The Dedicated Team Model: When and Why You Should Use It

The business world has been through a lot lately. Of course, there is no need to go over the calamities of the last three years, as others have done before us thousands of times. Yet, companies have learned new things about the markets they work in, the customers they serve, their suppliers, partners, and everyone involved in the business process. One of the most valuable lessons was that talented professionals, capable of delivering results under pressure and regardless of the social, economic, and technological conditions, are the backbone of modern business stability. 

In today’s article, we’ll be talking about nothing else but the type of people and teams mentioned above. Generally, they come and solve issues or take projects to the market on a turnkey basis. However, they are as flexible as they come and might help businesses deal with a plethora of challenges and projects. Capable of delivering the result even when scattered around the world, a duly formed dedicated development team is something to cherish in today’s overly-competitive business world.

What Is The Dedicated Team Model?

Let’s start by laying the ground rules and defining a dedicated team. There are several vital definitions to provide. That is, we can define a dedicated team from the cooperation model perspective and from a pragmatic point of view, which explains what the dedicated team brings to the table regarding expertise, experience, and performance.

Talking about the cooperation model, a dedicated team envisages an agreement between a client and a software vendor where the latter provides access to the pool of remotely working software and business development experts required to accomplish a particular project of the former. In most cases, this is a long-term finite cooperation mode, which lets the client achieve its business goal smoothly and painlessly.

With a team of experts covering every single aspect of the project, the client has all the time they need to focus on developing their core business. This is precisely what a dedicated development team is when defined based on their contribution to the project. In other words, hiring a dedicated team is like getting a new in-house team that comes in swiftly with a skill set particularly needed to ensure fast and efficient software product development. What is more, in most cases, the software vendor is responsible for handling and managing the team, which, once again, allows the client to get the product to the market as soon as possible.

Dedicated Team Structure In Project Management

The key value and main difference of a dedicated team structure compared to other models is its focus and simplicity. So, what is a dedicated project team structure? There are three elements involved – dedicated, project, and team.

The first aspect is all about exclusivity. In short, dedicated means you get a team of professionals who will only work on your project at the moment. They are less exposed to context switching and can directly focus on delivering the best quality product.

The second aspect, the project, indicates that cooperation with a service provider will go well beyond having people who will write code or create some visuals. Unlike other models, this one entails focusing on your needs and delivering competencies capturing the entire project’s scope.

The third element is the team. Within the dedicated project team structure, you get access to a blend of professionals, each with a particular role and skill set. Usually, the team includes these experts with their respective business roles:

• UI/UX designer(s). These professionals create user experiences and interfaces following the insights from the user research. They are crucial to the success of any project, as the design is, first of all, about how things work and not how they look.
• Software engineers(s). These are the people behind writing the very code. Based on the type of project your company develops, this cluster of your dedicated team can consist of various experts, including mobile and web developers, front-end and back-end engineers, etc.
• DevOps engineer(s). DevOps engineers ensure that your project or product experiences no downtime as they coordinate all the operations, development, and testing capabilities.
• QA engineer(s). Quality assurance is crucial and can save businesses a lot of money when a timely implemented. QA engineers evaluate the product’s overall technical design and eliminate bugs and flaws by testing its stability.
• Software architect(s). While it all depends on the complexity of your project’s idea, software architects are an integral part of a dedicated team regarding solution engineering or a legacy system revamp.
• Business analyst(s). These people help you ensure that every single technology decision within the framework of your project is made to propel your business growth. Also, they link technical professionals and business executives, thus aligning the company’s business vision with its technological development pace.
• Project manager(s). Project managers are the primary communicators within a dedicated team model, as they manage all development cycle stages, from initiation to project release, making sure the client remains constantly updated on the progress.

A dedicated project team structure is simple. You have various experts working exclusively on your project and ensuring its entire scope is taken care of. The phenomenon may bring distinct advantages because of such a straightforward structure.

The Benefits of a Dedicated Team

In most cases, companies choose a dedicated development team model due to the specific benefits it entails. Without further ado, here are these are the ones to consider:

• Cost-Efficiency
• Focused Approach
• Transparent Management
• Relevant Experience and Expertise
• Faster Development
• Access to the Global Talent Pool

Cost-Efficiency

The cost structure of dedicated team services is plain and simple. Perhaps, cost-efficiency is among the top reasons for choosing this model. It is always cheaper to hire an entire team of dedicated professionals that go through searching, onboarding, and training an in-house team. With a dedicated team, you get a pre-made solution with experts ready to start with the project when and as you please.

Focused Approach

Another key advantage of the given model is a focused-based approach toward project development. This upside is directly linked to the fact that you get a dedicated group of professionals. They all work on the same project and collectively are ready to overcome obstacles. There is a low chance the team will lose track of what they are doing. It means you get nuance-based services, allowing you to find the best-fitting solution to your needs.

Transparent Management

With a team of professionals dedicated to your project, you don’t need to worry about transparency. They are either managed entirely by a software provider, which means how the experts work will not be your responsibility, or managed with existing time and task management solutions. In real-time, you can see how much of the project is completed and how much time was needed. At this point, you will always be on the same page with the team, and you will if the project is moving in the right direction.

Relevant Experience and Expertise

With dedicated software development teams, you can be sure there are professionals with the right skill set and expertise for each given part of the development cycle. There is a high chance a team offering dedicated team services has already worked on similar projects. They can provide valuable insights and consider minuscule details others might have missed. Besides, when working together, these teams establish effective workflows and have means for delegating tasks. As a result, they can turn your project in the right direction, have the skills to deliver results, and know how to work as a group.

Faster Development

Naturally, with seasoned professionals who know what they are doing, you will get faster results. Speed of project delivery is something most companies are looking for in a competitive market. With a hands-on approach, a dedicated team offers a more fast-paced development, especially compared to Extended team and Time & Material models. Moreover, you get DevOps engineers as a part of the package. It means the workflow will be streamlined, and the gap between operations and development will be narrowed down. All these aspects grant faster development. These ensure your project will constantly evolve and adapt to ever-changing market conditions.

Access to the Global Talent Pool

Last but not least, with the model at hand, you can tap into a global talent pool. ‘Manually’ looking for every specialist for an in-house team is a laborious process. You need to search through the market and contact the candidates, interview them, go through hiring along with onboarding, and often train accordingly. With dedicated project professionals, you put all of these steps aside. You just set the requirements, and a service provider finds you the experts matching your needs.

A dedicated development team model has its distinct upsides. Most notably, the approach is cost-efficient and focused. You pay for direct service delivery, and you are sure the team puts all other projects aside to work on your only. It means your clients will get the product sooner than your competitors, which translates into a competitive advantage. Yet, like with any given model out there, there are not only benefits involved.

Disadvantages of Dedicated Teams

A dedicated team model cannot be coined as a silver bullet. It means along with upsides, there are also various disadvantages of the approach to consider:

• Low Efficiency for Short-Term Projects
• Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution
• Different Time Zones

Low Efficiency for Short-Term Projects

It is unreasonable to hire a dedicated professional team for your product when you need to handle a short-term project. It is merely an inefficient thing to do. The reason is that the team needs to work through various workflows. With short-term projects, the approach will have low efficiency because the team simply won’t find the best means of collaboration to provide top-notch services. When you seek dedicated team services, you have a large and long-lasting project that needs a great deal of input.

Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution

However, even if you have a long-term project, you might still find out that the model in question is not the best fit. You must have clearly defined goals and precise project requirements for the given approach. Otherwise, a service provider will find a team of professionals with skills and expertise that doesn’t match your needs. That is why a dedicated team model is not a one-size-fits-all solution. To tap into its advantages, you still need to know what you are looking for.

Different Time Zones

As we mentioned at the beginning, the phenomenon often entails looking for teams working abroad. Naturally, it means that there is a high chance your project will be done by experts operating in a different time zone. This happens when an offshore service provider is involved. Unfortunately, this can also pose a particular threat. Working in different time zones means communication and collaboration disruptions are possible. Luckily, with a pinch of the agile approach on the top, the factor of time zones can be negated.

Putting all pieces of the puzzle together, there is a definite indication showing a dedicated development team model has its pros and cons. Yet, with the right knowledge, you can avoid the downsides and tap into the upsides. Knowing how the model functions is one part of the solution.

How Does a Dedicated Team Work?‍

The dedicated team model does not operate according to some complex multi-staged formula. In a nutshell, three distinct phases are involved in the process.

Taking a look at these speaks volumes about what the phenomenon is all about.

The Discovery Phase

This stage sets the foundation for further collaboration and ensures all the project details are clear to all parties involved. In most cases, during the discovery phase, the company hiring the team and the company providing services focus on these four elements:

• Project’s scope evaluation
• Estimating the needed number of professionals on the team
• Understanding whether selected experts have skills matching project requirements
• Negotiating all cost-related matters

When the stakeholders agree on the aspects above, the discovery phase can be coined as complete. Now, it is time to proceed to the next stage.

The Team Set-Up Phase

This stage is all about agreeing on the particular form of partnership involved, along with contract terms. When both parties sign a contract, it is time to put a team together. After that, a dedicated delivery manager contacts a client to establish the form of communication and show how the management process will unravel. As the next part of the phase, several seasoned engineers within a team will hire additional experts per the project’s requirements. Usually, it can last two to three months after the contract signing. As a result, at the end of this phase, you know who will deliver the project and who will communicate with you from inside the team.

The Development Phase

With all the team members assigned to particular roles, it is time to start a development process. At this stage of the dedicated team model, you get a group of professionals who will work similarly to how your in-house team would have worked. Experts are assigned to their respective roles, and a service provider manages the entire process through the hands of project managers. In most cases, the development company is the one taking care of operations tasks and setting the right work environment. To keep the workflow on a high level, the service provider often involved an HR professional in conducting regular one-on-ones with each member of a dedicated team. Now, you can say that development is moving from the dead point.

The Buyout Phase

This can be considered an additional, yet not mandatory, phase of the dedicated development team model. If a client wants the selected team to work on upcoming projects, they can engage in a so-called buyout. It means the services of the entire team are purchased, which translates to setting up a remote development center. However, this option is not always the case. There is always a degree of uncertainty involved. Namely, the client does not know how the team will present itself and whether the client will afford to develop future projects.

Going through discovery, team set-up, and development phases is not that challenging. Yet, each phase is paramount for the project’s success. This is why you must be completely sure you need dedicated team services.

Reasons Why You Need a Dedicated Development Team

From the insights above, you need a team of dedicated professionals when working on a long-term project.

However, the list of reasons does not stop with that. Hire a team that would work for you exclusively if these prerequisites are at play:

• If you are a startup wanting to build quickly.
  With this approach, you get professionals who can work from the get-go and deliver results fast.
• If you are a struggling tech company.
  The model helps reinvent your portfolio and give your customers new products as soon as possible, increasing the target audience.
• If you are a tech company working on a big project.
  The dedicated development team model is a perfect match for large projects with various moving parts, namely because you can have as many professionals as you want to deliver each given segment in time.
• If you are a tech company wanting to broaden the field. The model allows expanding your horizons and getting experts with knowledge who can work in fields and domains you are unfamiliar with.

With the reasons above, it is easy to determine whether a company needs to look for a team of dedicated professionals or not. In any case, it is vital to know whether you need to tap into the phenomenon. Otherwise, you might spend time and money and figure out it was not what you expected.

How Can We Help You?

The dedicated team model has distinct benefits. The model helps save costs and increase the speed of project delivery. Besides, you can delegate all the management turmoil to the service provider for the sake of focusing on bringing the most value to your customers. Yet, to tap into the benefits above, be aware of the disadvantages we spoke about and consider all the aspects of how the model operates.

If you still doubt the propriety of hiring a dedicated development team for your project, please, remember, that it is all right. Everybody wants the best for their business. Nonetheless, let us help you make the right decision.
Contact us and let’s discuss how our experts can help you move along the competition lane faster than your competitors do. With ample experience behind our back in deploying highly-professional dedicated teams, we can help you define whether you need one at all. And if you do, we’ll take it from there, one successful step at a time.