Ultimate Guide to Outsourced Dedicated Development Center Model

What is the Dedicated Development Center Model?

So, to better understand the differences, let’s look at project-based development model. In the title itself, we see that this model is related to the project, and the work is organized around a particular project. In this model, the development is suspended after the release. When there is an urgent need to implement additional functions, the work is resumed and a new version is released. This model is good as it allows the customer to clearly state a budget, not to depend on extraneous circumstances, and also to return at least a small part of the investment before continuing development. As we can see, this variant of cooperation is especially attractive for those customers who have a limited budget. A fixed-cost model can really become a solution for some customers, but it can also be the reason for the commercial failure of the product in some cases.

In its turn, dedicated development center model is suitable for clients who understand the complexity and pitfalls of developing their own project, and those who are ready to invest in the continuous development of a product in order to ensure its quality and success. Some projects assume constant development and change, its final functionality and requirements are difficult to formulate. Work on such an application is necessarily an iterative process, while the development of the functionality and usefulness of the product occurs in a spiral. Here the main fundamental factor is the team, which is the carrier of all knowledge, technologies, experience in the development and knowledge of this project.

What tasks can be solved with a Dedicated Development Center Model?

The dedicated team definition claims it to be a business model where the company provides development professionals for a long time period for designing the product. It means that it’s inefficient for short projects. Instead, it is extremely useful for a dynamic project with constant changes in requirements and tasks but where we can clearly see the final goal. The scope of the project can change as many times as it is needed, and the team will seamlessly work on its improvement. In this case, we can identify the main positive features of such an implementation:

• gives the possibility to increase or reduce ODC team when it’s necessary for the customer’s company or conduct staff replacements without spending additional costs;
• the workflow is adjusted to meet the customer’s company needs;
• provides a possibility to quickly make decisions or change the development course (which is very difficult to do in other development models);
• oversees short releases of the product and a gradual feature build-up. The product itself should be ready for delivery after each release. Such releases can be good motivators for a team that is interested in retaining the planned deadlines;
• the workflow is transparent: there is no psychological need to conceal possible problems in the implementation of the product from the customer, which enables prompt response and quick decisions about the need for certain enhancements to the functionality.

If you have an opinion that such a scheme of work is very expensive, we advise you not to rush to conclusions. After all, instead of paying for time and materials, in the dedicated development center model, payment is often made monthly, which allows you to clearly see how much the product will eventually cost you. This payment includes the salary of the developers who are in the team, as well as the fee of the company that provided it. This fee includes resources needed to provide the team with the necessary equipment, office maintenance, management costs, and other factors. However, the total cost will always be much lower than an in-house team. That is, it can not be said that this model is much more expensive. It is simply suitable for completely different projects and other customers. Everyone chooses what will be best for the end product themselves.

The advantages of a Dedicated Development Center Model

In addition to the fact that the payment is often based on the results of shortest releases, such a model has many more advantages for the customer. For example, such features are:

• an access to the source code and the project itself;
• no need to create development and testing departments in house;
• the customer’s company can save financial and labor resources like time and financial costs for recruiting a team, organization of their workplaces, training of new employees and their adaptation to the business of the company, utilities in the office, etc.

Implementing the development team model will help you to avoid many unpleasant situations that often occur in other development models, namely:

• when bugs appear in a carefully implemented and tested product;
• when there is a need to implement a new feature, and the source code is too difficult to maintain;
• when even in the project implementing company no more has employees who developed the project and have the knowledge of the project you designed.

Also, the close cooperation between the customer and the project team is a big advantage, which allows both sides to better understand each other, quickly get feedback and even use the trial and error method in development. The customer fully owns the development process, while the company that provides the team may not participate in the project at all. You can assemble a team purely for your own needs and at your discretion; the company provides you with employees only and makes sure the team is motivated and well-maintained.

How to choose a team for a Dedicated Development Center Model?

A dedicated team is a specialized team that is involved in the creation of one project. Often, ODC model of building a dedicated team is engaged in the project for one customer for an implementation of a large product. In such model, the team is the biggest asset because they are the people who give this idea the highest priority. They seamlessly follow the implementation of this idea from beginning to end with the use of the newest technologies and transferring knowledge to new participants in the development process, if necessary. The team is the key of building a successful and profitable product, which will have a prominent future. The team members in this model can be chosen by the client according to the demands for their experience and skill sets. Also, when selecting a team, it is important to consider their skills in teamwork. Anyway, such a development model is ideal for collecting a team that will go to achieve the goal.

For the project success, the ODC setup process is also important. The best results are driven by a well-formed team. So, the employees who just come to the company often need some time to adapt to the new team. They try to work together and it takes several months before the team grows in speed and quality of their work.

After the completion of the basic feature implementation, such a team can easily be reduced to one or two specialists able to maintain and upgrade the code. If new large-scale implementations are needed, the team can be expanded again and the specialists remaining on the project will transfer knowledge and specific experience to the new team that started working on the project.

 

Summary: Dedicated Development Center Model Often, product development is a continuous process stretched for the entire time of its existence. The very first version with the basic functionality, as a rule, is followed by the second version, then with the third one, and so on. At the same time, the functional components of the product, architecture, design are gradually but continuously improving. As a customer, you are to understand which of the development models is most suitable for the implementation of your particular product. Both models have both advantages and disadvantages. Each project has limitations, for example, a modest project budget, time frames, etc. All this should be taken into account when choosing a model of cooperation with the development company. However, if you need to develop a complex product that may need to be maintained throughout its existence, we strictly recommend a dedicated development center model.