Working With a Dedicated Development Team and Why You Should Consider an Alternative Approach
You have a software development project that you are eager to get started. It could be an entirely new software product that you are looking to build and launch onto the market. It could be a software product expansion, a series of updates or a complete modernization of your existing software. The sticking point is that you currently don’t have the required resources to tackle the project yourself. You also want to play an active part in the project and ensure that the software fits with your values and is reflective of your brand.
So, what approach will you take? There are a number of options.
You could build an in-house team from scratch. There are many advantages to building your software entirely in-house. However, there are significant drawbacks to contend with. For a start, building an in-house unit is not something that is done on a whim. It takes time, energy and resources to attract the right people and, even more importantly, retain them. It also takes more than hiring a few talented individuals to make a team. You need to build a culture and make sure that the people you are bringing in fit with your values and share the same vision. There are also HR obligations and administrative obligations.
All of this combined can negatively impact your speed-to-market and put you on the backfoot right away. There’s also the distinct possibility that you’ll be left with a bloated tech team when a project reaches its conclusion. This can put a huge strain on resources.
One option that has become increasingly popular in recent years is to work with a dedicated development team. In this blog post, we will look closely at this concept. We’ll help you define what it is and what it’s not. We’ll answer any questions you may have about who is in a dedicated development team, who is responsible for managing a dedicated development team and situations in which a dedicated development team is a perfect fit.
But, most importantly, we’ll share an alternative approach to dedicated development teams that we believe is even more effective.

What is a Dedicated Development Team?
A dedicated development team is an engagement model where you hire a full-stack development team that works exclusively on your software development project, usually for an extended period of time. The team is often based in a remote location and is managed by a third-party provider in terms of administrative support, HR responsibility, taxes, and social benefits. However, the team is solely dedicated to building your software and achieving your business objectives.
When you work with a dedicated development team, you are not hiring an individual or team of individuals, you are enlisting the support of a multidisciplinary unit. In one fell swoop, you can go from having no resources available for a project to having a fully-fledged software development team. This unit acts much like an in-house team but is supplied from another company.
Dedicated development teams are made up of individuals with a range of technical capabilities, depending on your specific requirements. This includes:
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- Backend and frontend developers;
- Full-stack engineers;
- UX/UI designers;
- DevOps engineers;
- QA specialists;
- Business analysts;
- Product managers;
- Project managers;
- Technical lead;
- Mobile developers.
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The exact make-up of your team will depend on your technical needs and project objectives.

Breaking Down The Key Responsibilities
When you are working with a dedicated development team, there are two parties involved — the company that is looking to build software (i.e. the client — You) and the third-party provider (the software company that is supplying access to the dedicated development team).
To gain a full understanding of what it means to work with a dedicated development team, it can help to break down the responsibilities on either side.
Responsibilities of the Software Development Company
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- Put together a development team based on the client’s technical requirements and objectives.
- Supply office equipment and IT infrastructure to team members.
- Manage all HR duties, including keeping staff motivated and ensuring team members have the right technical training.
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Responsibilities of the Client
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- Manage and guide the team from a software development standpoint, ensuring individuals know what tasks they need to complete and are aware of the overall project objectives.
- Handle day-to-day project management.
- Responsible for governance and ensuring that software meets legislative requirements.
- Ensure that an effective quality assurance plan is in place.
- Look after the overall product roadmap and all elements of the software development lifecycle.
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As you can tell from the responsibilities listed above, you receive a well-managed team and gain access to a full-stack development team. However, when it comes to the success of the software development project, the onus is heavily on you.

Advantages of Hiring a Dedicated Development Team
There are many benefits to working with a dedicated development team. However, the standout is the ability to scale resources quickly and effectively.
1. Quickly Gain Access to the Skills and Expertise You Need
When you work with a dedicated team, you remove the hassle of building a development team from scratch and gain instant access to the skills and technical expertise that you need to complete a project. This significantly increases your speed-to-market and removes a major blocker of progress for both scaling and established companies.
2. Work With an Established Team With Continuous Integration
Having the same team on board long-term can be a huge asset. Although the dedicated software development team is based in another location, they are an extension of your own team. They follow your methodologies and processes, and will gain a great sense of your company, your values, and ambitions. For projects that grow and evolve over time, working with a dedicated team is invaluable as you do not need to form another team, which can be an energy-sapping and resource-draining endeavour. With your dedicated development team in place, you can simply move forward together.
3. Benefit From a Focused, Dedicated Approach
A dedicated development team works exclusively on your project. This removes all distractions and allows them to dive deeply into the work at hand. This focused approach is really where the word ‘dedication’ comes in. Having a team that is dedicated to helping you achieve your goals and treats the company success as its own is hugely advantageous.

Brian Lanehart from Momnt talks about how his company work with Keeper Solutions.
So, Should I Jump Into Hiring a Dedicated Development Team?
In a word, no.
Hiring a dedicated development team is a perfect way to scale resources quickly and effectively. However, before you commit to anything it’s important to take a step back and think ‘long-term success’ over ‘short-term fix’.
When it comes to achieving long-term success, there are a few elements we recommend:
1. Set the proper foundations. Before hurling yourself headfirst into a software development project, it’s important to first undertake a preliminary stage of discovery and investigation. During this stage, you can get everything lined up and give yourself the proper launchpad you need. During this investigatory stage you can gain a deeper understanding of your software idea, your end user, the market landscape, your key challenges and opportunities, your technical requirements, and what exactly you need to achieve sustained growth.
2. Think of the full end-to-end lifecycle. This includes all elements from prototyping, building an MVP, launching your software (or new feature) onto the market, meeting industry regulations and security standards, iterating based on user feedback, evolving, scaling and entering new markets, moving from start-up to scale-up to achieving unicorn status.

The Keeper Solutions Full Cycle Approach — 4 Key Steps
At Keeper Solutions, we utilize a full cycle approach to software development. This approach can be broken down into 4 key steps.
Step 1 – Discovery Call
To get start, we kick things off with an obligation-free discovery call. During a 15-30 minute conversation, you tell us about your software, challenges you’re trying to overcome and long-term objectives. We’ll do a full technical audit and tease out your needs and technical requirements.
Want to set up a 15-min discovery call. Click here.
Step 2 – Design Sprint
With every new software idea, it’s important to first test the waters. Before committing to a full-scale software development project, we use a design sprint to validate your idea and gain a clearer picture of your user’s needs.
This is a framework used to map out challenges, explore solutions, and decide on best approaches. By the end of the design sprint, the UX designer can map out a UX/UI design which details the user journey and what is required to build the product. The design sprint also gives us an understanding of your technical requirements and what type of team will be needed to complete the project.
We then build a clickable prototype, which is rigorously tested and used to assess if an idea is worth pursuing. Our approach can be boiled down to five simple words – map, sketch, decide, prototype, and test. And we make sure to consider the user at every step of the way.
The design sprint usually takes between 2 to 6 weeks to complete, depending on the scale and level of complexity of the project. It is a workshop-based process, led by an experienced UX designer. It involves a small interdisciplinary team of UX designers, software architects, engineers and subject matter experts working together with you. You take an active part in this process, describing current products, plans and what you are trying to achieve.
During the design sprint, we create user profiles (needs, wants, desires, fears of the product user) and the user journey, which describes the journey that a product takes a user on in order to complete a task or create value.
Key Points
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- The design sprint is an investigatory process that helps you decide if a software project is worth pursuing. If you decide that the time isn’t right or the opportunity isn’t what you thought it was, there is no long-term commitment.
- This process helps to reduce risk by providing you with a greater understanding of your software idea, your end-user, the viability of your product, and potential market appeal. This can help you to save a huge amount of money down the line.
- Continuous user testing and full analysis of your software idea helps to increase speed to market and give you a distinct competitive advantage.
- During the Design Sprint, we can use the time to assemble a development team so that we can seamlessly pivot from design to development once the you are happy with the product design.
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Step 3 – Full Cycle Software Development With a Dedicated Development Team
If you decide that an idea is worth pursuing, we move into full cycle software development. Here, we put together a dedicated development team that works exclusively on your project and stays with you long-term.
This dedicated team becomes an extension of your own in-house team and can stay with you for the entire business lifecycle if required. This incorporates all aspects from building and launching your software to helping you perform continuous updates, release new features based on user feedback, scale into other markets and evolve your software.
Key Points
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- While this is a collaborate effort, we manage the project from end-to-end. This allows you to focus on other aspects of your business.
- Our technical architect puts together a detailed project plan. This includes a technical architecture, product roadmap, a detailed sprint schedule, a full breakdown of tasks and objectives, the agreed upon channels of communication, and the roles and responsibilities on both sides.
- We are responsible for ensuring that a robust quality assurance plan in place. We always recommend that QA engineers be included in the development process as early as possible. When a QA gets involved early in the process, there will be fewer bugs and surprises down the line. This significantly improves speed-to-market.
- We ensure that all security protocols are in place and that the software meets regulatory standards.
- While our dedicated team stays with you long-term, you can scale up and down resources as required. This means that you can ramp up resources during busy periods and then scale down resources when no longer needed.
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Working With Keeper Solutions
Our full-cycle software development approach enables you to build compelling and engaging software that your users will love. This approach will propel you to the top of the market and allow you to make a true impact with your software.
We have a proven track record, working with innovative FinTech teams and know what it takes to build market-leading software. We also have a detailed understanding of the regulatory landscape and how to incorporate AI and machine learning technologies into financial software systems. We pass on this experience and know-how to you.
Ready to get started? Book an obligation-free discovery call today.