Before you decide on whether onshoring, offshoring or nearshoring is right for your project needs, you should consider the type of team you need first. In the world of software outsourcing, there are two main types of teams: dedicated and extended.

What is a Dedicated Team?

A dedicated team is a type of work-model that involves an agreement between a business and a service provider. The provider provides a team of software engineers solely dedicated to work on the tasks or projects of the business for an extended period of time. A company would hire a dedicated team for complex projects that are costly, high-volume and would require a long-term development timeline. Due the complexity of the project, the company should have a solid objective and properly planned workload ready for the programmers.

Pros

• Direct management and oversight – an in-house project manager or one associated with the service provider works with the team
• Specificity and Full-time Commitment – each member of the team is selected based on the needs of the project and are fully dedicated to client
• Security and Cohesiveness
• Flexibility
• Ease of scalability and reduced cost

Cons

• Incremental management –  required for overseeing/communicating with the remote team
• Not well-suited for short-term projects
• Culture or language barriers

What is an Extended Team?

An extended team is essentially an extension of an in-house team that usually takes on non-core IT components. This is a partnership where responsibilities are shared between onshore and offshore teams creating more transparency. A company would use an extended team to assist in finishing a project already started by the in-house team or to help with a growing backlog.

Pros

• In-House Team Can Prioritize – smaller projects are delegated out to the extended team
• Complete Immersion – the extended team can assist in the process of a larger scale project as a whole, not just an isolated part
• Constant and Direct Contact – Not just on an “as needed” basis
• Ease of scalability and reduced cost

Cons

• Culture or language barriers
• Core changes could disrupt or impede extended team objectives
• Incremental management –  required for overseeing/communicating with the remote team

Are you working on an MVP with your in-house team and need an extended team to get you to launch? Do you need a completely dedicated team from conception to completion? Perhaps, you need a mixture of both. Working with a recruiting agency that understands the challenges of team selection in order to build the right team for your project is paramount. You don’t want to waste time and money on going in cold.

Best Practices for choosing dedicated team versus extended team

Building a dedicated team in another country is a big step. Your desire to be confident you really need this type of cooperation is natural. In order to decide, you can start by defining the type of project you are working on right now. If it’s a large, long-term project with a variety of tasks and an unchanging need for high-quality deliverables, then a dedicated team model is the right choice for you. On the other hand, if you have a small, time-limited project with a known deadline and predetermined resources, then you should opt for another cooperation model like Software Solutions.

Another question to consider is your project’s budget. Having a limited, strictly-planned budget usually means a dedicated team model is not your cup of tea. We’ve prepared this simple checklist to help you perform a preliminary screening of whether you need a DT model or not:

Managing a distributed team requires wisdom in leadership and dedication—not only from the team’s side but also the client’s. If you’re ready to communicate and bridge physical distances, you will be rewarded with a new source of inspiration and productivity while adding an additional layer of business optimization.