Dedicated Team vs. Extended Team: What’s the Difference?

Today, many businesses prefer working with professional software development agencies instead of expanding their in-house teams with new members.

The business reality now is that, in many cases, hiring entire teams of external specialists for your project is significantly more feasible. Say you want to welcome a new tech team for urgent needs. Sourcing and hiring routines alone will consume a significant portion of your time and HR effort. Add heavy price tags for local developers, but you will also have to waste your budget on top of time.

Our software development company is susceptible to such demands and responds to them with different engagement models tailored to particular needs. Which one to opt for? This article will compare the IT team extension and the dedicated development team model. Our analysis will help you choose the most appropriate variant of our outsourcing services to boost your company's growth.

And here’s why you can take our word for it:

Dedicated Team Model: How It Works and When to Use

The dedicated development team model is an approach to providing outsourcing software-related services for companies without internal development departments. This setup presupposes our external team functions as a standalone development unit that integrates into your company processes.

In this case, developers work exclusively on a particular project in a full-time regime and report directly to you.

At the same time, Geomotiv is responsible for all the tasks related to candidate sourcing, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. In other words, our company acts as a bridge between development teams and your company.

As a client, you can focus on interacting with the team on questions about project progress, task assignments, and daily activity monitoring. Developers also stay entirely concentrated on your project, leading to increased productivity and quality of their work.

Dedicated Team Composition

We shape the team's composition according to your needs and can adjust it if your requirements change. Below are the positions typically included in a dedicated team.

• Software developers. These specialists will create the required functionality based on the provided requirements and the project’s goals. Following the needs of your project, your IT partner will find front-end, back-end, or full-stack developers with the relevant skills, qualifications, and experience.
• UI/UX designers. These specialists are responsible for the look and feel of your future product. Based on your needs and the project’s tasks, they will create interfaces bearing in mind not only the questions of visual attractiveness but also the principles of user-friendliness.
• QA engineers. Your product's quality and correct functioning will play a very important role in your project’s success. That’s why paying enough attention to such processes as testing and bug fixing is important. QA engineers will closely cooperate with developers to discover and address all tech issues and vulnerabilities before making your product available to end-users.
• Project manager. This specialist will be responsible for creating a plan for the project realization, scheduling, allocating resources, assigning tasks, and tracking the progress. A project manager should deeply understand and clarify the project’s goals to all team members.
• Business analyst. Business analysts should closely work with all stakeholders to deeply understand all the requirements and then help the team to make tech-related decisions based on business needs. Though these specialists usually are not directly involved in software product implementation, they have a task to capture new business requirements during the project realization and transfer this knowledge to the development team.

You may consider assembling a small team including at least one project manager, 1 QA specialist, and 2-3 developers. Over time, we can expand the team with the necessary roles - up to 30 specialists if required.

See this approach in action:

"One of the leading OTT services providers hired our small dedicated unit of 3 AdTech developers in 2017. With impressive initial results, the client hired several more specialists full-time. This led to our team expanding to 10 members within the first year. Over the following five years, our team grew exponentially to 100 developers across 18 hybrid sub-teams. We continuously scale up our development capacities to align with the client's expanding needs for their OTT service, AdTech stack, and other solutions."

Benefits of Working with a Dedicated Team

So, why prefer dedicated teams to hiring in-house? Here’s a quick overview of just a couple of reasons for consideration:

• Saved money on salaries. Outsourcing is one way to reduce expenses without sacrificing quality. You can work with tech specialists from around the world or opt for the region with the most appealing rates. For example, while the rates of software developers in the US are comparatively high, many US-based companies work with offshore teams based in Eastern or Central Europe.
• Saved administrative costs. Working with a dedicated team, you do not need to rent a bigger office for your staff or to pay for additional energy and other resources.
• Ease of scalability. At any moment during the project's realization, you can easily update the composition of your team. Say you need additional labor resources in your dedicated team. We can easily find experts with the required skills without workflow disruptions. If you need to reduce the team size to optimize your costs, you don’t need to take care of any administrative processes. As your outsourcing partner, we will do it for you.
• Precise focus on your project. When you hire a dedicated team at Geomotiv, all administrative and HR processes will be our responsibility. You can fully concentrate on your project or other key business tasks.

Regardless of your business's size, scale, and growth stage, hiring dedicated development teams is valuable. Partnering with our experienced company enables you to unlock unique benefits if you are:

A Startup/Small Business:

• Fast team ramp-up without your direct involvement (you may participate in interviews);
• Reduced expenses thanks to our global access to affordable hiring locations;
• Teams of engineers with cross-functional skills and required domain experience;
• No need to overload your HR department with talent sourcing and recruiting;
• Ease of expanding your headcount as soon as it is necessary;
• Free project management support to fine-tune your work processes.

A Fast-Growing Company/Enterprise:

• Unlimited access to an extensive talent pool;
• Teams of niche specialists and subject matter experts;
• Transparent development rates and tailored financial reporting;
• Help with workforce planning activities;
• Flexible engagement models responding to specific demands;
• Establishment of your global presence with a long-term strategic hiring partner.

It can be a good idea to hire developers following this model in the following cases:

• when you have a complex project that requires specialists with niche knowledge, and it is pretty challenging to find such experts in your local labor market;
• when you have a long-term project that presupposes regular updates and modernization;
• when you need to hire a team that will include different skills and talents for your project realization, such as developers, testers, project managers, and designers;
• when you expect the team’s full engagement, the team will stay focused on your project from the business requirement stage to the project launch stage.

Team Extension Model: When Should You Choose It?

Now, we should proceed to decode the meaning of the extended team. In this model, you can augment your in-house team’s capacity with outside experts on a long- and short-term basis or for temporary needs. They will supplement your development unit's expertise as long as necessary and integrate seamlessly into established processes.

This model is useful when you have a strong in-house development team but need to fill some skill gaps. Staff augmentation can be viewed as one form of team extension.

When considering the extended team model, the specialists who can join your project are not only software developers. For an extended team of startups or bigger companies, you can hire testers, DevOps, UI/UX designers, data engineers, etc. It means that your extended tech development team can include any positions that you need.

Development Team Extension: The Best Time to Choose It

When is the extended software development team model best for your company? Here’s a glimpse into the most common situations you may have:

• Your in-house team has a particular skill gap. Team extension services may become a good option when filling specific skill gaps, especially for one-time needs.
• You have tight deadlines. The model enables you to bring in outside experts of any seniority level in less than two weeks without labor-intensive talent sourcing, hiring, and integration tasks.
• Your inner resources are busy. Consider the extension of your team when you need to streamline and speed up the development process with the help of additional labor resources.
• Your project requires niche or rare expertise. The extended software team model will help you when looking for specific talents to handle one or a couple of short-term tasks.
• Cost-cutting is your priority. Team extension allows you to pay only for the amount of work performed under the contract terms. You take operational costs and extra expenses out of the equation. Additionally, you will gain access to affordable developer rates in global hiring locations.

The main plus of the team extension IT model is that it allows you to maintain complete control over the whole team and ensure that your new developers seamlessly and efficiently complement it. You can maintain high-quality and reliable communication with them directly and within the group.

As a client who uses team extension outsourcing services, you can also actively communicate with candidates during interviews. Your team extension company will find candidates who meet your requirements, and you can choose the best of the best. You can ask questions and send additional test assignments to reveal what candidates for your extension team have the most profound understanding of the specificity of your industry and share similar corporate values to yours.

See this approach in action:

"A programmatic advertising optimization company contacted Geomotiv to request a competent software engineer with previous AdTech experience. After collecting all the details regarding the project and the team, our senior recruiters started monitoring our extensive database of 80,000+ developers. They presented an ideal candidate to the client and the team in less than two weeks. Upon accepting a job offer, this specialist became integral to the client’s in-house team and contributed to the project’s success."

Comparison of Dedicated and Extended Development Teams

After studying the peculiarities of these two models and identifying their strong sides, let’s compare them to define the key differences.

Now, let’s have a quick overview of the advantages of each model and point at possible hurdles you must be aware of:

How to Choose the Suitable Model for Your Current Business Needs?

The best way to select the correct model is to analyze your current requirements and the project's peculiarities.

We’ve prepared a short questionnaire to help you make the right decision.

1. Do you already have a development team? 
2. Do you need some help from external experts just for a short period, or are you looking for long-term cooperation?
3. Do you want a team of developers who will be entirely focused on your project?

Based on these questions, you can come to the proper conclusion. The main thing is not to forget what these models are intended for.

The dedicated team model allows you to hire a team of developers who focus entirely on your project. It’s a good idea to choose this model when you do not have in-house IT experts but want to realize a long-term software project.

Though quite often it is believed that the dedicated team model is a good solution only for those who do not have in-house developers, it is not true. If you already have a team, but your project is rather big and complex, you can hire dedicated developers responsible for some particular tasks. Or if you have a core project and additional ones, dedicated teams may become a good choice.

The extension model will suit you when you already have an in-house development team and want to power it with extra talents, especially short-term needs.

How We’ll Make these Outsourcing
Models Work for Your Business.
Our Comprehensive Approach

Regardless of the type of cooperation with our developers—dedicated or extended team—Geomotiv ensures the full coverage of your needs so that you can focus on more critical tasks. Our company has developed a comprehensive framework for approaching your hiring requests precisely and efficiently. Here’s what you can expect us to cover when engaging our company:

Hiring & Recruiting:

• Geomotiv specializes in hiring senior software developers whose skills and experience match your specifications. We can attract true professionals with cross-functional expertise, excellent soft skills, and a deep understanding of the correlation between business and technology.
• Our English-speaking in-house recruiters have 5+ years of experience sourcing and hiring global talent from 10+ locations.
• We can engage candidates with rare skills by digging into our extensive database of 80,000 specialists not readily available in the hiring market.
• Our candidates accept 95% of job offers and are ready to join your team in 1- 2 weeks; we can assemble full-scale dedicated teams in 2-4 weeks. 
• Our hiring process includes obligatory HR assessments and tech interviews with our internal team leads so that we bring in only post-sieve candidates with matching skills and relevant experience.

Onboarding:

• Once our specialists start working with you according to one of the outsourcing models, we initiate an efficient onboarding process. It includes access provisioning, introductory calls, documentation distribution, and regular check-ins at 2-week, 1-month, 2-month, and 3-month intervals.

HR Management and Support:

• We handle HR management issues of newly integrated individual resources or entire teams. Our HR specialists ensure the commitment and focus of provided talent throughout our cooperation, including long-term and temporary arrangements.
• We provide comprehensive HR support to your contractors by overseeing their professional development and individual health. Geomotiv also covers all administrative issues for every hire you integrate into your team/company.

Finance & Legal:

• Our services span beyond bookkeeping, payroll, and contract management to encompass comprehensive support in regulatory compliance and tax optimization strategies.

Client Support:

• Geomotiv is dedicated to providing comprehensive support to our clients on all essential matters. Our team is available for your feedback and suggestions during regular business hours or even 24/7, ensuring your needs are met whenever they arise.

In addition to this comprehensive offering, we have tailored our collaboration process based on 14 years of industry expertise. Partnering with us is effortless – just a few steps stand between you and the essential tech resources you require:

1. Share your requirements.
2. Get pre-approved candidates.
3. Execute MSA and welcome new hires.
4. Onboard new contractors with our help.

Are you ready to unlock unparalleled tech talent with our all-inclusive services? Our specialists are always available! Contact us to discuss your requirements and experience the difference Geomotiv can make for your business success.

Bonus Info: Real-Life Examples of Companies That Outsource IT Services.
Why not Join this List?

Among companies that outsource software development services, there are a lot of prominent names.

• Alibaba - the China-based company outsourced software development to the US as it couldn’t find experts with the required skills in the local market.
• Google - the tech giant outsources administrative and IT services with a view to providing faster and more cost-efficient services to its customers.
• IBM - the company has chosen the offshore outsourcing model for its IT-related tasks, including provision of IT infrastructure and network management.