How to Hire the Best Custom Software Development Team?

A custom software development team on demand is one of the most popular services in the modern IT industry.

Long story short, there are a few main ways to design and develop a software solution, regardless of its industry or technological specifics:

• Maintaining the whole development process on your own, i.e., on-premises development.
• Maintaining the core software functionality development on-premises while outsourcing the supplemental or extra features and services to other companies.
• Find and hire dedicated development team responsible for the whole custom software development lifecycle.

The first two are relatively straightforward and require no extra explanations and discussions. The third option seems risky and shady: when the whole development cycle is outsourced and responsible persons are out of your direct reach, managing the processes and tracking the progress becomes much more challenging.

Therefore, we decided to write this article to explain how to find a reliable custom software development team, mitigate risks, and most effectively benefit from outsourced custom software development services.

Why Choose a Custom Development Team?

Before discussing the potential benefits of custom software developers, let’s briefly discuss why you should even consider such services.

To simplify it, a custom development team on demand is an excellent service that helps to cover multiple tasks and business needs. However, the most common reasons to consider cooperation with such dedicated teams include:

• The limited talent pool in your region
• Lack of internal technical expertise
• Need to extend existing teams faster
• Cost efficiency of outsourced custom development team

Limited Talent Pool

First of all, it might be challenging to find and hire custom software developers in your region for many reasons, starting with high market competition and ending with unique software project development requirements and demands that can’t be satisfied locally.

For instance, if your project suggests dealing with outdated or rare technology for whatever reason, you will have to:

a) Find individual custom software developers with the required expertise b) Ensure they can work with each other in a team c) Learn what else is required for software project success

By choosing dedicated development team services, you can cover all the foregoing in a single action: outsourced IT companies provide their customers with the whole hiring cycle at once, offering an entire team on demand, competent to deal with demanded tasks, regardless of their specifics, complexity, or scale.

Lack of Internal Expertise

Another reason to choose team extension or dedicated team services is the lack of internal expertise. Once again, when you have to deal with specific or demanding technology, it is easier to outsource these tasks, such as looking for IT consulting or involving expert middle or senior developers.

On the other hand, it is even more beneficial to choose custom software development from scratch. When involving a custom software development team from the beginning, you can plan the development cycle more properly and predict specific issues in advance, thanks to the experience and advanced skills of such experts on demand.

Additionally, engaging custom software development teams significantly boosts knowledge sharing. It suggests integrating the most efficient management and communication practices: such developers have a rich experience in software development, making them experts in more fields than just software development.

Need to Extend Existing Teams Faster

Clearly, integrating a full-fledged custom development team is an exceptional and fastest way to scale your internal team when needed.

Besides providing your development project with “extra hands,” hiring custom software application developers help ensure new employees' overall quality and expertise. To repeat ourselves, such development teams commonly change the working environment and development projects. This positively boosts their skills and expertise in additional fields, such as team management or communication.

Finally, such custom software development teams have more experience dealing with different technologies and solutions.

Cost Efficiency of Outsourced Custom Development Teams

Eventually, it is hard to forget the overall cost efficiency of dealing with such developers.

Frankly, outsourcing is famous as a cheap and efficient approach to software development. The reason for this is simple: it is a global hiring solution that allows companies to find employees from various destinations, such as Eastern Europe and Ukraine. Their regional salaries are much lower than those of the US or Western Europe.

However, lower costs don’t affect the expertise of local developers. The opposite is true: Low expenses attract more customers and software projects, boosting developers' expertise by offering them new, highly demanding projects and goals to accomplish.

Frankly, most outsourced custom software development company clients are startups and small companies with ambitious plans and limited resources. This creates a very challenging environment for software teams. However, suppose they manage to accomplish the business demands under such pressure. In that case, they become even more qualified and competent than those who work with more available resources and less stress.

Benefits of Hiring a Custom Software Development Team

So, what other benefits can an agile custom software team offer? The core advantages of such cooperation include:

• Access to Comprehensive Technical Expertise
• Focus on Long-Term Collaboration and Support
• Faster Turnaround Time and Quality Assurance

Access to Comprehensive Technical Expertise

First, as mentioned before, custom software application developers offer more advanced and comprehensive technical expertise than their alternatives.

Once again, they are involved in different projects and deal with various challenges or technologies. So, apart from enhancing their expertise in specific niches and services, custom software developers can increase their awareness and familiarity more widely, i.e., in different practices and processes related to software development.

Therefore, it is a great idea to use the whole potential of agile custom software teams and their vast technical expertise to favor your business.

Apart from that, outsourced development companies are forced to constantly learn and adopt the most innovative or niche-specific tech solutions to stay competitive with their rivals. You can quickly notice such expertise of outsourced development companies by their preferences and divisions by offered technologies, services, software apps platforms, etc.

Focus on Long-Term Collaboration and Support

The long-term commitment is another benefit and reason to collaborate with a custom development team.

For clarity, the need for technical expertise or “extra hands” can be easily satisfied in the short term with team extension services when a business hires a few experienced developers to fulfill such needs. However, the team extensions specialists are involved in minimal functionality or needs.

At the same time, a dedicated custom software development team can be hired to cover the whole project for whatever term is needed, whether it is a short- or long-term cooperation. Besides, it can be easily and quickly scaled on demand with the help of your technological partner.

In other words, if your business requires a cost-efficient, fast, and well-planned software development solution covering most related processes, you should consider cooperating with a custom development team.

Faster Turnaround Time and Quality Assurance

Eventually, let’s briefly discuss why custom software development teams are so fast and how they achieve high-quality results.

Long story short, such custom teams operate as a unit, i.e., these software developers commonly work together. As a result, they know each other and understand each other’s capabilities and expertise, as well as weaknesses or issues. Additionally, they know how to communicate with each other and whom to ask for help in some instances or to deal with specific problems. Thus, they can be assured of each other and make suggestions about their partners' possible mistakes or tasks.

In addition, they work faster and more efficiently because they know whom to assign the most suitable tasks and can fulfill them themselves. Their hiring and onboarding take almost no time: they are engaged as a ready team with clear responsibilities and expert knowledge. So, when involving custom software teams, businesses spare no time in deciding whom to hire or assign to each task: it is already predetermined and agreed upon to achieve seamless, fast, and efficient work.

Summing up all the above, when you hire custom software developers as a team, you will satisfy all your software needs and development projects as fast and efficiently as possible.

For example, many outsourcing companies like Incora offer such services and provide their clients with post-launch software support and quality assurance. The reason for this is simple: many bug-hunting and fixing procedures might be ineffective after the software launch.

During the development, QA teams perform limited and closed testing to identify common issues. However, after going live, the app can perform utterly opposite to the closed testing because many factors change. Thus, you are required to perform QA practices once again. Cooperating with Incora’s custom software development team covers this aspect by default.

Essential Steps to Hiring the Best Custom Software Development Team

After clarifying the benefits and reasons for cooperating with the custom software development team, we should explain how to find and hire the best and most agile custom software team. Frankly, the hiring approach is similar to any other hiring algorithm and consists of 6 main steps:

1. Conduct Thorough Research and Shortlist Candidates
2. Check Reviews, Testimonials, and References
3. Evaluate Portfolio and Industry Experience
4. Conduct Interviews to Assess Skills and Culture Fit
5. Request Technical Assessments or Trial Projects
6. Review Contract Terms, Including Milestones, Timelines, and Budgets.

However, despite the general and common approach, we should explain some specifics and details of each stage to ensure you don’t miss any vital facts or aspects.

Step 1: Conduct Thorough Research and Shortlist Candidates

Obviously, the first step when you hire custom software developers - is to conduct research. You have to find dedicated teams that offer the most suited solution. There is no point in cooperating with iOS mobile development specialists if you plan to develop a website and vice versa.

Therefore, you must search for potential candidates who suggest the most related services. The easiest way is to examine various b2b platforms like Clutch and GoodFirms or their alternatives. These platforms gather information about different software development companies and share it with everyone who needs it.

For example, you can find data about their previous cases, industries they mainly work in, technologies they operate, gathering client feedback and reviews, etc. Besides, you can find approximate prices for services and even company ratings.

Long story short, such b2b platforms are a great way to create the first list of potential agile custom software team candidates. Frankly, at this point, you should primarily focus on:

• Industries they work with (Healthcare, FinTech, etc.)
• Their previous cases
• Available Feedback
• Offered services (web or mobile development, dedicated teams or team extension, etc.)
• Technologies specialize in (this is somewhat optional because the tech stack will be agreed on during later stages, and outsourced companies commonly have experience in dealing with multiple programming languages and development tools)

Having a shortlist of potential tech partners, you should study and analyze their profiles in detail.

Step 2: Check Reviews, Testimonials, and References

Clearly, you should start with the reviews and references or other feedback. Avoid companies with no client reviews because it is much harder to evaluate their expertise and predict the quality of the end product.

Frankly, sometimes, these b2b platforms partly publish information with a delay. To find a more current information, you can:

• Find the company’s website, where you can find the latest reviews. Still, it will be partly biased: nobody will publish negative feedback on their website.
• Simply Google the company’s name and look for other sources of feedback.

However, apart from looking for testimonials and reading them, we recommend you to learn more about the previous customers, test their software products, or contact them directly, asking for a more detailed report. Thanks to such communication you can learn much more context and hear a more constructive and detailed description of cooperation experience.

Still, your main goal during this stage is to learn the terms and conditions of cooperation with custom software development teams, satisfaction with the software product, and overall feedback on the project processes, their efficiency, quality, etc.

Step 3: Evaluate Portfolio and Industry Experience

After learning the context and clarifying the general feedback on a custom development team, you should evaluate their experience independently.

This process primarily includes examining case studies, learning what industries they have experience in, what technologies they propose, etc. At this point, it is more reasonable to check the company’s website: most software development companies share all their projects in the case studies section. At the same time, Clutch or its alternatives suggest a limited number of cases.

Besides, case studies on websites commonly include NDA projects and explain the scale of work, challenges, and solutions in detail, helping to understand the overall experience and the company's specifics.

Cooperating with companies that are experienced in your field (at least 2-3+ projects) is preferable. However, don’t forget to take into account other factors as well. Sometimes, it would be much more beneficial to hire custom software developers with excellent technical skills but unfamiliar with the industry than to cooperate with industry-specific teams with modest expertise.

During this stage, you should pay attention to tasks explained in case studies and the number of projects. As was mentioned above, technologies are essential, but they will be discussed and defined later.

On the other hand, performing tasks and developing features illustrate the developer’s skills. They represent the true potential and experience of a custom software development team and help you understand whether this team can deliver the expected results.

Step 4: Conduct Interviews to Assess Skills and Culture Fit

At this moment, you most likely have crossed out at least a few candidates for cooperation so that the rest meet your basic demands. Now, it is time to interview the agile custom software team members you are considering hiring.

This process is unique and highly varies, depending on the context. Suppose you don’t have a chief technology officer on your team or lack the knowledge to conduct interviews independently. In that case, you can consider using tech consulting services or hiring dedicated experts who can do it for you.

It is a much better and more efficient approach to find a reliable development team and correctly evaluate their skills. Still, apart from asking about technical expertise, you should also pay attention to other work-related aspects during the interview. For instance, pay attention to your communication: how well-organized it is, how transparent and efficient the messaging is, do you notice any issues or challenges like language barriers, etc.

Don’t forget that the custom software development team model usually suggests long-term cooperation. So, you should ensure that you are satisfied with the communication even before working together. Otherwise, if something bothers you or you are simply unsure - maybe it is better to avoid further interactions.

Step 5: Request Technical Assessments or Trial Projects

The most efficient way to evaluate the expertise and choose a proper custom development team is testing. There are many ways to check practical development skills.

However, the most popular approach is requesting technical assessment, i.e., a test task. These tasks are, at least partly, related to your project and assume developing a single feature. Yet, it might be better to agree on a trial project for a custom software development team.

While personal interviewing and individual testing tasks are great solutions for team extension services when hiring a full-fledged team, such an approach can take too much time and effort.

Thus, when businesses hire custom software application developers as a team, they prefer agreeing on trials to observe the internal communication and efficiency of the team as a whole. Besides, it helps speed up the development, switching directly to project work.

Step 6: Review Contract Terms, Including Milestones, Timelines, and Budgets

Finally, you should also consider the terms and agreements of cooperation. Still, the algorithm partly varies, depending on the previous step: if you tested the team, you can proceed to review a contract. Yet, if you choose a trial, you might set up the agreements for trial and further full-fledged cooperation.

To rephrase, these stages will switch places in case of a trial period approach.

While examining the contract, you should pay attention to each aspect related to working conditions:

• Timelines
• Milestones
• Budget
• Potential challenges or issues
• Roadmap plan

To sum up, the contract should clearly explain what and how to do, in each case, how much time and resources. Either way, agreement review is a complex task and is the responsibility of a layer or related specialists. For instance, many aspects and supplemental contracts will vary depending on the project type, whether it is an NDA, what country the software will be used in, etc.

Key Qualities to Look for in a Custom Software Development Team

Finally, let’s briefly discuss the key qualities to consider when hiring custom software application developers. The shortlist of the most essential attributes of custom software teams includes:

• Expertise in relevant technologies
• Proven track record of successful projects
• Cultural and time zone alignment
• Post-launch support and maintenance capabilities

Expertise in Relevant Technologies

Software development teams must have expertise in relevant technologies. This includes the ones defined in your project and similar or related software expertise.

Obviously, the higher knowledge of required technologies your team has - the better it is for your software product. Still, knowledge of similar or related tech stacks is also essential: it helps to create a more accurate perception of the task and find ways to improve or optimize its execution.

Proven Track Record of Successful Projects

A proven track record of successful projects is also essential when looking for custom software application developers.

It is one of the very few aspects that help to check the words of potential candidates and observe their qualifications, goals they accomplished, tasks they fulfilled, etc.

Cultural and Time Zone Alignment

Don’t underestimate the importance of cultural and time zone alignment. While cultural specifics are much more complex, their alignment is strictly personal; some related factors are more practical.

For instance, language barriers can significantly disrupt your software development project, resulting in communication issues. Apart from that, most custom software development teams are outsourced, i.e., they can be located in other regions. So, they can have different time zones, which must be considered because the time distinction can also negatively impact the communication processes and bring extra management challenges.

Post-Launch Support and Maintenance Capabilities

Finally, don’t forget to learn more about custom software development teams' post-launch support and maintenance services and capabilities.

To simplify it, software development is just one of the essential steps of software projects. However, apart from that, there are other vital aspects and processes like quality assurance, bug hunting, post-launch maintenance, and support.

For instance, here at Incora, we provide our customers with limited post-launch software QA, maintenance, and support. We do it to ensure the quality of the final product and polish it, making sure there are no bugs left behind.

Why Choose Incora as Your Custom Software Development Team?

So, why should you choose Incora as your custom software development team? Frankly, the number of reasons is vast. Still, to keep it short, let’s briefly discuss the core benefits of partnering with Incora for custom software development:

1. Quality. Our development team has a vast experience in software development. So, our employees use their skills to ensure the highest possible software product quality. As a result, we manage to provide our clients with highly competitive and high-quality products and services.
2. Price. Our team is primarily located in Eastern Europe. This makes our services much cheaper compared to the US-based proposals. Still, more affordable prices don’t affect the software quality. As we said before, our developers offer high-quality services and products.
3. Niche-Experience. Besides, we encourage our employees to choose niches and improve their skills and knowledge in a specific direction, such as industry, technologies, etc. As a result, our developers can bring even more value to your projects than simply developing features. They can offer IT consulting and empower internal knowledge-sharing practices.
4. Personalized approach. Finally, we have a unique and customized approach to each client. We do everything to learn the needs of our clients and ways to satisfy them fully. Contact us for the best custom software development services, and we will discuss the details.