Dedicated Team Model: How to Make it Work
As an ever-evolving set of principles, project management has seen a number of different ways on how to build your “dream team” while maintaining high cost-efficiency. It’s not a secret that many companies, despite their best efforts, struggle when it comes to hiring a remote team that could successfully integrate into an existing team of in-house developers.
This is when an extended team model (ETM), also called a “dedicated team model”, steps into the picture to secure high scalability potential. It infuses a project with critical skills and the required expertise that an in-house team may lack. With the help of outstaffing companies, like ours, you can add meticulously chosen specialists who will fill the niches to create a successful well-rounded team, while not having to rely on a limited pool of local candidates.
We at X1 Group pursue the goal of forming compact, yet effective teams of dedicated developers, and learned a great deal over the years. And in order to help you understand the benefits and tricks behind hiring a remote development team, here is a simple guide on how to make the extended team model work to ensure far-reaching success of your business.
Core Values
Despite being a common practice, a dedicated team model may still be seen as a trivial outsourcing hiring for the newer industry people, so we would like to introduce you to this well-proven way of enhancing existing teams.
To make it crystal clear, there is a list of key features to highlight the advantages that this practice brings upon itself:
1) Smooth Merging
At its core, this approach is aimed at successfully bringing remote staff without replacing the in-house peer. Managing business goals and missions will still be in full control of the local crew; meanwhile, the augmented staff will bring the expertise that was previously lacking for its counterpart.
2) Plain duties sharing
All ETM members invest their time and skills in the project as they are a part of. The responsibility for the end result is also equally shared between both teams.
3) Full Control
A remote team will always be available for both managers and in-house developers for a highly valued communication in a teamplay-based scenario.
Building a Dedicated Team: the Process
Forming a team is not always easy; and in order to make it smooth and less painful, you need to know the entire process that lies behind tuning the remote team up. The following are the steps that X1 Group takes to ensure that the potential candidates will surely bring even the most unique expertise to our clients’ projects.
Evaluation
This is all about figuring out the goals and scope of your project, setting up the roles, and deciding which of the in-house candidates could fill them. This can either be performed by you or by our specialists who will thoroughly go through this process and define which key components are missing to successfully kick-off the project.
Picking up the right candidates
Then we perform meticulous research of the people who will indeed match the project based on both the hard and soft skills they possess to bridge the skill gaps.
Our clients also get to join this stage and participate in choosing the best drafts. In fact, you get the final vote on who to pick.
Team Coordination
After everything is said and done, we reach the point where the key responsibilities and principles will be set up:
- depending on your needs, there will be a project manager, a person in charge of making the orders and fixing the issues that might occur. Although this position is an integral part for the in-house team, an offshore party may also need a PM to secure the team’s smooth cooperation;
- syncing the teams up
After the teams are formed, we set up a number of meetings between two parties to share the views on a project and decide the best way to distribute the workforce to save both the client’s time and money;
- setting up deadlines
The short-term and long-term goals will be equally allocated between both teams, so you will be certain about the future of your project and at which stages it could be improved or adjusted further;
- reporting and live tracking
The offshore team will gladly provide you with all the actual data about the project so you will be able to view it in a live mode based on the platform you prefer;
- communication
You will receive constant access to the PMs who are in charge of managing their teams, therefore receive access to adjusting the course of the project, if needed. This may also include technological aspects such as the deployment platform or even a toolset stack that the project needs to keep up with.
Scaling
Based on your demands, you can require to either expand or reduce the size of an offshore team. If a developer was brought on board to implement a certain feature and is no longer needed, we can suspend his/her contract so you get to work with the rest of the units. In turn, if the project needs extra functionality, we can always find you a perfect match to deliver that goal.
Why is Remote Teams an Answer to Your Prayers?
Our own team here, at X1 Group, is divided among two offices, and we know that many businesses share this way of working. Our company specializes in creating distributed teams that seamlessly work with businesses in-house pals, and we do this by cherishing:
Reliability
By extending your team with our developers, you get a solid unit in a modern office that is spared from any technical difficulties and is always available for your requests. We only deal with proven employees who attain the workplace and share full responsibility for the end result.
Task and time-driven control
Enjoy a fully possessed development flow where you can set up goals and deadlines to allow for the best cost efficiency. You also get to choose a project-tracking tool and see how each task steadily progresses to its full completion.
No recruitment stress
Arguably the most discouraging part is now avoided thanks to a number of seasoned developers at our disposal who excel at working in a fast-paced environment. We are ready to provide you with both niche talent workforce and well-rounded professionals based on how ambitious your project is.
Flexibility
We are equally engaged in all the contemporary frameworks. Whether it’s Agile, Kanban, or Scrum, we are ready to excel and adjust in any of these environments, depending on which option you prefer.
Loyal payment model
An extended team method implies absolute freedom of expenses: the payroll only affects those members who are currently needed for the project and can be terminated on-demand.
Working with a dedicated team has its challenges but, with a right approach, you can extract the maximum value out this. Whether you decided to take advantage of working with us or try to build the remote team yourself, the tips revealed above will help you establish a better teamwork and relieve you of the additional recruitment stress.
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