Disclosing Ways to Hire Dedicated Web Developers

Digitalization is the choice of successful companies that are trying to keep up with tech innovations. But rough competition for web developers, high salaries, and significant spendings on in-house development force companies to look for alternatives. That’s when dedicated teams are a worthy investment.

According to Statista, 35% of companies hire dedicated web developers to keep their core team focused on high-priority tasks. Besides, 24% of companies expect to increase efficiency with IT outsourcing, while 18% of entrepreneurs want to receive assistance from high-qualified vendors.

But that’s not all the cases when a dedicated team comes in handy. There are also:

• Difficulties with hiring tech talents
• Necessity to take the load off the main team
• No required expertise
• Flexibility of a team

We’ve collected everything about this model and formed an ultimate guide that’ll help you hire dedicated web developers and make no mistakes.

Simply put, this model implies hiring remote developers for a project. This team can work independently or act as a part of the main team. With this model customers can choose how to manage it: on their side or hiring a vendor’s project manager for this team..

This model implies long-term partnership. A customer and vendor usually agree on partnership duration and sign a contract. Still, the team can be scaled up and down on demand.

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1. Huge tech talent pool

Dedicated team stands for hiring a remote development team from a vendor. With this model you’re not limited to your homeland and can cooperate with companies from all over the world. There are many nearshore and offshore tech hubs full of experienced developers and tech vendors to choose from.

2. High flexibility

Another great advantage of a dedicated team is its high flexibility. It’s easy to manage the team size, depending on the current development situation. If there is a feeling that the task pool is getting bigger you can always expand the team and hire web developer or several additional specialists.

3. Cost-effectiveness

As any outsourcing model, it’s pretty cost-effective. Entrepreneurs can be stunned with average software developer salaries at their homelands, while they can pay less and get the same high-tier software development services.

For example, according to Glassdoor and DOU, the average software developer salary in the US is more than $75K annually, while Ukrainian developers earn around $24K annually.

4. Full control

Dedicated team model brings full control over the team. It implies that all management will be carried out by the customer. Customers can assign management to their own project manager or CTO and establish appropriate reporting. As a result, the overall development process becomes more transparent.

Still, if there’s a need, customers can hire dedicated PM from the vendor to manage the team.

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1. Require tech knowledge to supervise the team

To carry out the development process, it’s vital to have proper tech knowledge and expertise. Otherwise, it’d be impossible to control the project development effectively. So you should have a tech person on your side (PM, CTO) who’d work with a team. Otherwise, prepare for additional spendings for hiring a dedicated Project Manager from the vendor.

2. Communication difficulties

Before you hire dedicated web developers, keep in mind that outsourcing implies huge distances between the product owner and the development team. For example, the time zone difference has a significant impact on communication. Moreover, keep in mind language barriers and cultural differences may occur.

Even though there are a few more outsourcing models, a dedicated team contract is often the most suitable choice for companies.

Let’s compare this contract with Fixed Price and Time & Materials.

A fixed price contract means that the client pays a fixed cost for the development services. Before signing a contract, vendors study project requirements to assess development time and cost. They often use a project discovery phase approach for this.

This type of cooperation is very risky for the vendor because no one is immune to unforeseen problems during the development. This can knock the team off the schedule and lead to serious financial and reputational losses.

Customers value this contract for transparency and stability. But this contract is not flexible at all. After the contract is signed, it’s impossible to make any changes to requirements as this affects the final development price.

Still, this contract is great for small projects with a tight budget since the final price is defined in advance.

Time and Materials contract is about paying for the actual development time. The final cost equals the total development time multiplied by the developers' hourly rates. Let's assume that the development took 550 hours, and the hourly rate was $50 per hour. As a result, the total development cost will be $27,500. But remember that you’re not paying only for web developers. Business analysts, project managers, and designers also charge money. You can scale your team up and down what makes this contract very flexible.

However, this contract also has a significant drawback. It’s not suitable for small projects. Many outsourcing companies set a minimum price and if your project is lower than that, they can refuse from cooperation.

Finding and hiring web engineers for Web2 and Web3 development can take some time. Especially if you want to hire them from a reliable vendor. We’ve prepared a list of recommendations for you to find an experienced company making no mistakes.

A clear understanding of your business goals and how to achieve them greatly simplifies negotiations with the vendor. To achieve this, you need to determine all the important details, such as:

• The problem you want to solve
• Features to solve this problem and bring value to end-users
• Technologies to achieve those goals

Being able to explain these criteria in detail will give the vendor a more precise picture of what you want and help them assemble the right team for you.

You can filter vendors by domain expertise to narrow down the list. If you need to make an e-learning app, it’d be the right decision to look for vendors with some experience in the delivering education app development services.

Create a vendor list based on the criteria you defined earlier. Specialized aggregators like Clutch and Good Firms, which collect information and feedback on IT companies from all over the world, will help you to create this list.

When searching, pay attention to the following:

• Company size
• Customer reviews
• Portfolio of companies
• Awards and certifications
• Minimal project size for cooperation

Once you've filled the list with suitable companies, it's time to negotiate. Contact companies that meet your requirements the most. Tell them in detail about your project and listen to what they can offer you.

Based on these negotiations and the information received, you can make the final decision and choose a company for further cooperation.

Let's imagine that you’ve already found a company where you’ll hire dedicated web developers. But what will the whole workflow look like? Dedicated team acquiring process is usually divided into several stages, which we’ll look at in more detail.

At this stage, negotiations are underway and the vendor collects project requirements to assemble the right team. Negotiations may include requirements for a team experience, a preliminary work schedule, and other organizational issues.

Usually, the vendor already has a pool of in-house talents and the client can easily choose the right programmer. However, you shouldn’t exclude cases when the vendor doesn’t have the necessary specialists or the existing ones are not suitable for the project. In such a situation, the vendor would need time to hire new employees.

After the right staff is hired or selected from the available pool, it's time for interviews. These interviews are conducted by the service provider, the client, or both. However, the last word always rests with the customer since the customer chooses whether the candidate is worthy of joining the dedicated team or not.

The team gets to know each other, study the necessary materials to get started, get acquainted with the tasks and deadlines. In addition, this stage includes establishing long-term communication channels and the relocation of the team (if required).

At this stage, development has already begun, and the dedicated developers remain in the customer's team as long as required. Moreover, the workflow of the new team is calibrated to achieve the maximum efficiency of their work.

In different companies, this stage occurs in different ways. Some clients need to expand the team and hire dedicated web developers to cope with the increasing number of tasks. Meantime, other clients need to scale it down since the development is nearing the end, and some developers may be no longer needed.

Saying “dedicated web development team”, we mean developers, designers, and more. Still, you can discuss what specialists you’d like to hire with a vendor.

Developers are those who’ll make your website or web app work as intended. All web developers can be divided into two groups:

Back-end developers

Back-end developers are responsible for creating the "back end" in web apps. In other words, they deal with everything related to the ‘brain’ of the app. A good back-end developer should be experienced with programming languages (.NET, Python, Node.js), databases (MySQL, NoSQL, GraphQL) and know how to work with algorithms to build a server-side.

Front-end developers

Front-end developers are responsible for creating the user-facing part of the app. They deal with everything users interact with. Front-end development requires extensive skills in HTML/CSS, and experience in using Angular and React to create functional interfaces that’ll please the eye.

Our web developers in Cleveroad comply with modern technologies to create powerful websites and web apps for business purposes. They use Angular and React for their wide set of tools that speed up development and bind it with a powerful backend part built on .NET framework that is praised for its OOP base and ease of deployment.

UI/UX designers create unique looks for websites and apps. They create designs from scratch, create wireframes, pick color schemes for website elements, choose fonts, and much more.

Without designers, it’s impossible to start development at all. When web developers start building a website, they rely on prototypes created by the design team. So it’s crucial to hire a dedicated web designer to create a unique design.

Quality assurance engineers are crucial to roll-out a bug-free product. When new features are implemented, QA engineers test each one to ensure they work as intended and write bug reports for developers. Besides managing test sequences, QA engineers prepare test environments and check out UI and UX for logical issues.

Project manager is a stress-resistant strategist with well-developed communication skills. This is a person who manages the whole project at all stages of development, dives into all the details, understands the workflows, and controls the assigned tasks’ implementation. PM is an intermediary between the customer and employees, who solves problems and conflicts, listens to both parties, and makes their interaction as productive and comfortable as possible.

Even though PMs are not mandatory, if you feel that you can’t manage team supervision on your own, you can hire a dedicated project manager that’ll carry these responsibilities.

Before you hire dedicated web developers you should think about how to manage them. Effective team management must be established from the first day of cooperation. But how to manage cooperation and receive a transparent picture of whether it’s effective or not? There are several aspects that have to be controlled through the whole development process.

KPIs are great indicators of work efficiency. They must be defined before the development. Moreover, they must be transparent for both parties. To create well-defined KPIs, you must work together with the vendor and come to a common agreement. Moreover, a vendor can calibrate some aspects based on their previous experience.

To stay in touch with your remote team, you must create solid communication channels and pick the right tools to make no mistakes. There are lots of ways to establish communication with dedicated developers to receive up-to-date development info:

• Regular meetings at the office (if possible)
• Video calls
• Corporate messengers

All communication ways and meeting schedules must be negotiated in advance so that both parties will be pleased. That’s what we do at Cleveroad. We build convenient meeting schedules, and upon the client’s request, we can provide access to corporate Slack.

A regular reporting system will give you a bigger picture of what is already done and what needs to be done. Reports can be made on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. They can include a detailed list of implemented features, appearing problems and ways to solve them, plans for the development period before the next report, and much more.

But keep in mind that reports are not about “they tell, you listen.” Giving feedback on team progress is a big part of their motivation and can give them the right direction on what they must take emphasis on in their actions.

To find a dedicated team that’ll fulfill your tasks, you need to know where to look for it. Knowledge of existing outsourcing regions and search platforms will greatly boost the search process.

We’ll split this section into two parts: tech hubs and best search platforms.

Region, where your tech partner is located has a huge impact on services cost. There are several popular outsourcing regions that are worth noting:

• Eastern Europe
• Central Europe
• Western Europe
• Latin America
• Asia

Now, let’s list the most famous tech hubs to give you a clearer picture of the regions’ hourly rates and tech proficiency.

The easiest way to find dedicated web developers is to search for them on professional platforms that gather info about IT vendors from all over the world. We’ll name the biggest and the most famous ones that help entrepreneurs make their decisions.

Cleveroad is a Ukrainian software development company with more than five years of experience. We deliver unique software solutions that boost businesses in such industries as healthcare, social media, streaming, e-commerce, and you can check them in our portfolio. Our top-tier dedicated web developers are ready to help you bring your tech ideas to life.