Hiring Dedicated Development Team in 2024: The Ultimate Guide

Big enterprises, such as Google, Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook, tend to hire dedicated development teams to access specialized skills, raise project scalability, and accelerate product development. Many IT vendors can offer you to hire a dedicated development team from their staff. There’s no need for countless interviews and lengthy onboarding. Another reason to cooperate with a dedicated app development team is a low budget. There’s no need to pay for office rent, taxes, software, and hardware. Besides, you only pay when there are tasks to assign.

In this article, you’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to hire a dedicated team, where to search for dedicated developers, how much it costs, and what to keep in mind before choosing such a cooperation model.

A dedicated development team is a group of professionals that is dedicated to working exclusively for your project or for the completion of chosen tasks related to your project. This approach allows you to get fully focused and committed specialists who are dedicated to the success of your project, generally resulting in faster project delivery and flexibility in resource allocation.

A dedicated development team is great for performing large, long-term projects with frequently changing requirements. It is quite flexible, focusing on the scope of work and tasks, costs and resources, as well as prioritizing the development team itself.

The key value of this model is enhanced concentration, resulting in increased speed and quality of the outcome. Challenges like team members being stretched too thin or overworked are not a concern since the team's sole objective is focused on the project.

Forming a dedicated team can be done in two ways:

• A separate full-service team is established, comprising all necessary employees, such as a business analyst, frontend software architect, and more.
• The customer can hire a dedicated software development team to complement their existing employees with external experts.

However, it's essential to note that dedicated teams typically do not cooperate with in-house programmers and are managed on the customer's side. Once the project is completed, the cooperation concludes.

Finally, what specialists can become members of your dedicated development team? Here’s a list that can hint to you about your future dedicated team structure:

• Frontend web developers. These specialists create a part of the software that your user interacts with, including the solution’s interactivity
• Backend developers. Back-end developers are responsible for building and maintaining the server side of your software solution
• Mobile developers. Mobile developers master applications for smartphones and tablets, consequently for iOS or Android mobile operating systems. Besides, usually they are also qualified to provide cross-platform Flutter development services
• UI/UX designers. UI/UX designers craft an appealing, user-friendly, and intuitive visual for your software solution
• QA specialists. Specialists that provide quality assurance services test the software for quality and bug-free infrastructure
• DevOps engineers. DevOps experts act as a bridge between software creation and IT operations and head all automated processes throughout software development
• Other specialists. You can also hire other dedicated specialists like a project manager, business analyst, or solution architect, depending on your request and project requirements

The IT services outsourcing market size is expected to reach $574 billion by 2025. This market growth is associated with the consequences of the pandemic when businesses need to continue to provide their processes with new software products, and they turn to outsource companies for their development. As a result, Exploding Topics has pointed out that hiring a dedicated development team has become a popular practice for businesses of all sizes, with 92% of G2000 companies and 37% of small businesses outsourcing projects to external providers.

There are several examples of companies that have cooperated with dedicated development teams and outsourced their tasks to outsource vendors:

• Google. This giant outsources parts of its projects, like IT management and backend development to reduce expenses.
• Slack has outsourced the development of its mobile app and marketing website. A dedicated team created the project’s MVP.
• Expensify cooperated with an outsourcing company to develop a backend part of the project.
• Alibaba. This Chinese public commerce giant has outsourced the design of its website as well as some of the tasks associated with the development of the Alibaba platform.
• WhatsApp. The development of the iOS version of the popular messenger was completely outsourced to a dedicated development team.
• GitHub. The largest web service for hosting IT projects has put a significant portion of the backend website development in the hands of the dedicated development team

Your decision to hire a dedicated development team can, for sure, positively impact your software project. Let’s take a closer look at the main benefits of hiring dedicated development team:

Hiring a dedicated app development team erases the problem of staff underutilization or, on the contrary, the need to maintain the whole team while some specialists are barely engaged in the development process. A dedicated development team is a flexible solution that allows you to easily adjust the team size and knowledge based on your project’s real needs

When choosing a dedicated app development team for hire, you have the ability to choose software specialists with the level of expertise that meets your project challenge the most. Getting a such well-combined team of experts helps you to ensure that they possess the essential skillset to tackle complex tasks and complete them swiftly, delivering robust and reliable software solutions.

Due to the fact your dedicated development team is fully committed to your specific project goals, it’ll take much less time for them to complete the whole software solution. This will not only enable you to accelerate the project’s timeline significantly, but also to facilitate faster software launch, gaining a more significant competitive edge on the market.

A dedicated development team usually counts specialists with practical experience in running software projects, and generally, they handle all the coordination and project management processes. The elimination of the need to keep your dedicated team under full supervision frees you some time to complete your business's internal tasks.

At any time, you can reach out to them to learn how things are going with the project, At the same time, the team can contact you for approval of the completed project scope, to report on current progress, or for risk management purposes.

To extract the best outcomes out of a dedicated development team for hire, you’ll have to conduct certain preparations prior. Below you can find 6 steps to lay on while planning to insert a dedicated development team into your project completion.

You, as a business that seeks to hire a dedicated team of developers, have to strictly outline your requirements, terms, and conditions of further cooperation. Here are the key points you should consider:

• Project scope. To make your dedicated team complete set tasks correctly, it’s vital for you to primarily understand your own project requirements, functionalities, and desired timelines clearly
• Tech expertise. Outline the expertise and skillset needed for a project and communicate it transparently with a dedicated development team
• Decide on team size and composition. Analyze essential attributes needed to complete your software solution and consequently determine the number and selection of members of your dedicated team
• Budget and payment terms. Make sure to clearly establish the budget and payment structure (e.g., fixed cost, hourly rates. etc.), to ensure financial transparency and full alignment with our business’s budget constraints

At this stage, it’s crucial to conduct well-structured and deep market research. Primarily, you have to focus on IT companies that offer dedicated development team services. Then, make sure that the IT partner has proven experience in software solutions delivery for clients from your domain by checking their portfolio.

By the way, feel free to examine Cleveroad's portfolio to find out more about our expertise and how we help our clients reach their business goals.

The next step is to define how well the IT vendor’s software experts can deal with the project goals you set. Try focusing on specifying the following things:

• Hard skills. Ask specific questions about their previous software projects, assess problem-solving skills, conduct coding assessments or specified technical quizzes to test their actual knowledge. In case you don’t have tech expertise, it’s better to ask for assistance from your software experts or hire and IT consultant.
• Soft skills. Pay attention to how team members interact through conducting group exercises and asking questions that require clear and concise communication between team members
• Project management skills. Get to know what project management methodologies they use (Agile, Waterfall, etc.), their experience with using project management tools, and their capability to handle potential risks
• Understanding of your brand. Discuss your project goals and challenges, assess their level of engagement, and seek a sense of ownership and willingness to go the extra mile to reach set goals

The final selection of your dedicated app development team for hire heavily depends on the tasks you seek to accomplish or simplify. Here, you’ll cooperate tightly with your IT vendor, who’ll assist you in gathering a perfect team of software experts.

However, note that the formation of the team plays a pivotal role in the success of dedicated teams model utilization and requires as much of your engagement as possible. Finally, nobody knows your business specifics as you do. So, at this point, you’ll be guiding your vendor to offer you the most qualified experts for the accomplishment of your business goals.

Effective collaboration can’t go without effective communication. That’s why it’s very important to establish reliable communication channels which can be mutually agreed on with you and the dedicated development team. Here are several examples of convenient and suitable communication tools our team commonly use:

• Project management tools: Asana, Trello, Jira
• Video conferencing platforms: Zoom, Google Meets, Microsoft Teams
• Instant messaging: Slack, WhatsUp, Telegram
• Version control systems: GitLab, GitHub, etc.

When all the conditions are negotiated, it’s time to begin the process of onboarding the dedicated development team. Team onboarding is a vital process that bridges the gap between your project and the newly assembled dedicated development team. It aims to ensure a seamless integration of the team members into your project's workflow while clarifying expectations, roles, and responsibilities.

By contributing time and effort to a comprehensive team onboarding process, you set the stage for a successful partnership with the dedicated development team. Effective onboarding ensures seamless collaboration, clarifies expectations, and enhances the team's ability to deliver high-quality results in line with your project's objectives.

It’s hard to provide a cost for hiring a dedicated app development team instantly. There are numerous factors that significantly influence pricing, including the dedicated development team's level of expertise, size, member selection, and location.

The rates of software development experts significantly vary among various regions and also impact the pricing. Examine dedicated development teams' hourly rate internationally below:

As you can see, even now, it’s not that easy to get a complete picture. North American software developers have the highest rates, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean superior quality. In Asia, rates are the lowest, and the quality of software development may appear surprisingly good. Anyway, there you can face significant cultural differences that may impact communication and software creation outcomes.

At the same time, the CEE region (Central and Eastern Europe) is considered a quite beneficial option. The region, particularly Estonia, is famous for a great number of tech-savvy software experts with a rich selection of deep and unique technical knowledge. Apart from this, Estonia has the highest English proficiency rates in the EU, making communication and collaboration with the development team smoother and more efficient.

Now, let’s specify the most important aspects you should keep in mind while planning to hire dedicated developers.

Teams familiar with your domain terminology and best practices can more quickly grasp your project requirements. Besides, particular knowledge of your domain can strengthen your dedicated team's ability to anticipate potential challenges as they may have faced it before in previous projects. Also, the robust understanding of your domain eliminated the time needed to explain generic domain details.

Industry knowledge is clearly not enough to accomplish a software project. According to your requirements for dedicated team members' tech knowledge, you’ll have to ensure that dedicated team members' tech knowledge aligns with what they actually offer.

Imagine you need to hire a proficient front-end developer, but the specialist from your dedicated team lacks knowledge in frameworks or tools that you require, like React Spring or Vue.js. While they might have general front-end development knowledge, they lack expertise in technologies you actually need. That’s why it’s important to determine what expertise your project needs and transparently communicate this with your dedicated development team for hire.

Another thing to do is to ensure that your vendor and dedicated development team have a clear reputation and a rich record of solution delivery success stories. Review the IT vendor’s testimonials and reviews from past clients on platforms like Clutch to ensure their exact level of expertise and the ability to deliver highly functional, secure solutions and continuously and consistently support their clients after the software release.

Cooperation with a remote team often implies particular risks in smooth and sustainable communication. This is caused by the distance and sometimes even differences in time zones. Earlier, you learned about the most commonly used communication tools and technologies during cooperation with dedicated teams. However, it’s vital to make the chosen communication approach mutually convenient for both parties.

Another factor you should evaluate is your future software development partner’s ability to scale the team size as you need. This will minimize future complexities with quick adaptation to the changing needs of your project. Also, the IT vendor’s preferred communication approach may also influence the swiftness of final project delivery, so check if it aligns with your specific goals and preferences.

NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is a legal contract aimed to protect confidential information shared between parties. Prioritize vendors that offer signing an NDA. This document ensures that both parties demonstrate full commitment to confidentiality and respect for each other's sensitive information, fostering mutual trust and transparency.

There are several points to consider when you hire dedicated team. You need to pay attention to their location because it affects the price. Also, it’s better to consider the platform you can use to find the required specialists.

There are several popular destinations to hire dedicated teams:

• North America
• South America
• Western Europe
• Central Europe
• Asia and India
• Australia

So, where you can hire a dedicated development team? There are several most commonly used platforms you can use to find required specialists.

There are a bunch of platforms where you can find a dedicated team.

Clutch

Clutch.co is a well-known B2B research, ratings, and reviews platform. The service lists over 7,000 companies working in a variety of IT fields. The platform offers a lot of clients reviews and feedback. As a result, you can choose a reliable vendor.

GoodFirms

GoodFirms is another popular platform to find a dedicated development team for hire is. It provides many experts from all over the world within the software development field.

GoodFirms has a bunch of cool features like research on various topics related to outsourcing development.

IT Firms

IT Firms creates different lists of leading developers in various categories and regions. The service offers to find top vendors to create excellent IT solutions. For example, you can find top e-commerce developers from all over the world.

Cleveroad is an outsourcing software development company that has been providing dedicated development team services for more than 12 years for companies of various industries and sizes. We have an extensive staff of specialists who are ready to integrate into your work processes and provide their experience in the development and design of software for business.

Turning to Cleveroad, you get:

• Agile-oriented team of more than 100 highly qualified specialists, experienced in a broad spectrum of domains, like Healthcare, Fintech, Logistics, E-commerce, and E-learning, fitting in your project
• Scaling capacity of the team depending on your product requirements, adapting the number of specialists as required
• Transparency and accountability so that you are always on track with the current status of the project through regular reporting and communication with the entire team
• Cooperation with a team proficient in web technologies (AngularJS, javaScript, React, etc.), mobile technologies (Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C, etc.) and more
• We provide a wide range of software services including custom web and mobile software development, IT consulting, legacy software modernization, CRM, HRM, ERP development, etc.
• A deep knowledge and proven expertise in advanced technologies like IoT, AI, Big Data, Machine learning (ML), cloud computing, blockchain, etc.
• A cooperation with an IT partner with ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (security management) and ISO 9001:2015 (quality management) certifications
• A comprehensive Project Management Office to help you fully oversee your project requirements in order to complete it fast, timely, without overstepping a budget

Besides, during collaboration, we offer different cooperation models for you to choose from based on your cooperation and budget requirements:

• Dedicated development team model. The dedicated team model provides you with the ability to hire a complete development team assembled exclusively for your project. It typically includes project managers, developers, designers, testers, and other specialists needed for the project's scope. Here you manage the team directly, including setting tasks, deadlines, and expectations.
• Staff augmentation model. It staff augmentation services involves provision of individual developers or other tech specialists to supplement your existing team/project and embrace additional and fresh expertise. You manage the individual resources, providing them with tasks and guidance. Anyway, they may also interact with your in-house team
• Outsourced team model. While utilizing this model, you sign a contract with a third-party company to handle a project or development task. The company manages the team by itself and delivers the final product. You only define the project goals and approve delivered scopes of work.