Why should you work with a dedicated developer?
There has never been a greater demand for software development in business. Increasingly, companies are turning to software solutions to empower workflows, meet business needs, and provide new customer experiences.
Innovative mobile and web apps can transform the way your business works, while consumers are increasingly demanding a seamless, omnichannel user experience.
To keep up with this demand for new software products, the largest enterprises have invested heavily in their in-house development teams. However, small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) don’t have the same level of resources to match the tech industry’s major players.
That’s why hiring a dedicated developer is such a lucrative investment. A dedicated developer can help you create exceptional digital products without the upfront cost of an expanded in-house team or the risk of hiring freelancers.
What are dedicated development teams? Why should you hire a dedicated developer? How can you ensure you get the best out of your dedicated development team?
In this article, we’ll give you a complete rundown of dedicated development teams and why you need them in 2023. Let’s go!
What is a Dedicated Developer?
A dedicated developer is a professional software developer who works exclusively for a specific client or company on a full-time basis. They are essentially the middle-ground between hiring freelancers and building a permanent in-house development team.
A dedicated development team is put together and provided by a software development company - where the resources and expertise of many experienced developers are pooled together within one organization.
These teams are usually hired for large projects that need more attention, planning and oversight. The dedicated developer model offers businesses a more efficient, reliable development team for a fraction of the cost of going in-house. We’ll discuss the key benefits of dedicated developers later on in this article.
Hiring a dedicated team is essentially a form of outsourcing. This is an increasingly popular solution for businesses who don’t have the in-house expertise to build the digital products needed to keep up our the modern business landscape.
What is the difference between dedicated developers and freelancers?
In contrast, freelance developers are part-time software developers that tend to work with multiple clients at a time. Like dedicated developers, they are usually hired on a project-by-project basis, but they are able to dedicate fewer resources to an individual client.
Freelancers are typically hired on a short-term basis, whereas contracts with dedicated developers tend to be larger in scale. With dedicated developers, clients have direct access to the developer for communication and collaboration, while freelance developers may not be as available or responsive.
What are the different models of a dedicated development team?
Dedicated developers can provide services to a business in a wide variety of ways and methods. Here are the main team models to choose from:
- Full-time Dedicated Team: A team of developers is exclusively dedicated to working on your single project and will work on it until completion. This is the most common dedicated model for business software development.
- Part-time Dedicated Team: This is a similar model to full-time, but this team will also take on other projects and won’t dedicate their entire working time on your project.
- This still differs from freelancing as you’ll have access to the team and its project manager throughout your project period.
- Outstaffing: If your in-house or freelance team is experiencing some capacity issues, a dedicated developer could join it to help complete work on a project-by-project basis. This model is designed to plug gaps in your existing teams - and you won’t experience the same productivity benefits of a full-time dedicated team.
What are the two main pricing models of dedicated teams?
- Time and Material: A team of developers works on a project on an hourly basis, with the client paying for the actual hours worked.
- Fixed-price: A team of developers works on a project for a fixed price, with the scope of work and deliverables clearly defined upfront.
Software companies may employ a hybrid combination of any of the above models - and you can often tailor your contracts to the specific needs of the project and client.
What are the benefits of hiring a dedicated developer?
Why should you hire a dedicated development team? Here are the top benefits to consider when choosing the type of team you create your digital products with:
Faster product completion
A dedicated development team will help you ship your digital product faster. A dedicated developer is hired on a full-time basis to work solely on your project. This means they can focus all their time, energy and attention on building your product.
By opting for a dedicated team, you can ensure your developers fully understand your project and its requirements - and don’t have to waste time onboarding new developers and waiting for them to get to grips with your project.
How is this model faster than building your own team? It can take months - or even years - to scout, hire and train an in-house team to match the effectiveness of an experienced dedicated team.
Dedicated developers from a software company like Qarbon IT means you unlock the tools and expertise of that organization. These companies will have the right technologies to speed up development, and will also know neat solutions and best practices needed to develop products in your industry.
Improved cost-effectiveness
The dedicated development model suits businesses that want to bring down the cost of developing their digital product. Hiring the right dedicated developer can help improve the cost-effectiveness of your products in the long term.
This is the primary reason why businesses choose to outsource projects to dedicated teams. In fact, Deloitte found that 70% of businesses cited saving money as their main reason for outsourcing software development.
It is safer and cheaper to hire a team of dedicated experts from a single software company than build a team yourself or hire many freelancers.
- Hiring freelancers leads to low initial costs, but can often lead to delays and revisions: It takes longer to complete projects with freelancers, and you’ll likely have to cycle through multiple developers throughout your project.
- Freelancers are billed hourly, and this time adds up. In the long run, you’ll probably spend more working with freelancers.
- Building your own development team is expensive: Recruiting and interviewing developers take time and money, while training costs also mount up quickly. There are also the logistical costs of housing a team to consider. You’ll need to pay for office space if you work on location. You’ll also have to set up the usual infrastructure for hiring employees - including payroll, IT services, etc.
- Dedicated developers are contractors who are ready to start building your product immediately. You can skip the sunk costs of in-house teams!
Improved flexibility of resources and manpower
Working with a dedicated development team from a software company can help you scale up and down your resources to meet the needs of your project.
Software development projects are complex - and how many development resources you’ll need will likely change over time.
With an in-house team, it’s unfeasible to hire and fire developers during points in the project when less help is needed. This often leads to wasted capacity and can quickly cause you to go over budget.
The ability to scale down your development resources as well as up is a key benefit of working with a development team. If you know what stages of your product development cycle will need more or fewer developers, you can build this into your initial contract.
If your project requirements dramatically change during the development cycle, you won’t have to pause development to hire more developers. A software development company can pull resources from other dedicated teams and manage any changing needs.
Delegate management to experienced project managers
A dedicated team will be led by a project manager or development lead. This model provides you with a single point of contact to get in touch with your dedicated development team.
This allows you to take a hands-off approach to building your digital product, where you can trust in the expertise of proven project managers. This team leader will manage the developers on their team and will ensure updates and communication in an effective manner.
Poor management is a common pitfall of in-house teams, while the responsibility of managing a freelance team often falls onto a non-developer (or you!). Dedicated teams allow decision-makers to focus on running their business, and not waste time wrestling a freelance team of developers.
Improved access and communication
As dedicated developers are committed to your project on a full-time basis, you’ll have direct access to your team to solve any issues and provide updates.
Poor communication is one of the most significant drawbacks of working with freelance developers. A freelancer has to handle communication with multiple clients, and will often have irregular work hours. With a freelance developer, it’s difficult to establish a working relationship tailored to your business and how you work.
This level of consistent communication can help to ensure that the project stays on track and that any issues are addressed in a timely manner. Clear and consistent communication is crucial in software development. It helps to ensure that everyone involved in the project is on the same page.
We’ve discussed how dedicated teams tend to have a central point of contact - a project manager or lead developer. A leader of a tight-knit team can provide effective, actionable communications to clients in a way that isn’t possible for freelancers.
It’s also important not to understate the benefits of building a long-term relationship with your development team. This simplifies communications, helps avoid misunderstanding and ensures you’re all on the same page.
No need for software, hardware and development infrastructure
A dedicated team will already have the necessary tools to complete your software projects. Kitting out an in-house development team with the systems and development tools they need can be expensive.
The infrastructure costs of an in-house team include:
- Hardware: Development systems need plenty of power, and purchasing multiple workstations is a significant expense - especially for small businesses.
- Software: You’ll need to pay for the licenses for software kits, development tools and key technologies.
- Networking: Web development requires a fast, reliable networking solution - and enterprise-grade networks are very expensive.
The cost of this infrastructure is factored into the price of a dedicated developer contract. Software companies are able to spread these expenses across their clients over time. You’ll only pay for what you use!
Bring specialized expertise to a project
Another key benefit of hiring a dedicated developer is that they can bring specialized expertise to a project. Dedicated developers often have experience and expertise in a specific area or technology, which can be extremely valuable for a business.
This specialized expertise can help to ensure that the project is completed to the highest standards and that the final product meets the client's specific requirements.
For example, Polish crypto startup Algory needed a custom scanner to monitor trade opportunities in the cryptocurrency market. In working with a dedicated development team, this client benefitted from our expertise and previous experience building finance and trading applications.
Dedicated teams bring so much more experience to the table. They’ve worked with plenty of clients in a wide array of industries. They will understand how to create the best digital experiences for your business needs.
We highly recommend examining the case studies and portfolios of any dedicated software developer you consider hiring. It’ll reveal what industries they’ve built apps for in the past and what technologies they are familiar with.
Provide cohesive end-to-end development services
A dedicated team will be able to follow your project from its initial planning phase until its completion. By sticking with the same team of developers, you help guarantee a full, cohesive development experience.
To ensure this, you should look for a software development company that offers end-to-end services, and provides:
- Product discovery: Our dedicated teams will explore your product idea and get to grips with the key requirements of the project. This stage is important for identifying user pain points and demonstrating product-market fit. The desired user flow identified during this stage should stay consistent throughout the development process.
- Workshops to identify technology and project requirements: Once you’ve discovered the business needs, it’s time to figure out how we’ll bring your project to life. It’s this step that really boosts the productivity and effectiveness of a dedicated team - as we can refer to the software strategy during development.
- Development: Then, it’s time to make the project. We use the same developers throughout this process. This tends to result in cleaner code, reduces lead times and helps avoid feature and scope creep.
- Launch: Your development team will plan and execute your product launch. We’ll also monitor the performance and health of your application and watch out for launch bugs and glitches.
Best Practices for Hiring The Right Dedicated Developers
As with any hiring decision, it can be difficult to find the right dedicated development team for your project.
Here are some of our top tips for discovering the ideal developer:
Look for developers with relevant experience and expertise
A dedicated team offers you a breadth of experience to help guide your project and find success in your field. That’s why we highly recommend finding developers who have a proven track record in the product area/industry you’re looking to target.
How can a development team demonstrate this?
- Past clients: Do the past clients match up with your expectations for that software company? Does it show they have experience solving similar problems to your planned product?
- Testimonials: Here, you can find the specific set of skills that other clients appreciate.
- Case studies and portfolios: Deeper dives into how a dedicated team approached a similar project to yours can reveal the specialist expertise that matters to you.
That’s exactly why we post our case studies from past clients - demonstrating our wide portfolio of projects. Check the collection out here!
Clearly Define the Project Scope
Before hiring a dedicated developer, it is important to clearly define the scope of the project, including the deliverables, deadlines, and required skills and expertise.
These requirements should be strongly linked to your business goals and needs. That’s why a product discovery process is so important. It's also important to establish a clear timeline for the project, including specific milestones and deadlines for completion. This helps align expectations and will avoid miscommunication and delays to your project.
Establish a strong relationship with a project manager
As your primary point of contact, your project manager is an essential part of your development team. Having regular contact and comprehensively discussing your project with this team leader is crucial to keeping the entire dedicated team on the same page.
When you work with Qarbon IT, we will assign you a project manager with experience in your industry from the very start of the discovery phase. They will guide you through the development process toward project completion.
Hire an outstanding dedicated development team
A dedicated development team offers a flexible and efficient method for building digital products. The industry is growing fast, with the growth of software development outsourcing expected to reach 70% by the end of 2023. Working with a software development company that has plenty of experience and expertise is vital.
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