Boost Your Power with Dedicated Teams

To find a dedicated team that will help you carry out your tech project (or at least its tech part), go through:

• Freelance platforms like Upwork
• B2B portals like Clutch
• GitHub or StackOverflow
• Outstaff vendors like Relevant

Usually, these are countries from Asia, Eastern Europe, Central, and South America.
Our on-demand dedicated engineering teams are located in Eastern Europe, Ukraine.

Why in Ukraine

Ukraine can be fairly considered Europe's new best outsourcing destination. Ukraine is a developing economy, which makes hiring local professionals cost-efficient for most western businesses. Additionally, this country is a home to nearly 200,000 specialists in the IT field, which makes it a perfect place to outsource software development tasks to. Powerful software development hubs around the country house thousands of highly professional specialists in various fields, so that there is no problem finding experts of software development in Ukraine.

The time & material model means that you’re paying for the result of your cooperation with the vendor’s team. No coffee-drinking, social-media-scrolling time included. It’s your way to go if:

• you have a small project
• all you have is a concept or idea
• you’re planning to build an MVP
• you don’t know the target market
• you need updates or minor features
• the scope is dynamic
• your project doesn’t have the requirements, price or deadlines figured out yet

The dedicated team and the time & material models share some similarities, like efficiency and flexibility, and some cons, too. For example, both models require the client to communicate with the outsourced team frequently.

Largest advantage: The time & material model is result-oriented.

Largest disadvantage: It’s hard to plan or control the budget.

The fixed price model means that you and the software development vendor you’re partnering with have agreed on the scope, the deadline, and, as the name suggests, the price of the project. This is the critical part: the model doesn’t allow the product requirements to change much.

The dedicated team and the fixed price models have a crucial trait in common: when you sign up for either of them, you know when to pay, whom, and how much. Since the team, the scope, and the deadlines are agreed upon in advance, there will be no budget-related surprises.

Go for the fixed price model if:

• your project has extensive specs and a clear goal or results
• all the procedures are known and negotiated beforehand
• the deadline is set in stone
• you don’t feel the need to control everything
• you aren’t planning to change anything about the project in the process

Largest advantage: You can plan your budget ahead.

Largest disadvantage: Less flexibility in terms of the project scope.

The outsourcing vendor is usually the one who handles all the legal aspects of hiring and maintaining IT programmers. However, you will have to consider the following:

• Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The document has to state what information is considered confidential, that a person can use the disclosed information for the project purposes only, and what the penalty is.
• Statement of Work (SOW). This document should specify the scope of work, the deliverables, the schedule, the acceptance criteria, the duration, the standards, and any other terms, conditions, or special requirements for the future project.
• Master Services Agreement (MSA). This document defines your cooperation with the vendor. It is the place where you want to specify the terms of payment, dispute resolution, and intellectual property rights.

The onboarding process might seem daunting, but it lays the foundation of successful and fruitful cooperation between the client, the in-house team, and the extended team. Here’s what you need to do to ensure that the onboarding goes smoothly.

• Describe the business context to your software development dedicated team

Make sure to explain your strategy and vision, your goals and competitors, your market and users, your strengths and weaknesses to them. Learning the business context before getting to development guarantees that the new tech pros you’ve hired will work smarter and always keep an eye on your company’s goal.

• Give your in-house team a pep talk

Even if your in-house team understands the need to hire a dedicated team, there may be tension or even rivalry between them. So, please, have a nice talk with your in-house team. Make sure to tell them that no one doubts their competence, and they are not being replaced by the dedicated team.

• Make sure to share all the necessary project documentation

Your extended team has to have access to all the resources it will need to hit the ground running. The most important are the backlog, the technical documentation, and the code repository.

• Try to organize an offline meeting

While most of the dedicated team onboarding can be done online or via video conferencing, you’ll need real-life communication to really form a bond between the teams. It’s easier to disapprove someone you’ve never met, so in-person communication can be the key to long-lasting and supportive relations.

How do you manage a team you can’t see, text with more than you talk, and visit once a month (at the best of times)? It’s actually not that hard if you trust your team. All you’ll need to do is:

• Manage remote offshore teams just like in-house teams

Once a remote team joins the in-house team and becomes a part of the company’s talent pool, it is necessary to establish a sense of equality. Both in-house and remote workers need to understand they need to perform at the same level of productivity and quality. That is why you must impose the same standards upon all the employees.

Making sure everyone is doing their best is a must, therefore it is best to allocate some resources to assuring the quality and productivity of the teams.

• Organize scheduled standups

Gather the team via a call or video conferencing and ask each to answer three questions:

1. what did you do yesterday? / what has been done so far?
2. what problems did you face?
3. what are you planning to do tomorrow?

Holding daily meetings like this is a good practice that keeps everyone updated, allows employees to structure information on what they’ve done, and plan future tasks. Just be sure to moderate these standups and make them short and to-the-point. If someone starts deviating from the plan, gives too much detailed information, or needs help, talk to the person individually after the meeting.

• Leverage tools

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools you can use to keep track of your dedicated team and its activities.

1. All-in-one solutions: Troop Messenger, BasicOps Hibox, Paymo, Hive
2. Managing tasks: Trello, Jira, Twoodo, Wrike, Worksection, Avaza, Taskworld, TeamGantt, Fusioo, Eylean Board
3. Document collaboration tools: Google Drive, Bit.ai
4. Team communication tools:Skype, Slack, SocialChorus, UberConference

• Establish work procedures

Try to think ahead and answer the questions dedicated team members may have before they even arise. Make sure that they know what your work procedures are and follow them correctly. Who is responsible for what? How do you create new tasks? How can you share files? Whom to contact if you have access issues? Your dedicated team has to know answers to these and other questions or know where to find them.

• Provide constant feedback

Being responsive is an essential part of managing a dedicated team. Software engineers may have dozens of questions, big or small, that need to be answered if you want your product to meet your expectations. The feedback of a product owner is what guides the remote tech pros who can’t casually meet you in the office kitchen and say “I’ve been thinking that there is a better way to implement that feature.” Sometimes, your answer defies the next steps of the employee, and while you’re procrastinating, the person (or the team) doesn’t know what to do next. This slows down the development pace and leaves the workers frustrated.

• Don’t forget they are professionals

Sometimes, you may think of your dedicated team as a younger sibling of the in-house team. Don’t do that. Both teams need to be equal in your eyes because they both consist of high-profile tech experts you picked out yourself. If a dedicated team has ideas, they should also be considered. Don’t forget that you hired that dedicated team specifically for their tech expertise, so treat them as legitimate professionals, take their opinions into account and praise the team members for the work they’ve done.

We’ve prepared a useful image for you on that topic. Save it for the future.

To track tasks and project development progress, we use Jira software.

Yes, they are. At Relevant, we use Agile Scrum and Kanban.

We are ready to provide you with any number of software developers you need, from 1 to 100.

Working with a dedicated team is not something only small businesses and startups do. It is the go-to cooperation model for many world-renowned companies as well. They include Zapier, Slack, GitLab, and many more.

Zapier team works from 13 countries. Wade Foster, the co-founder of Zapier, says that the distributed development model is a better way to work, that allows hiring smart people no matter where in the world.

Slack. This company values around $3 billion, and the app has more than 8 million daily active users. The interesting fact is that web interface and mobile apps of Slack were developed by an outsourced team.

GitLab is another company with a team distributed across the globe. Victor Wu, the Product Manager at GitLab says that remote work is a clear business advantage that has a multitude of benefits that far outweigh the drawbacks.

Some other companies that have distributed development are Apple, Oracle, American Express, IBM, Verizon, Amazon, Doist, Automatic, Buffer and 10up

All the services we provide may be maintained with the dedicated team model:

• app & web development
• frontend & backend development
• DevOps
• cybersecurity
• quality assurance
• digital design
• AI&ML

The dedicated team model works for:

• Projects that are looking to grow and expand quickly

If you have a big project that is expected to grow into an even bigger one, look for a dedicated team. This approach will let you assemble a team quickly, skip the tedious recruitment and hiring processes, and hand-pick the members of the team yourself. Your in-house team is then left to work on the more important, business-oriented tasks while the augmented team does the additional work.

• Long-term projects with multiple tasks

We’ve already mentioned that the dedicated team model is flexible. In an industry that is as rapidly developing as tech, not embracing flexibility means losing opportunities and failing to implement brilliant ideas. It’s okay to change requirements in the process of development as long as you have a dedicated team to back you up and keep the quality high throughout the SDLC.

• Projects with a fixed and considerable workflow

Since you’ve hired an entire dedicated team to work on your project, you need to provide them with enough work to keep their pipeline busy. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay for the days (or weeks) they sit around with no active tasks to do. This is far from cost-effective and discourages the team that can’t take up any other projects from other clients since it’s dedicated.

• Companies that plan to expand 

A successful business grows and expands. If that’s your case, you’ll soon have to hire more people. A dedicated team that has been working with you for some time now will be able to help you with the onboarding of the newcomers. Since your dedicated team members already know the ins and outs of your projects, they’ll put your new in-house team members into the picture. Plus, if your dedicated team works in the country you are planning to expand to, you’ll already have trusted partners who can give you some insights on the new market.

Having a dedicated team may sound like a lot of commitment and rigidity. But the fact is that this cooperation model is both flexible and straightforward when it comes to the scope, time, or cost.

• Scope

Dedicated team is the most flexible model in terms of requirements. As the client, it’s up to you to decide on the scope and the workload of the project. Because the dedicated team members are de-facto your employees, you communicate with them directly and frequently, which makes altering the scope quick and less painful.

• Time

Transparent cooperation also lets you and the vendor agree on how you’re going to handle deadlines. Hiring the team for a specific job, project, or period is how this approach works most often. However, if you’ve enjoyed working with the team, you can always negotiate the extension of your partnership.

• Cost

The dedicated team model is very clear when it comes to cost tracking. Usually, clients pay monthly, just as they would pay their in-house employees. The sum consists of the monthly salaries of the dedicated team members and the vendor’s fee (administrative, infrastructure expenses, and overhead).

To get a fruitful experience of investigating potential employees and communicating with them, you should consider sticking to the following plan, which consists of several crucial steps.

• Set goals

You must set clear goals for the candidates. It means that the teams need to know what tasks they are about to embark upon and be ready for the challenge. Make sure they clearly understand their goals and expectations and are ready to meet them.

• Conduct an overview

At this point, you are to evaluate all the pros and cons of each group and its members. An evaluation of experience, soft skills, personal traits, proficiency, and other traits of the candidates helps in seeing the full image and finding out which team is the best. That is how you can identify the best candidates.

• Technical screening

Then, consider whether the teams are up to the requirements. That is where they pass tests and show how good they are at their job, which helps to filter out the best ones.

A short test lasting somewhere from 2 to 4 hours might be perfect for screening the tech abilities of the potential employees. This will help in defining the best candidates as they will have to demonstrate their tech skills and knowledge.

For the non-tech positions, the process of preliminary selection might be more challenging as you have to evaluate the soft skills of the candidates for the remote or in-house team. Soft skills, unlike the ability to code, cannot be measured precisely. That is why it might take several meetings or calls to decide on the candidate.

• Final interview

This is the final step that follows testing in the entire process, and that is where you meet the most suitable candidates and actually interviewing them. Usually, at this point, both you and the candidate know they already are on the safe side. Still, you have to make final evaluations before making the decision to start cooperation.

There are several questions you might want to ask before hiring a candidate. Asking these final questions might look like a redundancy, but better safe than sorry:

1. Are you anxious about working remotely?
2. Are you capable of tracking your own performance in an objective manner?
3. Are you an objective-driven worker?
4. Can you work with rigid deadlines?
5. Do you consider yourself a flexible and agile employee?

Asking these and similar questions might reveal some hidden strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Although you will most likely already know whether you are going to hire a candidate by that time, it is better to double-check.

• Ensure security

Not completely a separate step but rather an aspect to keep in mind throughout the entire recruitment process, keeping things safe is critical to you as an employer or a business owner. Businesses that never tried nearshoring or any type of outsourcing might be anxious to turn to this type of cooperation. There is no need to worry because platforms like Upwork, YouTeam, and Toptal guarantee the total security of cooperation between the client and the service provider. More so, these platforms make it possible for agile management and efficient cooperation between you and your in-house team.