Dedicated Development Centers: Benefits, Infrastructure and Staff

What is DDC and its Attributes

If your company is on the way of further extending of software development and is looking for a good combination of professional workforce and lower operational costs, one of the possible solutions is contracting with Offshore Dedicated Development Center. To understand what is meant by this notion, try to imagine an IT-office located offshore but working for you. To be more precise, a Dedicated Development Center may include the following attributes:

• Office equipped with all necessary hardware, software, and the Internet connection;

• A team (or teams) of qualified software developers and testers who work only on your projects and comply with the policies and culture of your company;

• All office management activities and legal procedures that are performed by in-house administrative staff;

• Local labor market and cooperation with leading local universities that can be used for recruitment to extend DDC teams in future;

• New employees who are involved in work quicker and more effectively as being a part of real (not virtual) team that is coordinated on the spot.

DDC Staff

Administration of an office as well as recruitment is a big deal, especially when it is conducted from another country. Even in our high-tech century, not all questions can be solved via phone or email. The personal assistance still plays a key role in many situations. Benefits for customers who chose the DDC model are connected with obtaining of means of comfortable administration and regulation of local questions.

For example, you can select and pay for the office premises in the Internet, buy the furniture in the e-shop, and interview the candidates via Skype, but it can be like pain in the neck to control such events as honesty of estate agent with whom you sign the rent contract, timely and safely delivery of ordered purchases to the office, personal impression from the candidates during the interview.

The control of all processes at place, personal signature in invoices and other documents, face-to-face conversations with team, coordination of office work, and cooperation with local authorities are only several possible tasks that cannot be fulfilled other than personally.

And, of course, these tasks should be performed by someone else than developers who are totally engaged in the software development. That is why one of the primary benefits of DDCs is that all administration of the office is performed by the people at place.

The dedicated development centers may include the following staff, besides the developers:

• Head of Department and Office Manager responsible for DDC organization, daily office management, communications with suppliers, business trips arrangement, and guests accommodations.

• Recruiter and HR Manager who search for new candidates for pre-selection interviewing and also take care of team-buildings and atmosphere in the office.

• Finance Manager, or Accountant, performing financial planning and reporting, invoicing, managing payments, new employee legalization, accounting, and tax reporting.

• System Administrator establishing and maintaining DDC’s networks and telecommunications as well as installation of necessary soft- and hardware.

• Project Manager who is responsible for organization of development projects of DDC team.

Depending on tasks and specifics of the industry and needs of the projects, the staff diversity can vary.

Benefits of DDC Model

Selecting the Dedicated Development Center model for your business you receive the following benefits:

• Possibility to dedicate a large part of development to the DDC team while focus the home team on development of some specific tasks and new directions.

• If the DDC is located in a different time zone (up to 8 hours shift), the development and maintenance can be performed almost without interruption.

• Reasonable prices for development services and possibility of further team extension from the local pool of candidates.

• No administrative overheads as all organizational, legal and tax questions are regulated by local office administrators.

• Guarantee of customer’s Intellectual Property rights and employees’ compliance with the customer’s non-disclosure agreement.

Accepting the customer’s or proven in-house model of organizational and development processes and activities.

Whether you are a startup or large extending company, the opportunity to have an Offshore Dedicated Development Center is a perfect perspective of the well-organized and efficient development of your business with less overhead and cost.