Outsourcing skilled labor has been a critical component of running businesses for quite some time now. Moreover, the demand for outsourced labor is only rising. Analysts forecast the $232.32 billion global business process outsourcing market to grow by an 8.5 percent CAGR between 2021 and 2028.

Businesses outsource all kinds of professional services, from manufacturing, IT operations, software development, customer services, and accounting to business management. Of course, there are also many different ways to outsource labor. But when it comes to high-profile tasks such as software or product development, the best outsourcing approach is either staff augmentation or hiring dedicated teams. The two methods suit these scenarios due to the unique demands and constraints of development projects.

This article focuses on the dedicated team outsourcing model: what it is, how it works, its benefits, and when to use it. Let’s get started.

What is dedicated team outsourcing?

Dedicated team outsourcing is a long-term collaboration arrangement between an employer or client and a hand-picked team of developers, designers, and engineers. A dedicated team works exclusively for you or on the project in question. More importantly, a dedicated team follows your directives, giving you complete control over the project. Each team member is carefully selected to play a specific role in the development process based on their expertise and competence.

Hiring a dedicated team is similar to working with an in-house department in terms of the level of commitment to work. But unlike regular employees, dedicated team members usually work remotely and on an entire development project. Plus, engaging with a dedicated team is very different from handling employees.

For instance, you don’t have to go through the traditional hiring process to recruit a dedicated team, and the team members do not expect employee treatment or experience. In fact, this is one of the main advantages of hiring dedicated teams. Dedicated team members don’t require the same level of onboarding, recruiting, training, orientation, or attention given to regular employees. They don’t even need accommodation, upkeep, or benefits. Also, dedicated teams are self-sufficient and come fully equipped, making them extremely low-maintenance.

Dedicated team vs. staff augmentation

Staff augmentation means contracting independent professionals to join your in-house team. This only works when you need extra hands or skills to fill labor gaps in a particular project. Such hires are short-term, usually on a project-by-project basis. On the other hand, hiring a dedicated team provides you with more than just an individual worker. You get a whole group of curated and proven experts ready to tackle a development project from start to finish. A dedicated team does not necessarily fill a skill or labor gap but takes over the project altogether.

Both dedicated team and staff augmentation models have their perks and limitations, and each approach suits certain use cases. In a nutshell, staff augmentation is a great way to bridge internal labor gaps with talented workers without actually going through the trouble of hiring. On the other hand, working with a dedicated team is the best way to outsource a development project in one go while fostering a long-term outsourcing partnership with devoted developers.

How does the dedicated team model work?

Outsourcing development to a dedicated team is pretty straightforward. The first and most crucial step is to build the team itself. This means recruiting enough competent professionals to handle the task at hand. The team should be full-stacked and self-sufficient, so every role must be represented by at least one member. Depending on the project, you might need to gather:

• Project managers
• Full-stack or specialist front-end and back-end developers
• DevOps engineers
• UI/UX designers
• Networking architects
• Quality and success assurance managers
• Data scientists

This recruitment phase is where you make or break the team. However, gathering qualified professionals is no easy task, especially when you factor in the complexities of labor outsourcing. This is where staffing agencies such as WeDevelop come in.

We do all the heavy lifting involved in building your dedicated team, one professional at a time. Our talent pool consists of over 200 pre-screened developers, engineers, and designers sourced mainly from Argentina and other LATAM regions. All you have to do is tell us the kind and number of developers you need based on the project’s scope and requirements. From there, we’ll assemble a team matching every description down to the last detail.

Once you have your team, it’s just a simple matter of discussing goals and expectations. It’s important to hash out the logistics, milestones, objectives, and success metrics right from the start to ensure the partnership kicks off on the right track.

How much does a dedicated team cost?

One of the main reasons for outsourcing development is to save money on labor expenses. So, the cost is a big deal when working with a dedicated team. While outsourcing through this model does cut labor spending (compared to hiring in-house employees), the final cost depends on the team itself.

Pricing a dedicated team is pretty simple. First, each team member has a specific hourly rate determined by their professional qualifications, rank, or role. Then, you simply add up the hourly rates for every worker and multiply the sum with the total work hours to determine the weekly or monthly wages.

When to use a dedicated team over other outsourcing options

The dedicated team model is best suited to businesses that outsource development but maintain managerial control over the development process. Dedicated teams also pair well with lengthy, ongoing, repetitive, or complex development projects. But these scenarios can mean a lot of different things to different organizations. So let’s look at some of the ideal situations where dedicated team hires come in handy:

Early-stage startups

Startups are always eager to grow from their infancy to market as quickly as possible. But in most cases, young businesses lack the workforce and resources to get past the early stages. Dedicated team hires can give early-stage startups the labor boost they need to leap off the ground. Startups can quickly conceptualize, design, develop, and deploy products while keeping labor overheads low by working with dedicated teams. A dedicated team essentially reduces the startup’s time to market without the fear of burning out along the way. Such a rapid digital transformation can truly propel a startup to new heights.

Long-term or ongoing projects

A software’s lifecycle does not end after deployment. Software products need continuous support, iterations, updates, and upgrades to stay relevant in the dynamic tech world. Plus, a software application or website might be just a small step in the digitization journey. The point is, some development projects require uninterrupted nurturing to reach their full potential. In such cases, you need a dependable team by your side to see the project throughout its long life.

Giant tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Oracle assign dedicated teams to maintain and run various standalone or affiliate assets. As time goes by, such teams become more than just hires; they eventually form part of the employer’s brand.

Labor or skill shortage

Is your internal IT team shorthanded or under-skilled to handle a particular development project? If that’s the case, hiring a dedicated team is the only way to get the project completed with the dedication, attention, and care you’d expect from an in-house team. In addition, a dedicated team saves you the hassle and cost of expanding the existing IT department without the risk of compromising work integrity. Plus, your employees can continue their day-to-day routines without worrying about extra workloads.

Projects with flexible or vague requirements

The project discovery phase crucially sets the pace for the entire development process. It puts the project’s requirements and end goals into sharp focus, which, in turn, defines the development mechanisms. But it might take months to find the right product-market or problem-solution fit for a particular project. Fortunately, you don’t need to set everything in stone when working with a dedicated team. In fact, you can work together to determine the best course of action for the project even as work progresses. The dedicated team model gives you the time and advantage to pick the minds of brilliant developers and engineers at no extra cost.

Overwhelmed development companies

If you run an independent software or web development company, dedicated team hires might come in handy if your in-house developers get overwhelmed by work. Of course, it’s always a good thing to have orders flooding in, but you can sometimes bite off more than you can chew. Instead of turning down clients or rushing ongoing projects (which can compromise quality), you can simply delegate the extra work to one or more dedicated teams. Working with dedicated teams grows the business and its throughput without losing time and money, extending the physical work infrastructure.

The benefits of working with dedicated teams

A dedicated team is the closest you can get to an in-house workforce but without any of the downsides of actually hiring and retaining employees. As such, the dedicated team outsourcing model presents several perks, including:

• Cost-efficient talent source: You don’t incur HR or administrative expenses apart from wages.
• No-fuss hiring: It takes little time and effort to assemble a team, and once set up, a dedicated team hits the ground running.
• Taps to a global talent pool: Dedicated teams draw talent across regional and international borders, assembling the best IT minds the world has to offer.
• Committed team: The best thing about hiring a dedicated team is that it’s fully committed to you — it’s right there in the name.
• Cultural alignment: A dedicated team gets immersed in your organization’s culture and shares the brand’s values, beliefs, mission, work conduct, and professional outlook.
• High flexibility and scalability: You can structure a dedicated team however you see fit to suit its purpose and even resize or adjust it on the go to optimize performance and cost.
• Absolute control: With the dedicated team model, you have total control over your outsourcing strategy, and it’s easy to manage workflows and expectations, even when collaborating remotely.

Summary

We can sum up dedicated teams as a staffing model that combines the commitment and loyalty of in-house workers and the convenience and efficiency of labor outsourcing. It’s basically like having a detached workforce that’s still well within administrative reach. If you’re looking for long-term, transparent, and streamlined engagements with professional developers, the dedicated team model is the way to go.

Working with dedicated teams is a breeze. However, finding the right talent to build a capable team can be challenging. Contacting, vetting, and screening individual engineers, designers, and developers can be tedious and time-consuming. You also have to consider the team’s dynamics — whether every member fits in and that the whole team can work as one cohesive unit. So, you may want to consider softs skills and teamwork compatibility (time zones, culture, language, skill levels, etc.) too.

But you’re in luck; finding and qualifying talent is what WeDevelop does best. Leverage our massive labor network to quickly and accurately match the right professionals with your team’s requirements. Crucially, we go beyond building a functional and competent team to ensure you get the best possible service, value, quality, and experience. So get in touch, and let’s start building your dedicated team today.