A Teravision Technologies Dedicated Team

Depending on your project’s needs, different engagement models might benefit your project over others. In a previous article, we talked about staff augmentation. Now, we will talk about the Dedicated Software Development Team model. If you’re looking for a fully committed, dedicated project team that operates in parallel to your in-house team, then this engagement model is the one for you!

In this article, we will discuss the different aspects of the dedicated team engagement model, using Teravision’s competencies as a benchmark for things to expect and benchmarks we’ve learned to better deliver results with this engagement model over the past 20+ years of delivering products using dedicated software development teams. From the benefits it provides, to the methodologies a dedicated team operates under, we will look into all of it while offering recommendations along the way.

What Even is a Dedicated Software Development Team?

In essence, a dedicated software development team is when you hire a dedicated development company to work alongside your in-house development team on specific projects or tasks. This dedicated development company lets you hire a development team that operates separately from your own, either on the same project or a different one depending on your business needs. In other words, this dynamic is formed when you outsource dedicated software development teams to a third party.

Choosing the right software development dedicated team will give you access to dedicated hires that work exclusively for the projects they are assigned to, allowing for your own team to focus on appropriate tasks. Finding software teams for hire is made easier with this engagement model.

What Are the Benefits of a Dedicated Software Development Team?

Quick Access to Talented Teams

Having dedicated development teams working on your project can be a blessing when specific needs have to be met relatively quickly. However, these projects can be dynamic, meaning priorities can change which requires adjustments to your said dedicated software teams. When you hire dedicated software developers for your project, they’ll need to be able to adapt to the everchanging scope your project can potentially undergo. When you hire a dedicated software development team through Teravision, expect dedicated teams fully capable of quickly shifting focus to better align with your business needs as the project develops.

Inmediate and Ready-to-Work Back Up Engineers

When you hire a dedicated software development team, sometimes you’ll find yourself in the need to hurry your project’s development, or new requirements are established in the scope. From new dedicated technologies, to moving up the timetable specific features, there are different reasons to include new requirements. Having a reserve of talent ready to be a part of your dedicated team of developers for when those needs arise helps you keep your momentum going and ensures your goals will be met.

Flexible Team Composition and Budget

When you hire a software development team in-house, your main asset also represents your main liability; we’re talking about commitment. Having an in-house team involves making a financial commitment to pay them regardless of output, meaning you’re paying extra during periods of less output during your projects. This doesn’t happen with dedicated teams. When you hire a dedicated development team from Teravision, you only pay for the output you are expecting to receive during different periods. Meaning, during slow development periods, you can ramp down on the dedicated development team services you hired to ensure your budget is being effectively used.

Time-to-Market Reduction

Time-to-market is an important metric for every company and project, regardless of size. From large, enterprise level companies to SMBs, keeping yourself a step ahead of the competition always gives you an edge. By leveraging the dedicated team of developers companies like Teravision Technologies can offer, you’ll be ensuring your business goals can be met by distributing tasks to multiple teams. This will help decrease the potential bottle necks that can occur when your in-house team is not enough to get the job done.

Faster Product Iterations

Dedicated teams help you stay ahead of competitors, that we already stated. However, did you know that they can help with this another way? Not only can dedicated teams help with your time-to-market goals, but it can help you iterate your product faster. A dedicated developer team working alongside your main in-house team lets you find the right product features and iterations according to your audience’s needs, achieving client-market fit faster than you could with just your internal team.

Increased Project Success Rate

More often than not, outsourcing providers do not offer clear metrics or a success strategy so clients can feel their product is progressing. This leads to the dedicated teams of many outsourcing providers to be subpar. The great thing about the dedicated teams provided by Teravision Technologies is their total commitment to the success of your project, as well as the transparency of how far along a project is going. From the tasks assigned to each dedicated developer on the team, to the deliverables and epics turned in through the dedicated development model, a client is fully aware of what is happening with their assigned team at any given time.

Technical and Product Advisors

Teravision Technologies has over 20 years of experience offering dedicated teams to companies like yours. As such, we have absolute confidence in our abilities to offer guidance to clients on how to approach their product development process, using the latest in best practices at the time. We do this by not just offering dedicated development services, but also creating a dynamic where we take on more of a partnership style role, creating a synergy between Teravision’s dedicated software team, your in-house team, and our Leadership. This ensures our dedicated development teams are using your time and resources efficiently.

What Does a Dedicated Software Development Team Look Like?

Dedicated software development teams can vary according to the needs of each individual project. However, in our experience, projects that follow a certain distribution are more likely to succeed compared to other dedicated team distributions. There are two sides to a successful dedicated team engagement:

Client’s Role

Dedicated development is not a magic art that let’s you act hands off about it. As such, a client should have certain roles dedicated to supervising the progress of the project that dedicated teams are assigned to. This way, the transparency we mentioned before can be effectively followed. These roles are:

• The main stakeholder of the project, usually the one who contacted the service provider in the first place
• The tech leader, with a clear understanding of what your project needs on a technical level when you begin onboarding the dedicated team or dedicated teams you are given
• A business analyst, to ensure that the estimates that your dedicated teams give you take into consideration what you want to achieve from a business perspective
• A product owner, your internal expert of the project, that allows you to ensure your main requirements for your products functionality are met.

These roles mostly meet with the project manager assigned to the dedicated teams you develop for your project. This way, they can give more time their own internal teams and not have to managed the dedicated team’s tasks, only the results they bring.

Aside from the previously discussed, title based roles, we briefly mentioned the role of a client during the onboarding process. A dedicated software team with little to no onboarding sets them up for failure. This is why dedicated software development teams need to have access to all relevant information regarding the project. From business and product needs, to the tools the client has access to (production environments, logging/debugging information, among other types of information).

Teravision Technologies’ Role

Though it should be more than evident, our role is the more operative side of a dedicated teams engagement model. We provide different developers based on the needs your project has. Sometimes, the recommendations we give for the roles you provide can’t happen. As such, dedicated software development teams can vary based on each project. Here are some of the services you can expect to find with Teravision Technologies:

• SCRUM Master: The one we trust in leading the completion of your tasks. Dedicated teams, and any development team, always benefit from having a SCRUM Master ensure their tasks are completed within the expected timeframe
• Product Owner: For when your internal team doesn’t have a dedicated product owner of their own. A dedicated team with a product owner present will always have the client’s product needs in mind, even when not interacting with the main stakeholders of the project present.
• Business Analyst: Similar to the product owner, a dedicated team with a Business Analyst present ensures a client’s business needs are being met. Stakeholders with an extra representative within the dedicated development team ensures continued business considerations for clients when they don’t have their own in-house.
• UX/UI Design: For when your dedicated team needs the design and experience to properly reflect your goals and what your audience expect from you. From analyzing and benchmarking competitors to understanding what audiences like yours expect from products like yours, dedicated software development teams that benefit from UX/UI designers will be sure to connect with their prospective audience better than ever.
• Development: The cornerstone of any dedicated team you establish for your project. From front-end to back-end development, and technologies for different situations. Dedicated software development teams cannot exist without proper developers backing them up.
• Quality Assurance: Manual testing? Automated testing? Whatever fits the bill for your dedicated team, these will be what you receive. Typically, a dedicated development team with QA should use both manual and automated methods of testing to ensure no stone is left unturned.
• DevOps: This discipline is the one you go to when thinking about your project’s scalability. A dedicated software team that counts on a DevOps engineer future proof your project for sudden bursts of user activity by making your product to scale. Why wait for the users to come, when you can prepare for their arrival?

How Does a Dedicated Software Development Team Operate?

No dedicated software team operates under the same methodology; depending on the expertise of each dedicated team service provider, they may follow different methodologies for their operations. Normally a dedicated software team uses a Waterfall or Agile methodology in their approach to projects.

Agile Methodology

Our preferred methodology for operating a dedicated team. This method is extremely flexible, with the goal of being more connected with the dynamic nature of business goals, while delivering a functioning product as quickly as possible. A dedicated team working with an agile methodology works under a series of iterations, known as sprints. These sprints operate under the following workflow:

1. Software Requirements: The dedicated team define the project’s requirements alongside stakeholders
2. Development: The dedicated team begins the development of the project
3. Testing: The dedicated team begins testing the software
4. Delivery: Deploy an initial version of the product in a production environment
5. Feedback: The dedicated team reviews the deliverable with the stakeholders to ensure requirements are being met, while resolving issues found to iterate.

Each of the mentioned steps are repeated in different sprints with different objectives based on the feedback given to the dedicated team.

Benefits

• You can expect a higher quality final product from a dedicated team working with agile
• Deliverables are more flexible and are delivered to stakeholders faster than any other dedicated team
• The dedicated team can adapt to the needs of a stakeholder easier than other methods
• There’s generally better commitment than other methods from a dedicated team in this method

Drawbacks

The main drawback really depends on the dynamic between the dedicated development team and stakeholders, but communication is key for this methodology to work.

Waterfall Methodology

This methodology is highly sequential and strict, requiring each stage of the method to be completed before the next one can commence. A striking difference from the previous method we discussed. A dedicated team that uses the Waterfall methodology follow these sequences:

1. System and Software Requirements: A dedicated team gathers all relevant information and documentation of the project.
2. Analysis: A dedicated team determines what the business goals of the client is and how the current workflow looks like.
3. Design: The dedicated team structures the software architecture.
4. Coding: The dedicated team begins developing different unit tests, while integrating modules according to the architecture previously developed.
5. Testing: The dedicated team performs a system-wide test of the units.
6. Operations: The dedicated team performs the last bit of polish and support of the finished product, from migration to maintenance.

Benefits

• The project is perfectly understood on all levels, from its scope, to the deliverables and timeline a dedicated team needs to keep in mind.
• Documentation at every stage is extremely detailed to ensure no developer within the dedicated team is steered towards the wrong direction.

Drawbacks

• Not enough client involvement, making a dedicated team operated under ths method less transparent as a result
• Tying into the first drawback, a dedicated team that has little client involvement may not have the latest requirements a client might have, increasing the risk of developing the product wrong
• Because of how fixed and strict this method is, a dedicated team working with this method has a hard time introducing changes after the initial stage of the system
• Usually, a dedicated team using the Waterfall method works behind schedule, increasing the risk of rushed out products and testing
• Finally, all these drawbacks lead to a dedicated team delivering a late product. The pace of coding and testing and product iteration cannot keep up with fast and demanding business goals.

Dedicated Software Development Team Success Stories

Teravision Technologies have been offering dedicated software development teams for over 20 years now. We’ve had major successes with different clients of all sizes for this particular engagement model. Here are a few examples:

McDonald’s

HappyMeal.com is a responsive website and digital extension of McDonald's® Happy Meal® that offers information about the toys in the Happy Meal each week, coloring & activities, online games and videos, built on the technical expertise of Nearshore IT services and dedicated software development teams offered by Teravision Technologies.

MoCaFi

Mobility Capital Finance, Inc., also known as MoCaFi, is a MWBE-certified digital banking platform to build a financial ecosystem for unbanked and underbanked communities in the United States. Giving them dedicated software development teams allowed them to bring their initiative to more than 50 million people, closing the gap in financial mobility in the United States.

Unicef

UNICEF operates within 190 countries. Their mission is to improve children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their true potential. Teravision Technologies offered them dedicated software development teams to help them develop their Kids Power app to help kids get the nutrition they need to grow.

SOMA

SOMA is a dashboard by Blue Condor. Their main purpose is to provide airlines with accurate statistics and metrics to support their flight operations and manage inventory and purchasing. Offering them dedicated software development teams allowed Blue Condor to deliver results better with their new project.

Build a Dedicated Team with Teravision Technologies

Working with Teravision Technologies will provide you the opportunity to work with dedicated software development teams that have top tech talent directly from Latin America. Regardless of your project’s needs, if a dedicated development team will give you the results you seek, contact us and lets discuss your future with us.