if you hire an unskilled team to build the foundation, your project will fall apart. To prevent this, we have listed the most important aspects to take into account when choosing a company:

1. Look through their portfolio. This will help you ascertain the level of services they provide and whether they have sufficient experience to implement your idea. Viewing the portfolio of your future partner allows you to roughly estimate their level of programming and design. In addition, check if their projects are available in app stores, as well as their ratings.
2. Read client reviews. Previous clients’ feedback is the best indicator of how the company cooperates with its vendors. To find it, visit specialized websites like Clutch or GoodFirms. There, you will find out if the team has worked with projects similar to yours, what services the company is focused on, and whether it has won any awards. All of this will show you how popular the company is amongst your competitors.
3. Pay attention to the company’s website. You can understand the company’s standards by analyzing its social media accounts, as well as their website and the content they publish there. Browse through the website thoroughly, and read their blog: you can find a lot of important information there regarding their workflow, working conditions, cooperation model, etc.
4. Consider how quickly the company responds to your messages. The faster they answer, the more interested they are in your project. On the other hand, if the company is small, it is possible that they have no sales department. Thus, they should reply to you within 48 hours. In any event, when they do respond, you will see how motivated they are to work with you, if they ask a lot of questions to clarify your goals.

What are the Steps to Hiring a Dedicated Development Team?

The hiring process requires thorough preparation and analysis. To make it easier for you, we offer the following list of tips:

1. Choose Candidate Companies

Pick 2–5 companies and analyze their reviews on specialized websites, as we mentioned above. To avoid overcomplicating the decision, don’t choose more than 7 candidates. Listen to recommendations from friends and colleagues.

2. Find out everything about them

Learn what services the potential vendors provide, how many years they have been on the market, what their employees’ skills are, whether they adequately speak/understand English, etc. And, of course, ask every company to share their pricing, and compare them.

3. Draw up a detailed job description

Write an extensive job description, giving as much information as possible, to find a skilled dedicated team. With a thorough description, developers will evaluate their chances of success. If they feel that they can’t implement it, they will tell you.

4. Think about team structure

Keep in mind that there are different ways of gathering a dedicated team: you can hire a complete team of software developers, or you can start with one employee and add others later as needed.

5. Check your email daily

The chosen companies will send you and other potential recruiters CVs of their candidates daily. If you don’t check your inbox regularly, good employees can be hired by others.

6. Interview developers

The next benefit of hiring a dedicated team is that you interview candidates yourself. You choose how the interview will proceed: whether it is simple or complicated, group or face-to-face, contains tests or not, and so on.

7. Give feedback

Give feedback to the company and the candidates as soon as you can. This is very important because while you may be thinking everything over, the dedicated team may choose to cooperate with someone else.

8. Hire the team

Don’t think for too long: it can spoil your reputation as a recruiter and the team may refuse to work with you. On the other hand, take enough time to ensure that the team fits your requirements.

9. Start working on your project

Start by introducing the new team to your in-house employees, and distribute the tasks, responsibilities, and tools between them.

How do I Manage the Dedicated Team?

Although it may seem hard to manage a team that you can’t see in person, it’s not so complicated. The following management methods will help you manage your employees efficiently.

Scheduled standups

Have regular calls with the team using videoconferencing tools, and ask each member the following questions:

• What has been accomplished since the last call?
• What challenges have you encountered?
• What are you planning to do by the next call?

Having daily video meetings keeps everyone in the loop and allows workers to organize their thoughts on what they’ve done and what they are going to do in the future. These calls should be short, and everyone should speak clearly and to the point. If someone deviates from this rule, goes into unnecessary detail, or needs help, contact that person personally after the general meeting.

Collaboration tools

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools you can use to keep track of your dedicated team and its activities:

Standards of work procedures

Think ahead and prepare answers to possible team questions before they ask them. Make sure they are aware of your work processes and are following them correctly. Who is responsible for this or that aspect? Who creates new tasks, and how they do it? What tools do you use to share files? Who can help with emerging problems? The dedicated team must hear the answers to all these questions from you, or easily find them in special documents.

Constant feedback from both sides

To manage the dedicated team, you need to be responsive. Developers will constantly have questions, both minor and critical, that you will have to answer to make sure your product meets your expectations. Your feedback is the only thing that sets the direction for future development. You can’t just randomly meet a remote developer in the office with an idea for improving your project.

Your reactions and responses often determine the next steps in development, so if you take too long to respond or don’t respond at all, the team won’t know what to do next. This slows the development process and frustrates your workers.

Communication with your dedicated team

Sometimes it can be difficult for people to talk to others, especially in a foreign language. Nevertheless, communication is an essential part of teamwork. You need to be constantly aware of who is doing what in the team. Therefore, make your communication consistent, regular, transparent, and detailed, but brief enough to avoid ambiguity. If you find that team members are consistently misunderstanding each other or your instructions, offer to help them improve their English skills.

Conclusion

At first glance, hiring a remote dedicated team seems complicated because there are a lot of essential aspects to keep in mind, but, in reality, everything is easier than it may seem. A good supplier will be as interested in successful results as you are, since their goal is to make your business grow. The main thing you need to understand is the crucial role of communication at every stage.

If you still have questions about hiring a dedicated software development team, or if you want to make it in Georgia, we at VironIT will be glad to help you. Don’t hesitate to contact us at info@vironit.com.