Business value of hiring a dedicated development team
At Wise Engineering, we’ve built more than 80 dedicated teams for clients from the US and Europe. For businesses across multiple industries, as well as companies at different development stages, the dedicated team model allows to optimize development cost and speed up time-to-market. In this post, we’re sharing our knowledge of when dedicated teams are most effective. We also will give you some real-life examples to illustrate the value a dedicated team can bring.
If you want to talk about your specific case and get a consultation from our experts, let us know.
Dedicated team model overview
A dedicated team is a remote team of experts selected for a specific project and is 100% devoted to it. The team composition depends on the requirements and goals provided at the start and can be flexibly changed as the project progresses. The collaboration is usually long-term, and the team works as an integrated part of the internal engineering system of a business.
Dedicated teams help to extend existing in-house tech departments and increase their velocity, acquire niche tech expertise, speed up software development, and test business hypotheses faster.
Dedicated team vs classical outsourcing
The main difference between hiring a dedicated engineering team and classical outsourcing is that in the latter case, the 3-rd party vendor has complete authority over the project. The requirements are given at the start, and the result (an application built, migration performed) is provided in the agreed timeframes and, usually, budget. When you hire a dedicated development team, you get comfortable control over the project and work on the project iteratively, changing the requirements on the go (responding to client feedback, for example).
Dedicated team vs in-house team
In fact, a dedicated team acts as your in-house remote team with the difference in how you hired the employees. This team can work as a standalone team and take over the whole project or its complex part, but you do not need to worry about onboarding, office rent, equipment, consistent skills training, health and life insurance, or taxes.
When a dedicated team works and when it doesn’t
The dedicated development team model is the most effective for businesses that are:
- Launching a new product
When there is a need to quickly build an MVP, bring ideas to the market, test business hypotheses, react to the feedback received, and continue product enhancements iteratively.
- Improving existing products or dealing with their complex tech parts
Dedicated teams are not necessarily hired by startups. By assembling a dedicated team, mature businesses can delegate a specific tech part of their system and increase their engineering velocity. In this case, the dedicated team will collaborate with other teams forming the tech ecosystem.
- Scaling rapidly
When the current in-house team is overwhelmed with the workload, a dedicated team can quickly take off the burden and quickly increase the engineering capacity of the existing tech sector. They can work as a standalone team on additional projects or collaborate with other engineering departments.
When a dedicated team is not the best fit?
When you are aimed at short-term collaboration and have set project requirements that won’t change with time. You might want to consider a fixed-price contract with an outsourcing company in this case. If the remote workforce is not something you would agree to. Yes, in the post-pandemic reality, most companies adopted new ways of working. Hybrid or fully remote collaboration has become the new normal, but you have the choice not to consider remote employees. Hiring in-house is the only solution in this case.
You expect little involvement from your side in the development process. You have a vision of what is there to be built and expect the team to deliver it for you. You can also hire an outsourcing agency to help you avoid any tech-related hassle.
How we applied the development team model for our clients
Here are several real-life examples of how companies benefited from hiring dedicated teams for different business goals. See more cases from our portfolio.
Shipping a new product to the market – from ideation up to release
Client: Startup creating podcast recommendations platform
Request
- Insufficient user experience
- A need for a custom online payment system
- Preparing the application for multiple marketing campaigns
Results
- Wise as a tech partner accelerated the release time and helped to meet the strict deadlines.
- The platform’s front-end performance was improved, and Wise ensured cross-browser and cross-device compatibility.
- The dedicated team assembled a scalable tech stack for the platform that contributed to further product development.
- Each user persona received the necessary feature set and ability to interact with the platform based on interest.
Taking on complex project parts – infrastructure, database, and online payments
Client: Startup building application for continuous feedback
Request
- Prepare the application for scaling
- Minimize downtimes influencing the UX
- Ensure the stable performance, minimize vulnerabilities
- Automate manual payments processing
Results
- Reorganized the database and made the data model more effective
- Prepared the application for scaling while ensuring stability and security
- Developed Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery pipelines to speed up engineering processes
- Minimized downtime and allowed multiple deployments to production every day
- Automated sales processes with the integration of payment gateway systems
Rebuilding the platform and improving user experiences
Client: Startup launching a one-link business platform for experts
Request
- Optimize the tech stack, plan and execute necessary migrations
- Custom system for video & audio files processing
- Custom payment system development
- Product development and continuous product enhancement
Results
- Updated tech stack allowing the product to scale further without blocking the engineering team
- Improved code quality and smooth work of all 3-d party integrations
- Flexible and fault-tolerant infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines configured
- Custom algorithms for the realization of key product functionality, including iFrame, video and audio content, payments, and more
Possible challenges and how we address them at Wise
Hiring a dedicated development team is associated with multiple prejudices. We have more than 17 years of experience in building effective dedicated teams, and here is our solution to the most common challenges.
Security risks
With so many security breaches occurring on a daily basis, collaboration with an external team should be thoroughly secured. Signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) at the earliest stages of collaboration is a critical step. Furthermore, proper SLA (Service Level Agreement) and compliance auditing can be solutions to manage security risks as well.
At Wise Engineering, we adopt best practices to ensure the protection of sensitive data and any intellectual properties that constitute a competitive edge. This includes:
- Robust and reliable backup systems
- Using tech stacks with built-in security features
- Instant system audits and monitoring for security vulnerabilities
- Bastion host integrations
Lack of communication
Synchronous communication is critical for efficient collaboration. Time zone differences and language barriers can become impactful obstacles.
At our company, we ensure the time zone overlaps with the team you hire from our side. For instance, this can be at least 4-5 hours overlap for GMT-5 or more if needed. We can make it 8 hours as well. You can always contact any person from the dedicated team directly.
Besides, English proficiency is included in our corporate career framework for engineers. Even if a candidate is very strong technically, we do not continue collaboration if the English level is lower than B1. Client visits to our main office are a common practice as well. Usually, they are most beneficial at the start during strategic sessions or when significant project pivots are ahead.
Lack of control and transparency
A comfortable level of control is one of the key advantages of dedicated teams. You can be involved in all the processes as much as you want or need to be. The team management can be also delegated to a dedicated Project or Account Manager. They will prepare extensive reporting on the team’s performance and make sure productivity is kept at a high level. Systematic demos and stand-up meetings will help everyone stay on the same page as well.
To achieve transparency with the engineering expertise of people included in the dedicated team, we’ve developed our own framework for tech specialists leveling that helps assess candidates effectively and encourages their growth. We can share the file describing the levels with you so you would have clarity on what to expect at each.
Risk of a bad cultural fit
Being a values-driven team ourselves, we understand the importance of corporate culture for our clients and understand their concerns. We are ourselves very demanding during the hiring process paying great attention to candidates’ soft skills. When we build a dedicated team, we make sure the people suit a project both technically and culturally. Cultural fit is an important step of the whole dedicated team assembling process.
Make a dedicated team your next hire
Each business case and tech contexts are unique, that’s why we recommend contacting us directly and discussing goals and requirements in detail. Share your ideas with us, and we’ll help select the collaboration model that matches your project perfectly.