How to Hire a Dedicated Software Development Team in 2024

Regarding the type of software development, One of the main options for embodying your ideas is to hire a dedicated team in terms of IT outsourcing. Moreover, dedicated remote software development teams are popular not only as a solution for developing software projects from scratch. Instead, hiring a dedicated team allows a variety of use cases, including the improvement or extension of already existing projects, continuing the development, implementing new features, etc.

There are numerous advantages of hiring a dedicated development team instead of regular in-house development. For instance, business owners can hire a remote dedicated software development team of niche-experienced developers. It is also very cost-effective. Cheap is not equal to quality. In this case, it is arguable.

For example, if you consider outsourcing software development to Eastern Europe, like choosing Ukraine for outsourcing. Thus, you will find out, that Ukrainian dedicated remote software developers for hire are showing great development results with a much cheaper paycheck. Also, there are numerous examples of well-known software projects that came from Ukraine.

To cut a long story short, choosing a dedicated development team model is a great way how to develop almost any type of software development process. It allows you to save time and resources, or even minimize your role in the software development lifecycle. In-house teams require establishing numerous processes like project management or constant consultations. At the same time, the IT outsourcing approach requires only one step - to hire a dedicated remote software development team.

Most dedicated team model vendors will take care of all related aspects. It includes software project planning and estimation, setting up the agreements, choosing the tech stack, outsourced project management, etc. But now the question appears: How to correctly hire dedicated development teams for software projects?

Discovery Phase of Project for Dedicated Team Model

First thing first, you need to plan your software project before you hire a dedicated team. You will plan everything again anyway, after hiring a dedicated development team. However, before choosing an IT outsourcing company, you have to clarify your requirements and expectations:

Whether it will be a cross-platform app, a website, a hybrid application for mobile devices, or, a native iOS/Android app, will you choose the agile or plan-driven development approach, etc?

Frankly, each of these options directly impacts your final choice. Almost every dedicated software development team can develop any of these applications. Still, the developers for hire will vary. Moreover, some companies are also niche-experienced, i.e. they can show better or worse results in different industries.

Having general information about your projects you will be able to make a better choice and will know whom to hire. This information includes:

• preferred platform (iOS, Android, Windows, Web, etc)
• available resources (How much time and money do you have?)
• scale of work (How many features are required, and how complex are they?)
• possible tech stack (Python, JavaScript, AWS, React, APIs, etc.)

All the foregoing results in choosing a dedicated development team model, or only a few freelance developers for hire. For instance, if you are going to create a simple flashlight app for Android with only a few features, you don’t need to hire a dedicated development team of senior software engineers, experienced in web applications for eCommerce.

After you figured out the main working aspects, you will have to look for a reliable dedicated software development team vendor, experienced in such developments. The easiest way is to simply check their website and overall awareness of the brand, meaning that you will need to look for them on various B2B research and listing platforms. For instance, Incora is recognized by GoodFirms as the best company to work with.

So, your research will end up with a few candidates, who meet all your requirements and seem to be able to develop your product. Therefore, your next step is to contact these companies and arrange a meeting.

During these meetings, you will discuss your plans and the possibilities of the company, terms and agreements, estimate the required time and resources for the software development process, consider possible developers, etc.

Once again, these consultations are not final. Eventually, at this stage, you will have to proceed with a standard software development process, which helps to “round up the numbers” and clarify all the development-related aspects.

At this stage, the question appears: is hiring a dedicated development team a good business strategy?

Is Choosing a Dedicated Development Team Model Good for Business?

The short answer is - yes, it is. Getting into the details, choosing a dedicated development team model is choosing full-fledged software development as a service.

It is used in multiple cases and aims to implement and develop new features or optimize the already existing ones. Additionally, choosing a dedicated development team model can be a helpful instrument in other development processes.

To make it short, when you hire a dedicated development team to do the job, that you can’t do by yourself or don’t have enough time/expertise.

Why Do Companies Choose Hiring a Dedicated Software Development Team?

It is usually used by product companies and startups.

White Label App Development for Product Companies

The main reasons for hiring a dedicated software development team for product companies are the development and optimization of extra features, while the main software development process is done by in-house employees. As a result, major companies that choose the dedicated team model can pay more attention to essential app functionality, finding third-party developers to do the rest.

Hiring a dedicated development team from Eastern Europe is a good business strategy not only for reducing the time for talent research, candidate interviewing, and hiring processes but also for cost savings due to the local labor costs in different regions.

Finally, choosing a dedicated development team model gives access to a wider development community and talent pool of app developers for hire. While your company is based in the USA, your dedicated software development team is most likely from Eastern Europe or other popular IT outsourcing destinations. This makes the hiring process much faster and cheaper, still showing great results.

Product companies usually choose a dedicated team model for limited task performance and time-limited collaborations. Thus, it is easier to hire a dedicated development team for a specific period, instead of full-time app developers for hire.

Hiring a Dedicated Development Team for a Startup

Startup projects outsource core processes, including development itself. A new business with limited resources is more flexible than established companies. So, startups have an opportunity to outsource all processes except for management.

Choosing a dedicated development team model is cheaper and faster, which makes it an ideal option for startups. Hence, startups can hire a dedicated team, with great expertise and lower salary.

While startups are considering a dedicated software team hiring model as the main way of white-label app development, product companies hire dedicated teams to deliver extra functionality, optimize or improve existing functions, etc.

Why Dedicated Software Development Team Can Be a Bad Decision?

Before explaining why the dedicated software team hiring model is a win-win strategy for both sides, let’s consider when it may not be an option. There are some cases when a dedicated team model will cause more problems than solutions.

Legal Requirements and Regulations for Dedicated Team Model

It has a lot of extra requirements and regulations to take care of and brings new challenges. When you hire a dedicated team - you will have to deal with international laws and regulations.

Apart from very standard rules for employment and cooperation, business owners will have to deal with the new laws, related specifically to the IT industry, and affiliated fields. One of the most obvious examples is the General Data Protection Regulation, or simply GDPR.

It is a regulation, adopted by the European Union, which sets rules for software companies to behave with the personal information of EU citizens. It informs software product companies about what they can and can’t do with such data. Besides, this regulation also establishes and defines the terms of hiring a dedicated software development team and similar collaborations.

For instance, it requires both sides to sign a Data Processing Agreement (DPA), which legally defines everything, related to sensitive personal data of EU citizens, how it can be used, what security policies should look like, etc.

It is not the only example of laws, that directly impact software development. As for now, most countries have their alternatives like FISMA or HIPAA in the United States. Most likely, the number of such regulations and new laws will keep increasing, making a dedicated team model less profitable, compared to in-house development.

Additionally, some types of applications or data they may contain can be suspended from dedicated team model cooperation and IT outsourcing.

Lack of Control Over Dedicated Software Development Team

The next potential drawback of the dedicated software team hiring model is the potential lack of control and offshore dedicated development team management.

Having an in-house software development team makes it easier to control and monitor all the working aspects. It gives both symbolic and physical access to hired developers and their working environment. To rephrase it, business owners can fully control software projects and take a more active part in the development, having access to any aspect of the job.

On the flip side, the dedicated team model offers less control. When you hire a dedicated team, it is located in another place. So, they are more independent, performing the tasks, discussing potential changes by themselves, and only informing product owners about the progress.

To cut a long story short, the only possible way to control an outsourced dedicated software development team is to actively communicate with your remote employees and use various KPIs to measure your vendor.

Sometimes, it may be crucial for contractors to actively participate in working processes and have full control over the development. Thus, hiring a dedicated development team is not an option for such cases. It is still possible to improve the situation by improving the communication between the owner and the dedicated development team vendor.

Possible Development Quality Issues

Another possible drawback of hiring a dedicated development team - is the poor product quality and efficiency of dedicated developers.

Honestly, the independent nature of software development outsourcing is not a primary reason for poor quality. However, combined with not knowing how to hire a dedicated team it may easily end up with poor results.

We are not saying, that all software development outsourcing companies are incompetent or trick. Yet, it would be wrong to state, that all of them are reliable and effective. So, if the product owner will hire a dedicated team with no experience - the result will be devastating.

Truth be told, this is probably the most arguable drawback of the dedicated software team hiring model. There are numerous ways to avoid risks. For example, do more detailed research before you hire a dedicated team, check its background of this and feedback, use the KPIs, hire app developers with proven experience, etc.

Finally, don’t forget, that hiring dedicated development teams is not the only option of IT outsourcing. Apart from full-fledged teams, you can always rely on standalone app developers for hire, or consider outsfaffing services. Besides, this model partly covers some of the foregoing drawbacks.

What Outstaffing Dedicated Team Model Stand for?

Outstaffing is very similar to the dedicated software team hiring model. The main difference between them is the scale of your team extension.

IT outsourcing is about hiring a dedicated development team of several software engineers at once. It is a very useful approach with countless solutions for different tasks. For instance, it is ideal, if the client has no relation to the IT industry. So, instead of hiring an in-house team and dealing with all the related aspects, product owners can simply hire a dedicated team, that will take care of everything.

It is a popular service among software development companies as well. When the product becomes more complex or scales, companies need to develop new functionality or take care of existing features. So, it is easier to hire a hire dedicated development team instead of looking for new in-house developers. Such services are used even by the tech giants like Google and Facebook.

But what do companies do, if they need only one or two developers, or simply don’t want to hire a dedicated team?

In such cases, they should use the outstaffing model. It is the same as IT outsourcing but proposes a single or a few specialists. Still, it doesn’t mean that some of these two solutions are better or worse. They are just different ways, depending on the project requirements and needs. Niche-experienced developers can significantly upscale your software product and replace the whole team, if they are chosen wisely.

What are the Benefits of Outstaffing the Dedicated Team Model?

There are multiple reasons for choosing a dedicated development team model.

Apart from allowing finding an app developer for hire in a very fast way, the team extension model proposes also other useful options. Dedicated team extension allows hiring a third-party expert in a certain field for development or even consultations for a short-term project.

Sometimes, business owners don’t need a senior developer for hire to work daily. However, such expertise can bring a lot of value in certain circumstances. Thus, by hiring a dedicated team extension, business owners can find app developers for hire from any industry very quickly and with barely any effort.

Outstaffing dedicated team model is a global phenomenon. Global-oriented nature gives many more options, compared to local practice, like access to a worldwide pool of talents.

Finally, hiring a dedicated team extension and IT outsourcing proposals help to significantly decrease the final price of the product development. It is not a secret, that the salary of app developers for hire significantly impacts the overall software development expenses. Thus, having an opportunity to outsource software development to Eastern Europe is a great benefit for many such projects.

The salary differences in various countries are visible to the naked eye. For example, finding dedicated app developers for hire from Eastern Europe will be much cheaper than the same services within the US.

The dedicated team outstaffing model is a great solution to simplify the hiring process. It helps to find experienced app developers for hire, making it faster and cutting the product cost. Besides, developers from Ukraine or Poland do not lack experience and even overcome their Western colleagues in certain IT industries.

When To Choose Outstaffing Dedicated Software Team Hiring Model?

Despite the clear benefits of hiring a dedicated team extension, it is worth defining when to choose outstaffing over IT outsourcing.

There are two main cases when choosing a dedicated development team model or outstaffing is preferable:

• When the client wants to develop a software product, having no background experience in the IT industry.
• When the project becomes more complex or scalable, requiring extra hands to deal with some functionality or features.

The first case is more suited for IT outsourcing: a dedicated software development team is a better deal for developing from scratch or implementing numerous functional components at once.

At the same time, the second option can be achieved with both team extensions or hiring a dedicated development team, depending on the context and the scope of work to do.

These are not the only possible circumstances to adopt outstaffing or IT outsourcing. The reasons for considering one over another are different and sometimes unpredictable. So, let’s clarify when to choose to hire a dedicated team extension over a dedicated team model.

Outsourcing vs Outstaffing Dedicated Software Team Hiring Models: When to Choose Each

When you have no development time limitations or don’t require a strong management team - hiring a dedicated development team is the best choice.

Here is a short list of the main advantages of choosing outstaffing over outsourcing:

• Outstaffing is cheaper
• It allows you to find an app developer for hire with higher expertise, who can take care of most working aspects, thanks to better experience and skills.
• Outstaffing is less risky: if the hired specialist is not qualified enough - you will be able to easily replace it. At the same time, if your outsourced partner can’t reach your expectations, you will have to stop the whole development process until you find another dedicated team for replacement.
• Outstaffing senior app developers can be beneficial for mentoring and knowledge-sharing activities, upscaling other team members' expertise.

Honestly, they will most probably end up in this role no matter if you asked them or not. Dedicated team communication is a constant process. So, when it happens, the less experienced members of the dedicated team are usually guided by better-skilled developers and learn new things thanks to it.

Eventually, to avoid any unpleasant scenario, it is worth taking a few essential steps, common both for team extension and IT outsourcing services.

Hiring a Dedicated Software Development Team Guide

To cut a long story short, companies, that propose outsourcing services, also work with the outstaffing method. Here is a checklist for finding an IT vendor for both IT outsourcing and team extension:

• Is this outsourcing company well-known?

Usually, the more the company is famous - the more experienced it is. The main aspects, that directly impact the awareness of the company are:

• social media presence of the company(Medium, LinkedIn, and others),
• feedback from the clients.

Additionally, companies are regularly noted in various lists of B2B platforms like GoodFirms.

For example, Incora was recognized with the Clutch Leaders Award. So, our company will be a more preferred choice over the one, with barely any mentions on the web. The more frequently the company appears among various charts and TOP lists - the more client attention it is worth.

• What is the experience of the firm?

The answer can be easily found on the company’s website. Generally, software development companies leave some guides on their websites. The most common combination includes the services it provides, its case studies, and the most common technologies it works with.

• What is the technical expertise of the company?

Don’t forget to check the tech stack, the company works with. In other cases, it is better to ask the company representatives directly about possible technological suggestions. If the company has no app developers for hire, familiar with your tech stack - it is not your choice.

• Are there any cooperation specifics?

Last, but not least, try to figure out whether there are any specifics of working with this IT outsourcing company. Most outstaffing and outsourcing processes and agreements are based on the same elemental principles. Still, some IT vendors can have additional requirements or demands. So, try to find it out before starting the cooperation.

Additionally, IT outsourcing and outstaffing companies mention the industries, they have worked in. This can help you to make a balanced choice with your tech task and prioritized industry included.

The final factor to include - is the overall communication with the outstaffing company: how fast they react to your applied contact form, what your impressions of communication are, whether are you satisfied with the agreements, and terms of cooperation, etc. To rephrase it, the rest aspects are very personal and subjective, yet do not underestimate their significance.

After calculating all the pros and cons, and finding the IT vendor, that meets all your requirements and expectations, you can proceed to the next step and start the process of signing the agreements.

Signing the Agreements with Dedicated Software Development Team Vendor

When all the discussions and discovery phase of a project ends, you will have a better understanding of the possible IT vendor to work with, as well as some additional calculations, clarifications, and pieces of advice from the developers’ perspective. Do not underestimate it, because they can highly improve your future product. Niche-experienced developers can significantly upscale your product.

Such developers for hire are more aware of unseen technical or business issues or target audience demands. Still, don’t forget, that they won’t share such knowledge with you unless you sign the agreement and start working with the IT vendor officially.

So, pay attention to case studies of IT outsourcing candidates. Remember, that your success is their goal. Thus, trust their decisions and constantly discuss various additional ideas.

If you have already chosen an IT outsourcing partner - consider the working terms. They include a wide range of aspects and extra contracts or agreements. Most of such papers are prepared by the IT outsourcing company, so all you need to do - is to examine and sign them.

Don’t rush yourself, you still will have to discuss at least the most crucial parts. For example, whether your agreement is based on time and materials or fixed price cooperation type.

Some documentation is your direct responsibility. For instance, if you operate in the European Union, or will get access to the private data of its citizens, you will have to prepare DPA documentation. It defines what your remote dedicated software development team has access to, and how it can interact with such data. Also, don’t forget to define whether it is a white-label app development or an announced software development as a service.

Most IT vendors warn and help their business owners with all such documentation.

Choosing a Dedicated Development Team Member

Finally, after all the bureaucracy and discovery phase of the project are done, you can get to the development itself. But before that, you have to choose the specialist for the project.

There are countless ways how to do it. You can rely on your IT outsourcing company's proposals, or take an active part in such a process. To do so, you can:

• conduct a general interview,
• require showing technical skills,
• check specialist background.

Nevertheless, most IT vendors insist that the team must be hired at once and on certain terms. A standard dedicated software development team consists of 5 members:

• 2 web and mobile developers, who are familiar with both frontend and backend,
• 1 PM for outsourced project management,
• 1 DevOps specialist,
• 1 QA team member.

Optionally, we can also propose a specialist, familiar with full-stack development, if needed.

Judging from our experience, it is an optional tam composition, suitable for most software projects. If the project is more complex or scalable, we can add extra web and mobile app developers, or DevOps specialists.

Dedicated Team Model Software Development Lifecycle

Eventually, the final stage is the software development process itself. It can vary, depending on your business requirements, the project’s possibilities, and agreements. Sometimes, clients want to be updated and aware of each step and change, implemented by the developers and be able to monitor the work, taking an active and direct part in the development. To make it possible, they usually insist on having an in-house project manager, who will communicate with the outsourcing team.

Instead, we encourage our clients to choose outsourcing project management. It is our basic option, included in dedicated team services. It is a win-win strategy, allowing both sides to avoid intervention in the development. An outsourced PM can directly communicate with the whole team in no time, keeping the client up to date and sending reports with other documentation.

However, this part is debatable and can be changed according to the will of the client. For example, in some of our projects, we use the foregoing “Team - PM - Client” system, in some, we have specified “Team - Client” chats, which allows for improving the direct contact between both sides, sometimes we propose more agile development and communication strategy when we communicate with the clients on demand.

Frankly, the most common issue, that appears, when it comes to outsourcing, is how to keep a manageable outsourcing team. It is highly important to establish great communication. It can solve almost all issues, which may appear during outsourcing. The rest is a direct responsibility of the outsourced company.

Hiring a Dedicated Team as a Win-Win Strategy for Businesses

Any business must be successful. It includes not only the awareness of the brand, or financial aspects, even if both are essential. Frankly speaking, success is a very general and abstract term, which varies, depending on personal opinion and business goals: if you revise one, the rest will also change.

Probably the most accurate explanation for business success is that such a business achieves its own goals and goes beyond them.

There is no doubt, that any successful enterprise should have a business strategy as well. Despite that, there are some exceptions when a company becomes successful just because of pure luck, without a strategy, this success will eventually fade.

In the context of the IT industry, one of the best successful business strategies is outsourcing, i.e. hiring dedicated teams or finding app developers for hire as team extension services.

It is also true that these are common services that cover different software development processes and other aspects, which require extra hands. Yet, we would like to make a few additional steps and determine if a dedicated software team hiring model is a good business strategy when switching from optional to the main software development approach.