December 11, 2018 • 12 min read
It’s no secret that bringing a product from idea to fruition is easier said than done. Even when you know exactly what your end goal is, uncertainty is high and the process of getting there, arduous. While most organizations endeavor to operate by the slogan "Done is better than perfect," too often, it still turns out to be a sad story of missed milestones and extended deadlines.
Where could the problem lie? Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at your software development team. Do you have the skills needed within your existing pool of in-house developers to handle large software projects or an entire product development? Does your team have enough experts to go around and take lead in the many projects that are currently in motion?
If you can’t give a resounding yes to these questions, then you may not have the right software development team with you, or just don’t have enough of the needed talent for the project at hand. Thus, the pressure to simply get it done is dialed up many notches higher.
Whether you intend to build software from scratch or grow your existing development capacity, you need people who can live up to the challenge. This means proficient, reliable individuals who are considered specialists in their particular field. But when you’re still missing these people on your current team, hiring the right local tech talent can also turn out to be a long, drawn-out process.
For one, it takes time to evaluate prospective team members, and especially when you have to include budget considerations in your hiring decision. Secondly, there’s really no guarantee that the people on your team, whether newly-recruited or those who’ve been there for some time, will stick around for long. The tech industry—particularly software, has been identified as the one with the highest talent turnover rate at 13.2% as of 2017. This high attrition rate in in-house teams will not only prove to be a real bane to your company; it will also set your project weeks back (even months) if a team member suddenly ups and leaves.
This is a scenario that most organizations can ill-afford, and thus, calls for a more pragmatic approach to creating software development teams.
If you can see your company potentially falling into a similar situation, here’s an alternative that’s worth considering—partner with a dedicated development team outsourced through a software development company. Doing so increases the chances of reaching project completion, allows you to efficiently scale your delivery capacity, and lowers development costs.
The way this business collaboration model works is quite simple: the IT staff augmentation company provides software development professionals who have the skill sets and experience that match the client’s needs. It allows you to augment your own team with the people you need, or even set you up with an entire team from scratch if necessary.
This model is ideal for long-term projects, having the primary goal of a seamless collaboration with remote developers who work exclusively on your project. In the right situations, having a dedicated development team can equal success. But having heard horror stories of outsourced development work gone awry, you’re not sure if this is the best move for you. So, how do you know exactly if and when you need a dedicated development team?
Here are five signs that could tell you that—yes, it’s time for a dedicated software development team:
Perhaps your business is in the process of developing a new product that requires skills you don’t have in-house. Or, you might need additional skilled manpower resources––software engineers, Scrum Masters, QA specialists, etc., but you just don’t want to defocus your existing core team. Also, you may need to secure rare IT talents for a particularly challenging project. These are the common scenarios where businesses may find themselves needing to supplement their existing team.
Whatever the case may be for your organization, software development centers like Arcanys allow you to augment your in-house engineering team with the best talents, hand-picked just for you.
Hiring a dedicated development team allows you to maintain full control over the developers, as the usual arrangement is that they work full-time and exclusively for you. Having them focus solely on your project significantly reduces team management issues, and greatly enhances their productivity. An added benefit is that dedicated team members have a deep understanding of the client’s project and business goals, thereby making them more attuned to the direction of the project and mindful of what more they can contribute.
As a software development company, we want our clients to think of it like this: the Arcanys dedicated development team is a branch in your organization. Our edge is the focus we put on augmenting development teams with top talents (we accept only 5% of the candidates we interview). With nearly 10 years of expertise in building project-specific tech teams for our clients, we cover a wide range of established and emerging skills, plus we train our developers on the latest tools and technologies on a regular basis. What could be better than this?
When it comes to developing your software application, you have high expectations (well at least, I hope you have). Your standards, therefore, call for only the more experienced software professionals, and the demands of the project tolerate no compromise on proficiency level. But let’s face it. Developers of this caliber are likely very expensive in your area, their rates going way higher than what you’ve budgeted for. In that case, outsourcing your project to software development companies located in more cost-effective destinations like the Philippines is your best bet. The same budget you’ve allocated can now allow you access to top-notch talent and a pool of other project-specific resources.
What makes this option even more appealing is that it is not a short-term financial fix. If you’re happy with the developers you get and you can see the arrangement working out for the long haul, an outsourced software development team can prove to be a viable long-term plan that gives you the opportunity to explore cost-efficient strategies without compromising on quality. With such a scheme in place, it’s easier to achieve a more predictable budget, where you can designate a defined monthly cost allocation, which may be increased or decreased depending on the team’s need within that period.
With an Arcanys team, for instance, you can flexibly scale your dedicated team up or down according to your finances and priorities. You may also opt to tap into some IT skills which may not be required on a permanent basis, but should be easy to fit into your budget when billed by the hour. These areas of expertise include UI/UX design, web architecture, QA, machine learning, data science, and others.
When it comes to creating software applications, time is of the essence, and yes, may even be a matter of life and death—of your business, that is. The last thing your company therefore needs is a prolonged hiring process. If it seems like getting the right people on board would appear to take longer than actually building the product, then you know you’ve got a problem there.
Fortunately, that won’t be a problem for long if you partner with a dedicated development team. Thanks to experience and some well-oiled processes, most full-time software teams are ready to counter emergency situations, deploy new skills in a flash (count two to three weeks on average), and complete a project within tight deadlines. Reliable software development outsourcing companies have an adequate pool of skilled talent, which enables them to provide the tools you need for a fast-paced development cycle.
Fast deployment also gives way to high flexibility. When the software company you partner with is able to assemble a development team for you within weeks, it also follows that they can ramp the team up or down with ease, depending on your requirements. Having this flexibility in your team would come in handy when there is a need to speed up development or to give the project the push it needs in the final periods going to completion.
With our wealth of experience, we here at Arcanys understand that the scope we establish at the start of a project is not always strictly defined, and requirements may bear changes over the course of development. That’s why we are ready for any of these changes and can work with you in creating flexible teams that are easy to scale as the need arises. One thing businesses should keep in mind though is that outsourced teams are not emergency development kits. The teams we build are meant to last; you can’t hire them for a month and then disappear. Any plans to scale down should be communicated early on so that we can adjust the teams within a realistic time frame (1 month).
It’s not a scoop: many countries like the US and Australia suffer from a shortage of tech talent. This isn’t really surprising considering that the tech industry has the highest attrition rate, as I’ve mentioned in the early section of this article. This means that even if you manage to attract and recruit niche tech people, there’s still a rather high chance —a 13.2% chance to be more precise—they will be gone within a year. Needless to say, this phenomenon makes the retention of your tech people harder. Are you willing to take that chance?
You need to secure your team. A dedicated development team is stable and is fully committed to your project. The attrition rate is no longer your main concern, but that of your outsourcing partner. While the departure of a team member would still affect your project, the impact should be significantly smaller because your software development service provider would be ready to replace that talent with another IT professional of comparable caliber.
At Arcanys, we have an attrition rate as low as 5% on long-term projects or those with a high learning curve. This allows your team to gain valuable project and domain expertise and gives them more reason to stick with the project. If a developer decides to leave, we can easily replace him in no time. In addition, we do require that the departing team member and the one replacing him or her work together for at least a month to ensure minimal disruption and a smooth transition—at no added cost to the client. Not only do you save on hiring fees, but you also only need to pay for one person, even when two are actually working on the project during this turnover period.
The complexity of getting certified people on payroll (and the frustration that often comes with it) should be so familiar to any business that there’s really no need to go on about this. The bottom line is: recruitment and payroll take a lot of time and effort. This is time that we don’t have and effort that could well be used in other productive endeavors.
IT staff augmentation companies like Arcanys specialize in providing on-demand software development experts for companies like yours. It’s like having your own in-house team, without the hassle of recruitment or payroll. We take these matters off your hands, so you can focus on what really matters—your product, your project, your business.
With that, we’ve made it so that managing an Arcanys dedicated team is as easy as it gets. You can opt to have complete control over how your vision will come to the realization, or if need be, equipped with our deep technical understanding and operational know-how, we can step into your project at any time to help ensure that everything is coming together as it should.
If you find yourself nodding in agreement to a couple (or all) of the signs that we’ve discussed above, then you know that hiring a dedicated software development team from a managed services provider is the way for you to go. You may opt to augment your in-house developers with the more difficult-to-fill roles like the project manager or senior architect. Or, you can simplify the onboarding process and reduce payroll hassle by outsourcing the entire team.
As to who the members of that team should be, well, that would boil down to your needs and preferences.
Ideally, a dedicated software development team would have for its members—a project manager, business analyst, software architect, designers, software developers, and testers. At Arcanys, we would be happy to provide you with any of these skills that your project requires, or build your entire team from scratch and provide technical expertise to further support your team.
Engaging a dedicated software team for developing your product significantly increases the chances of getting that product built and out the door within the timeframe you expect. But when the signs show that creating that team of developers from within your organization’s pool of IT talents is just not possible, software development service companies can step in to provide you with the skill sets you need. By partnering with IT staff augmentation companies, you can readily assemble a dream tech team you’ll be proud to call your own.
When you feel ready to get a dedicated team, make sure you don’t overlook what matters. Our Ultimate Guide to Software Development Outsourcing in 2019 offers you all the information you need to know to find the right outsourcing partner.
We are a trusted software outsourcing company based in the Philippines, focused on creating dynamic dedicated development teams for our clients, and committed to providing premier IT development services. With Arcanys:
Arcanys co-founder
Arcanys co-founder
Fred had been working on IT and operational projects in the finance and software industry in Switzerland for 10 years before co-founding Arcanys in 2010. With nearly 20 years of experience in the industry in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, Fred is now leading the worldwide sales and marketing efforts of Arcanys.