In today’s well-established software industry, there are several different development team models available such as dedicated tech teams, outsourced teams, offshore teams, etc. These different team models are chosen by a company according to its business requirements and the available resources.
The significance of this paradigm can also be realized from the current crisis of COVID-19 that the whole world is going through. Because of socially distancing yourself from all others, it is practically impossible to work with the in-house team. This is exactly why a vast majority of the work is done remotely these days. Today’s article revolves around the 5 questions about a dedicated software team you have always wanted to ask and their potential answers.
What are the dedicated teams?
This should be the very first question that should strike your mind before diving deep into the sea of dedicated teams. You really need to know what dedicated teams actually are. A dedicated team is a group of people hired from multiple locations and their job is to work on a single dedicated project.
This team is bound to work on this dedicated project without indulging itself into any other project before the completion of that project. In this way, this team can focus entirely on the tasks assigned to it for a particular project rather than working on multiple projects at a time.
Dedicated teams can either be created using offshoring or nearshoring. In an offshoring model, your aim is to get your work done at the cheapest possible rate while your dedicated team may reside millions of miles apart from your organization. This has its own pros and cons whereas in the case of nearshoring, your goal is to get your work done while keeping your dedicated team closer to your organization maybe to reduce the communication gaps, even if you have to pay more for it. A dedicated team model is also known as staff augmentation model.
How does a dedicated team model works?
First of all, you try to identify your project requirements after which you start hiring the dedicated team members from multiple sources. Once a dedicated software developers team is created, it starts working on the assigned project at the specified time.
You can either communicate directly with the dedicated team or you can even hire a dedicated project manager who can take the responsibility of getting your work done. The main point to be noted over here is that a dedicated team should be considered as a team of your own employees working from different locations rather than in your office. It is so because a dedicated team is supposed to follow all the rules and regulations of your own organization.
In this way, you can get more control over a dedicated team and can easily manage it according to your needs. Another ambiguity arises when we start thinking about dedicated teams vs outsourcing.
Many people often confuse the dedicated team model with the outsourcing model because in both the cases, the team members are supposed to work outside the boundary of an organization. What we need to realize is that, in an outsourcing model, you simply handover your job to a third-party development team whereas in the dedicated team model, you are responsible for hiring all the team members.
Also, in an outsourcing model, the team is not solely dedicated to your project alone rather it can conveniently work on the projects delegated to them by different clients and you cannot even restrict them to work only on your project.
On the other hand, the dedicated team model provides you with more control and hence you can easily command the team you have hired to work only on the project it was hired for.
Moreover, the outsourced team is also not bound to follow the rules and regulations that you have set for your organization as it is in the case of the dedicated team model.
What are the pros and cons of working with dedicated teams?
Whichever software development model you choose to follow, it comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. First, we would like to talk about the pros of working with dedicated teams:
You can control the dedicated teams as per your organizational needs.
You can expect a good productivity out of a dedicated team since their entire focus will be on a single project at a time.
The dedicated teams can be scaled up and down according to your business requirements.
The dedicated team model works best for the long term projects that comprise of a variety of different tasks.
You have the liberty to design the dedicated team structure right according to the way you want without any external interference.
There are also a few cons associated with working with dedicated teams which are mentioned below:
Dedicated teams are expensive to build as compared to the typical outsourced teams.
It takes a reasonable amount of time to hire the dedicated team members whose vision exactly alligns with your business goals.
Dedicated teams are highly unsuitable for the projects that span a very short time and also have a fixed budget.
Is a dedicated team model right for you?
For figuring out if the dedicated team model is exactly what you need, several factors should be considered which we will try to explore in the answer to this question. As it is already mentioned that the dedicated team model is best suited for the projects that are likely to last long, therefore, the first thing that you should estimate is the duration of your project.
Secondly, you need to take a look at the available resources that you can possibly lend to your dedicated team. Then you also need to know your exact budget i.e. the sum of amount that you can spend on a particular project including its development and the salaries of the developers.
If every thing is in your favour i.e. you have a long term project which has multiple different tasks that can be delegated, you have enough resources which you can allocate to your dedicated team (these resources should be other than the ones that are already in use within your organization), and your budget is also very flexible, then you should definitely go ahead with the dedicated team model. However, if it is not the case, then you might consider any other development model that suits your particular needs.
How to build your own dedicated team?
There are multiple steps that are involved in the process of building a dedicated team and these steps also differ slightly from one organization to another. However, the basic workflow of building a dedicated team on your own is more or less the same. This process is listed in the form of a few points below:
Identify the needs of your project and if they align with the capabilities of a dedicated team, then you are in a good position to say that you are going to have a dedicated team for this particular project or you are going to follow the dedicated team model.
Now you need to hire software developers for your dedicated team. For this, you need to consider the skills and specialities of the people you are interviewing. For example, a candidate might only be a healthcare mobile app developer and be strictly reluctant to work on any other type of project. Therefore, you should select only those candidates that are eligible for your particular project.
It is highly recommended that the final selection should be based on the interviews with the technical team lead or the CTO.
Once the eligible candidates have been selected, you can assign them a trial project or you can even start working on the main project directly. It entirely depends on the level of trust that you have built with the developers during their recruitment process.
Another point that should be taken into consideration is that you need to look carefully whether the timezones of the places where your dedicated team members reside match with yours or not. It is required because you need to continuously communicate with your dedicated team. If there is a communication gap, then the dedicated team will unfortunately fail to function as it was intended to.
Wrapping Up:
By now we all have realized that it is nearly impossible for an organization to work on its own without the concepts of project outsourcing, dedicated teams, offshoring, nearshoring, etc. especially during these days. In one way or another, you have to take services from remote development teams to survive in this crisis. You simply cannot shut down a business if the employees cannot visit the office daily.
You need to have ways out of this situation through which you can still keep going. Dedicated team model is one such solution which can be used very successfully if you have sufficient resources available and you are ready to work on long term projects with varying needs.
