Hiring dedicated development team has become a very popular solution among companies that are planning to build their own software product but do not have in-house programmers (or if their programmers do not have the required skills or are too busy with other tasks). Quite often it is much more feasible to work with external specialists than to welcome new team members onboard. That’s why more and more companies after considering and analyzing different variants prefer this model and establish relations with an outsourcing agency.
If you are also trying to find an answer to the question of how to hire software developers, this article will help you as it explains the general concept of dedicated development teams and provides some practical tips to those who have already decided to choose this cooperation model.
What is a dedicated software development team?
First of all, you need to understand that despite the fact that dedicated developers won’t be officially employed directly by your company, they will stay fully focused on your project which is a great plus for you as such a situation will have a positive influence on the quality of a final product.
Secondly, though these programmers will work on your project and will be managed by you as you will have the possibility to closely monitor the development progress, you are not responsible for all the administrative tasks related to their hiring, onboarding, as well as to payrolls. When you hire dedicated development teams, all these questions will be solved by an outsourcing company.
In other words, hiring dedicated development team doesn’t presuppose hiring each member of the future team separately. You need to prepare requirements regarding your future team, its composition, skills, and knowledge of programmers, their expertise, as well as the number and qualifications of other specialists like designers, project managers, and QA engineers (if you want your team to include such experts). After that, you should share these requirements with the outsourcing agency that you have chosen and the agency will find the best candidates for you. It means that you have a great possibility to save your time and money on hiring processes.
Moreover, when you hire dedicated development team you have a lot of flexibility and can enjoy the great scalability of your team. It won’t be a problem to add new members to your team when you need extra hands and at the same time when you already do not have tasks for some experts, you can reduce the number of your team members.
Hiring dedicated development team: Step-by-step plan
So, when you want to hire dedicated development team, the entire process looks the following way.
Stage 1. Identify project requirements, its goals, and set the budget.
This step is just the first one but it is already vitally important. If you make a mistake at this stage (for example, define the wrong goals or set a higher budget than you are ready to allocate for this project), you may face serious problems in the future. So, please be very attentive.
Stage 2. Conduct market research and find companies that can help you hire dedicated development teams.
It is important to analyze their offerings, discuss possible terms of cooperation, consider companies’ portfolios and ask any questions you may have.
Stage 3. Choose a vendor and share your requirements.
Before making a final decision on the agency that will support you in hiring dedicated development team, it is highly recommended to search for reviews written by clients who have cooperated with this agency earlier. Make sure that you’ve found a reliable partner. After you establish cooperation with an outsourcing agency you need to provide your requirements for your future project. And the vendor will start looking for the best candidates to join your dedicated team.
Stage 4. Gather a dedicated team.
As a rule, a vendor finds candidates and you, as a client, can conduct interviews and approve the candidates. Do not hesitate to ask as many questions as you have during the interview. It is crucial to find experts who will be able to perfectly cope with the set tasks.
Stage 5. Choose the software tools and set the business processes.
After approving the team, you need to explain to the developers how your cooperation will be organized. You should provide them with the necessary software tools (for example, Jira – for task management, Slack or Skype – for communication) and clearly set the processes of communication, reporting, etc. Your team should know what and when they should do and what, in general, you expect from them.
Stage 6. Organize regular meetings and provide feedback.
Developers always should know whether they are on the right track, what the client thinks about their work, and what can be improved. Very often, companies hold daily meetings for discussing ongoing tasks and updates. But if it is more comfortable for you to organize these meetings, for example, twice a week, it will also be okay. The main thing that you should bear in mind is that you should always timely tell your developers what must be enhanced or changed. It is easier to introduce changes step-by-step during the development process, not at the end when everything is ready.
Though it may seem that it is rather challenging to hire dedicated development teams, it is not true, especially when you know how everything should be organized. We hope that you have found our article useful and that you won’t face any issues when you start your cooperation with dedicated developers.
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