December 18th, 2018

Why SMBs Move to Dedicated Team Model

A visible trend of small-to-medium companies moving away from traditional development methods. What are the main factors to gravitate towards long-distance talents?
As small businesses (SMBs) are a vital part of each country's economy, it's important to enable their steady growth by saving both time and financial resources.
Winning a competition against big companies is no joke, and it surely shifted SMBs' attention to a dedicated team model when developing a product. By using it, the limited talent pool becomes a non-factor and you get high-quality employees who know their roles and duties on top of not having to pay extras for a costly local office.

These are some of the major reasons why this approach is starting to prevail when picking an effective development strategy by small and medium-sized companies.

Money is the Key

Business is all about making money. Whether it's planning stage, active development, or the growth period, your company will always take a look at how much profit it can bring in. This ever-present factor is what sets the pace for a project from the very beginning: the funding amount is the stepping stone and needs to be used wisely. And the dedicated team is arguably the no.1 pick in terms in offering the best value for its cost.

First, you don't have to pay for the office, which saves a lot of money and it's not only about rent. Its maintenance often costs pretty penny: paying for security, janitors, an office manager, and equipment is what can suck any venture dry.

You are also free from having to acquire top-notch processing and network hardware—the essential tools for all kinds of programming, not to mention their constant upgrade, supply, and repair. One powerful desktop can cost the monthly salary of a senior developer, and it's risky to make such investments before the project has even started.

On top of that, hiring is no longer a luxury—you don't need a costly department for this purpose, all the onboarding is a part of the service. Being able to halt the contract is also what can save large sums of money if needed.

Convenient Scheduling

If the team is far away from you, that doesn't mean it won't be supervised. Whether it's based overseas or in a neighboring country, there will always be hours when your schedule overlaps to enable steady contact between both parties, keep you aware of the project's status, and make adjustments.

Modern tools like Slack or Google Calendar allow for smooth scheduling whenever the client finds suitable, so there will always be staff to stay in touch with the actual project needs.
Dedicated team development | X1 Group
Image courtesy: Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst

Getting the Talent

Hiring is a truly stressful affair not to mention that it costs quite a bit of money. Small businesses are the most vulnerable group when it comes to onboarding - they may simply not have an HR department. Plus it's a tall task to attract local talent when competing with the big companies that are usually favored by skillful candidates.

So the SMBs started passing this burden to the outstaffing companies that have a wide pool of candidates who can fulfill any role. It's both a time and money-efficient method since a manual search takes a while and requires additional expenses for promotion of the vacancies. Getting "niche" developers one by one—this is what small businesses need, not a horde of similar programmers who perform the same generic role.

The candidates will go through a set of complex interviews and background checks so you will be certain about their hard and soft skills to meet all the goals. In the end, it becomes a more effective choice than keeping your own HR department or manually searching for candidates—an impossible goal to reach without costly consulting from marketing pros.

You're in a Full Control

You get access over the planning and can easily adjust it. Most of the remote teams have adopted the Agile methodology and this implies a fast reaction to the requirements shift. Whether it's you changing your mind or the market dictating new needs, be sure that the team will readjust to meet the new goals and objectives that your business needs.

It also neglects the fear of being far away: you're in full control with a responsible person (for example, a product owner from your side) assigned to the project who represents your best interests. There will be a nonstop contact between you and the team, including regular video-meetings to keep you informed about the project's status and enable pivoting on how it could be improved or what cool new features should be added.

When to Use

Small and medium-sized companies have become the best fit for this kind of model. When a company has a limited budget and doesn't want the project to last forever, a dedicated team will become a great solution. It allows for assembling a group of pros with well-written duties whose services can be discontinued on demand and replaced with the people you need to fulfill the ever-changing needs of a project.
Small and medium-sized companies have become the best fit for dedicated team model.
Mid-term projects can also benefit from this kind of model: the devs' contracts can be prolonged depending on the product's state. After working for an extended period of time on the same project, they receive deeper expertise and can give valuable advice on how the product's business logic and architecture could become more beneficial for the venture.

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