When an owner hears “dedicated team,” they usually picture a couple of developers on a monthly invoice. That is a staffing arrangement, and it is not what we mean. A dedicated team is a fixed monthly capacity that carries a whole engineering function: the people who write the code and the people who make it safe to depend on. The reason it exists is that the second group is where an in-house engineer’s week actually goes.
The problem it solves
Hire one good engineer and, within a quarter, they are the DevOps person, the security person, the person who writes the requirements, the person who tests, the person who talks to the vendor, and the person who gets paged at 2 a.m. They are also the only one who understands the system, which means they cannot take a vacation and you cannot lose them. Hire three and you have the same problem with a bigger payroll.
Companies that are not technology companies rarely need a full engineering organization. They need the output of one, on a budget that fits, without building the organization.
What is inside a dedicated team
Ours are structured the way our largest ongoing engagements are written. For a fixed monthly fee, you get access to a broader team and the disciplines the work needs in any given month:
- Product management and delivery. A delivery lead who is your single point of contact, runs the weekly rhythm, and makes sure nothing falls between the chairs.
- Business analysis. Requirements written down before they are built, so the engineers build the right thing once.
- UI and UX design. For anything a person has to use.
- Software development. The core capacity, sized to the engagement.
- Quality assurance and testing. Not the developer testing their own work; a separate discipline.
- Architecture. Someone accountable for the shape of the system as it grows.
- DevOps and CloudOps. Environments, deployments, monitoring, hosting.
- Security, privacy, and compliance. Designed in, and kept up.
- Production support and maintenance. The 2 a.m. page goes to us.
Roles roll on and off as the priorities change. A month heavy on design pulls the designer in; a month heavy on migration pulls in data work. You do not pay for four specialists to sit idle; you pay for the capacity and we allocate it.
How the work gets decided
You and the delivery lead prioritize together, on an ongoing basis. There is a starting plan, and everyone expects it to evolve as the work reveals things. Capacity can shift between systems at your direction: more on the new platform this month, more on the legacy system next month while it is still carrying the business. That flexibility is the point of the model. A project contract cannot do it without a change order; a dedicated team does it in the weekly meeting.
When it fits
- A multi-year modernization where an old system has to keep running while its replacement is built in slices. This is the most common reason we run one.
- A company whose software is the business and that needs continuous development without becoming a software company.
- After a takeover or rescue, when support and forward work are both needed and the boundary between them moves week to week.
- An owner who has decided not to build an in-house team and wants one number a month.
When it does not
If the work is a defined project with a clear end, a fixed-budget project is cheaper and cleaner. If the need is a few hours of fixes a month, a reserved-hours support agreement fits better. A dedicated team is for continuous work with a moving mix of disciplines, and it is a commitment on both sides.
How it compares to hiring
The comparison owners make is to two or three in-house hires. Against that, a dedicated team costs roughly what the hires do, all in, and comes with the eight roles above instead of one, no recruiting, no ramp, no single point of failure, and the ability to scale up or down with the work. The trade is that the team is ours, not yours. We build and document as if you will take it over one day, and some clients do. Most keep us on. What you should never have is a system you cannot run without us; that is a rule regardless of the model.
The specifics, including what a month costs, are on the pricing page under ongoing development and dedicated team packages. The way to find out whether it fits is the same as everything else we do: a conversation, a Deep Dive, and a recommendation.