Agility in Action: 5 Scenarios to Hire a Dedicated Development Team

Even the best ideas and the most generous budgets won’t save a tech project if the software development team is chosen incorrectly. It’s great if you have your own HR and recruiting professionals and can afford an in-house IT department. But let’s be honest — it’s not the case for most businesses out there. Sure, you can hire a bunch of freelancers not knowing each other. But it’s like swinging from one extreme to the other.

There’s, however, an alternative. Hiring a dedicated software development team can become a total game-changer. When should hire a dedicated development team? How can a business benefit from dedicated outsourcing services? We’ve answered these questions in our guide.

The 5 Cases When You’ll Win From Hiring a Dedicated Development Team

Let’s say your company wants to develop a mobile app for its customers. You don’t have the budget or time to establish an in-house IT department.

A dedicated software development team (DT) would be a group of professionals that you hire to work exclusively on this project. They are responsible for the complete app’s development lifecycle from scratch, including the application’s design, development, testing, and maintenance.

The team would have experts in various areas of app development: software architecture, front- and back-end development, user experience (UX) design, quality assurance (QA), and project management.

Their goal is to deliver a seamless end-to-end development experience — the app meets your requirements, stays within budget, and is delivered on time.

There are countless cases of when and why to outsource your project to a “ready” team. There are, however, a few typical scenarios when this approach brings the best outcome.

#1 Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Launching a minimal viable product is the fastest and most cost-efficient way to validate your business idea. Often, founders need it to even decide whether they need to go further and open a startup.

Having the necessary experience in building and launching MVPs on the market, a dedicated team provides young startups with quick first results — user feedback and performance overview. The biggest perk here is that you can start with a limited budget and build your product’s first version sufficient for pitching to investors.

For example, when Airbnb was just getting started, they hired a dedicated development team to help them build their MVP in just a few weeks. This way, they tested their concept and iterated quickly, ultimately leading to the business model we know today.

The Benefits

• Faster time to market
• Competitive advantage
• Security of your intellectual property
• Ability to iterate quickly based on user feedback
• A cost-effective approach to building a new product

#2 Scaling an Existing Software Solution

As a small business grows, its software needs inevitably evolve. Soon your product requires new features, performance improvements, or user experience enhancement. A DT will help you scale your product without diverting internal resources. In most cases, they identify and address scalability bottlenecks, optimize your codebase, and implement new features and functionality as needed.

For instance, an e-commerce startup experiencing rapid growth would need expert assistance optimizing its online platform, improving back-end performance to handle increased traffic and demand, and adding new features to increase customer satisfaction.

The Benefits

• Improved scalability and performance
• Ability to handle increased traffic and demand
• Faster time to market for new features and functionality
• Further market reach

#3 Complex Software Integration

Big complex digital products aren’t isolated and require multiple integrations with different software applications, databases, and platforms, often with diverse functionalities. Making them work together seamlessly as a unified whole can become a challenge. Here are some examples.

An online retailer can’t provide its services without connecting its website with payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe for secure transactions. The platform needs inventory management systems to keep track of product availability and automate stock updates. On top of that, there should be integrations with shipping providers like FedEx or UPS for real-time tracking and efficient order fulfillment.

Or let’s take healthcare as another example. In this setting, tech solutions require various software applications — electronic health record (EHR) systems, laboratory information systems (LIS), or radiology information systems (RIS), to name a few.

Sound like a lot of work and specific knowledge. However, experienced tech vendors would have access to talents with such narrow expertise. A dedicated team, in these cases, would establish seamless communication and data exchange between all these disparate systems.

The Benefits

• Seamless integration with multiple third-party systems
• Improved security and reliability
• The product’s extended functionality
• Ability to leverage third-party APIs and data sources

#4 Legacy System Modernization

Updating or replacing outdated software systems or applications with newer, more efficient technologies is another technical challenge. Legacy systems are typically older software systems that have been in use for some time and may have become outdated, incompatible, or difficult to maintain. Here’s why it’s tricky.

1. Outdated Technology: Legacy systems are often built on outdated technologies and programming languages that may no longer be widely used or supported. It can make it difficult to find developers with the necessary skills to work on the codebase.
2. Lack of Documentation: Legacy systems may have inadequate or outdated documentation, making it hard for developers to understand the code and its functionalities. This can lead to delays and errors when attempting to modify or add new features.
3. Integration Issues: Legacy systems often need to interact with newer technologies or modern applications. Integrating legacy code with modern tech can be complicated due to differences in data formats, communication protocols, or architecture.
4. Technical Debt: Over time, legacy systems may accumulate technical debt — suboptimal code or design choices made to meet tight deadlines or accommodate system constraints. Technical debt can make the codebase complex, difficult to understand, and prone to bugs.
5. Risk of Business Disruption: Legacy systems often support critical business processes, and making changes to the codebase can carry a risk of disrupting those operations. This risk can make organizations hesitant to undertake modernization efforts.

Many software projects start exactly with legacy system reviews. In some cases, a business needs an entire team to fix previous mistakes, refactor the codebase, and make the product scalable and functional again.

#5 Ongoing Software Maintenance and Support

The product’s life only begins after the launch. Bug fixes, security updates, performance optimizations, feature enhancements, and providing technical assistance to users are crucial to keep the product profitable.

Neglecting software maintenance for digital products can have several negative consequences, including:

• Decreased reliability
• Security vulnerabilities
• Customer dissatisfaction
• Financial losses

Outsourcing maintenance tasks allows businesses to scale resources based on their needs. They can easily adjust the team size and scope of work to accommodate changing requirements or business growth. It’s a cost-effective way to keep a tech solution in perfect shape without hiring, for example, an entire IT department.

Why Should You Choose a Dedicated Development Team?

You’ve just decided to launch or scale a startup, your business needs a complex internal system, or you have a digital product that needs — that’s where you can greatly enjoy all the benefits of the dedicated development team.

When you hire a dedicated team, you, in a sense, hire a coherent body that is inspired by your goals, follows your instructions, and won’t leave you halfway to the goal if something goes wrong.