Hiring a dedicated development team for your web development project is a much wiser move than engaging freelancers. Read this post to learn why.
Web development is a complex process that includes many variables. Finding the right staff (developers, designers, QA engineers, project managers, etc.), acquiring the necessary tools and equipment, and working out efficient processes — it all takes time and money.
Projects differ in length, scope, and requirements. Quite frequently, a company’s in-house development staff has no expertise or resources to implement new features or test the existing ones. This is when help from outside becomes something of a lifeline.
Where can a company find this help? The two most popular solutions are freelancers and dedicated teams. In this post, we’re going to compare the two models and show why it is more beneficial to hire dedicated developers in the majority of business settings.
First, let’s consider situations when each model is typically preferred.
A freelancer is a self-employed professional who provides services to clients in various fields, with web development being one of the most popular areas.
Freelancers are the best choice under the following circumstances:
A dedicated team is a group of professionals who work for a web development company full time. Whenever a business or an individual entrepreneur needs resources for their project, a dedicated team’s PM assigns specialists with the right qualifications to work exclusively on that project.
Hire dedicated developers when:
Even though some companies choose to work with freelancers, mainly because they cost less, the future belongs to dedicated development teams. Here are the key reasons why you should get a dedicated team for your next app or website.
These days, most projects require expert knowledge of many technologies. For example, both back-end (SQL, PHP, Java, C#, and others) and front-end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) developers work on a typical web application or website.
Freelancers are almost entirely niche-oriented. They may focus either on one technology or on one side of the equation such as the user interface. Finding the right type of web development professional is a long and complicated undertaking that may span weeks or even months.
Breaking Down the Tech Hiring Process
1. Role Identification
The process starts by identifying the specifics of the job, including the required skills, qualifications, experience level, and responsibilities.
2. Position Announcement
Once the role is outlined, a detailed job announcement is created and disseminated across various platforms like job boards, social media, and recruitment agencies.
3. Candidate Search
The next step involves a comprehensive search for potential candidates using multiple sources such as professional networking sites, recruitment firms, and industry events.
4. Initial Screening
This stage entails reviewing the applications received to identify candidates who meet the job requirements in terms of skills, experience, and cultural fit.
5. Skills Assessment
For roles that require specific technical abilities, an assessment is conducted to evaluate the candidate’s technical skills and problem-solving capabilities.
6. Interview Phase
Candidates who pass the skills assessment undergo a series of interviews, often starting with a remote session, followed by in-person meetings. These interviews aim to evaluate their technical knowledge, problem-solving abilities, and cultural compatibility.
7. Reference Verification
If a candidate passes the interview phase, references are checked to verify their past work performance and conduct.
8. Job Offer Extension
The successful candidate is offered a job, complete with details about the compensation package, start date, and other relevant information.
9. Onboarding
The final step is the onboarding process, which includes introducing the new employee to the team, setting up their workspace, and providing any necessary training.
The comprehensive nature of these steps underscores the complexity and effort involved in finding the right software professional – it’s far from a simple task, requiring diligence, precision, and a keen understanding of technical skills and cultural fit.
By contrast, an outsourcing company employs developers who are well-versed in a multitude of technologies and have sufficient experience to face any programming challenges. The company’s HR department has thoroughly tested the developers’ professional abilities and knows their level (junior, mid-level, or senior) So, there’s no need to waste your time sifting through hundreds of CVs.
A dedicated team may also include experts in other important fields such as marketing, search engine optimization, design, or user experience — all of them in one central location. That facilitates communication and contributes to the better efficiency of the working processes. No freelancer can beat the expertise and organization a dedicated team provides.
One of the weak points of working with freelancers is the lack of liability when it comes to sensitive business data. A freelancer may simply disappear in the middle of a project to leave you guessing what will happen to your proprietary information.
In addition, if you hire a bunch of freelancers to work on the same project, the risk that your project specs will get into the wrong hands is greater. If some of your information gets stolen, you may not even know about it or be able to identify the culprit.
When you hire dedicated developers as a team, on the other hand, you’re working with one and only one entity. You will sign a formal contract that will legally bind the provider to keep your confidential data secret. A large, respectable company will not vanish overnight. It has a real business address and can be held liable.
Freelancers are not particularly concerned about the success of the company they’re working for or of the project they are engaged in. Once the term of the agreement is over, they say good-bye and go. Companies or individual entrepreneurs have to start a time-consuming and complicated hiring process all over.
In contrast, a dedicated team’s PM can quickly find an adequate replacement for any developer who has dropped off for some reason. That’s because a large company values its reputation and thus is more interested in long-term cooperation and positive reviews.
The word ‘dedicated’ means that the team will be completely committed to your project, satisfying all your requirements and fulfilling all your requests. They will have no other tasks to distract them. That guarantees stability and the high quality of the end result.
Freelancers are free to work on multiple projects at the same time. It’s clear: more clients, more money. Your application or website will be just one of many. Quality will inevitably suffer. As the saying goes, “Between two stools, one falls to the ground.”
Communication is one of the crucial aspects of the web development process. The vendor and client must understand each other to the letter. Otherwise, the client may be in for some unpleasant surprises when the work is done, but not necessarily through the vendor’s fault.
It’s true that in our day and age, people from different corners of the world can easily communicate with each other through numerous channels: Skype, Slack, Telegram, email, and others.
However, there’s no guarantee that a freelancer will always be available to answer your questions or update you on the status of your project at any given time. That’s especially true if you’re working with a group of freelancers who reside in different time zones. Keeping all of them in sync may turn out to be a nightmare.
A dedicated development team has a PM responsible for the entire communication process. You can get in touch with the PM at any time to know who on the team is working on a specific feature or whether a bug has been fixed.
Any product needs support and maintenance after it’s released (adding new features, updating the existing ones, and ensuring a failure-free operation). You can sign a contract with an outsourcer to provide all those services right at the start of your cooperation to save you from trouble afterward.
Freelancers can offer support of a released app too. However, a freelancer may suddenly terminate the contract, putting your app at risk. Besides, they may cover only part of the functionality owing to the lack of resources. If you hire dedicated developers, on the other hand, you are sure to get complete coverage.
In order to produce enterprise-quality software, web developers need to have access to the latest versions of development tools such as IDEs or graphical editors. Those require investments that mostly only large companies can afford. When you hire a dedicated development team, you get the cutting-edge licensed software and hardware to have your project implemented by the top industry standards.
In addition, using authentic and licensed tools to build commercial websites is critical for security reasons. Licensed tools often come with security updates and protections that unlicensed tools lack. This can leave your software or website vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Freelancers have the basic tools that enable them to address essential tasks. However, you never know if those apps are authentic or if they are regularly updated. Also, freelancers may have no resources powerful enough to perform the enterprise-level testing of your product.
Most projects are living, breathing “beasts.” You may decide to put your project on a pause due to a budget shortfall. Or, you may want to expand it to adjust to a growing customer base. Scalability is one of the best features of the dedicated development team model.
All you have to do is inform the PM that you need to reduce the number of developers or find new professionals. You can also request to withdraw a specific developer if you’re not content with his or her performance. Rest assured: the outsource web development company will find a substitution in no time. Reputation and long-lasting relationships weigh more.
The entire hiring process is the company’s responsibility. By contrast, when a freelancer leaves, it’s the client who has to search for a replacement. Even when a new developer is found, though, they need to learn the specifics of the project. That takes valuable time and slows down the overall process.
To hire dedicated developers when some members of the team leave is easy. Those who have already worked on the project are restored to their positions. They have the required knowledge of the technologies and workflows. It means that the project can get up and running without delay.
While freelancers cost less on paper, you may end up paying more due to the many drawbacks of this model, such as insecurity, lack of commitment, inadequate development software, insufficient communication, and no legal responsibility.
The dedicated team model has all that freelancing lacks. You get full attention to your project, frequent and transparent communication via several channels, the ability to track the development process in real time, full control over the staffing process, easy scalability, all-around expertise gathered in one location, after-release support and maintenance, and other benefits.
When you hire dedicated developers organized as a team, you enhance your brand’s image. You can proudly say that your high-quality, well-tested web app or site has been created by top-notch professionals like the GetDevDone team.
For 15 years, hundreds of our pros have worked for thousands of clients on thousands of projects. Hire a dedicated development team and save from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars annually.
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