The document provides guidance on how to select a competent development team. It emphasizes evaluating the team's experience, work portfolio, technical skills, communication skills, flexibility, attention to detail, and processes. The document also stresses assessing how well the team's skills align with the project requirements and being transparent about costs, payment terms, and post-launch support. Hiring the right development team requires clearly communicating your project needs and budget while carefully vetting the team's qualifications and way of working.

1. Confused about how to
hire a development team?
Scared of outsourcing
Learn from the experts

2. To select a competent team that is most appropriate for
your project, pay attention to the following:
Actual Team
Process They Follow
Are they Transparent?
Your Requirements

3. Actual Team
Experience
Attention To Detail
Work Portfolio
Flexible
Relevance With Your Idea
Communication Skills
Technical Skills
Pragmatic
Thinking/Understanding Skills

4. Experience
An experienced development team has a better idea of
handling chaotic situations and working with more efficiency
due to better development processes.

5. Work Portfolio
Work portfolio gives you a better idea of a team’s skills and
expertise. You can assess whether it’s just another sales
pitch or the team has something concrete to show by going
through their work portfolio.

6. Relevance With Your Idea
Work portfolio also helps determine any relevant
connection between their past projects and your current
idea. Ask the team if they have done something specific in
the genre to which your idea belongs.
Action
Adventure
Arcade
Board
Card
Casino
Dice
Educational
Family
Kids
Music
Puzzle
Racing
Role Playing
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
Trivia
Word

7. Technical Skills
A diversified technical skill set ensures the team would be
virtually platform agnostic and will suggest you the right
platform based on your idea requirement.

8. Thinking/Understanding Skills
Working on the same project for a good number of months
needs you and your development team on the same
wavelength. Analyze their thinking and understanding skills.

9. Attention To Detail
A project is successful when the owner and the developers
pay attention to every small detail. Ensure that quality in
your team.

10. Flexible
No matter how well you spec your project, some things are
going to change and you must ensure that your team knows
that. But on the other hand you should be open to a revised
quote if some major functionality is added at the later stage.

11. Communication Skills
Excellent communication skills are required for both
inhouse and remote development teams. Communication
plays a vital role within the team and outside too.
+

12. Pragmatic
A pragmatic estimate of the time it will take to complete the
project ensures that the team won’t over promise and
underdeliver. This is one quality you should look for.

13. Process They Follow
A process-oriented team has greater probability of
delivering on the initial promises ensuring good quality work
in set timelines. Any oversight in this regard directly impacts
the quality of the product, the bandwidth you spend, the
iterations required and the timeline.
Channels Of Communication
Project Managers
Tools
Spec Docs

14. Channels Of Communication
For team oriented projects, project management tools
(chosen according to the requirements of the project) are
far better to ensure that the whole team is on the same
page. To build on this, weekly meetings with the client and
daily updates on progress helps you stay in the loop and
intervene accordingly.
Lighthouse

15. Tools
While collaborating with a development team for a period
ranging anywhere from a few months to years, the choice
of right tools by your team can save many hours. The tools
used should not have a huge learning curve but team
members must be proficient in their niche areas. Your team
should be using right tools for:
Project Management
Codebase Management
Bug Tracking
Transferring Development Builds,
Among Others

16. Project Managers
Work with a team rather than individuals unless you already
have a team at your end. A point-of-contact model helps
you transfer your vision to the team and makes
communication much more effective.

17. Spec Docs
Including every little detail of your project in spec docs
might seem cumbersome and totally unnecessary at the
initial stages but helps you do feasibility analysis, discover
competition and make life easier for the development team
which goes into iterating constantly at a later stage.

18. Are They Transparent?
With many teams looking to make a quick buck, the genuine
ones often have to deal with mistrust from clients looking
for prospective teams. But there is an easy way out to
differentiate between the two types of teams.
Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Payment Terms
Cost Estimates
Cost Overrun Risks
Master Service Agreement (MSA)
Post Go-Live Support

19. Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Ideally, your idea is your intellectual property (IP) and the
sales reps of your prospective team should respect this and
should be forthcoming when you ask for an NDA. All the
discussions on your idea should follow after signing the
NDA.

20. Cost Estimates
The team can estimate the total time and money it will take
to complete your project only after they have a clear idea of
the features you have in mind. If the team is able to give you
a random number before you have passed on the
knowledge, it is a clear sign of a sales rep trying to make a
quick sale. The only reliable number the team can give at the
initial stage is their average hourly rates.

21. Master Service Agreement (MSA)
The MSA should be signed and vetted by your lawyer. It
should contain all the terms, statement of work, IP
ownership, etc., which will govern your future relationship

22. Payment Terms
The payment terms also depend on whether you are going
for an hourly billing-based model or a project-based model.
For a project-based model, pre-decide the project
milestones when you are expected to pay. Ideally, there
should be at least 4 payment milestones and you shouldn’t
be asked to fork out more than 25% of the total cost as
upfront money. The final installment should go out only at
project completion.

23. Cost Overrun Risks
There is a high possibility of cost overruns and all the cost
overruns associated with the scope of work included in the
MSA should be borne by the team whereas those arising due
to change in scope should be borne by you.

24. Post Go-Live Support
You have a finished product which has undergone rigorous
regression testing and you are ready to make it live. Some
bugs will creep up inspite of all the due diligence. So your
team must commit to correcting the bugs for some time
after the product goes live.

25. Your Requirements
Strangely, the decision about the team you are going to
work with also depends upon broad requirements of the
project and the onus of communicating this to the team lies
entirely on you.
MVP or Polished Product
Cost & Budgeting
Full-Cycle Development
Team Size
Meeting Schedules
Post-Launch Support
Clear Idea or Brainstorming
Platforms

26. MVP or Polished Product
Analyze what is your requirement for now – an MVP or a
polished product. An MVP helps you test waters before
getting into full-blown project implementation.

27. Full Cycle Development
Requiring only the developers to augment the other areas
of your expertise requires a different team structure, viz. a
viz., full-cycle project development which involves
feasibility analysis, project management, architecture
design, graphics design, development, quality analysis and
deployment.

28. Meeting Schedules
Weekly sprints, daily updates, group chats and bi-weekly
discussions are some meeting schedules to keep you
updated with project status and makes work coordination
better. Communicate what suits you and your project best
depending upon the time at your hands.

29. Clear Idea or Brainstorming
Are you ready with a clear vision of your project or you think
some brainstorming will help? Are you going to invest the
time in market research and feasibility analysis at your end
or wish that your team does that for you.

30. Cost & Budgeting
Have clear knowledge of your project’s cost and how you
want to keep it within budget. Knowing about the price
break-ups and payment options in the beginning helps avoid
any confusion when you are half way through.

31. Team Size
Keep your team size requirement clear from the start of the
project. If you think fewer people can do the job in the set
timeline, there’s nothing like it. Coordination and
communication are better in smaller teams.

32. Post Launch Support
This includes analytical monitoring and framing marketing
strategies.

33. Platforms
Having clarity on which platforms to target and their
distribution strategy is important. It will help you decide
about cross-platform development tools such as Unity,
Corona or whether to go ahead with native development

34. Having trouble finding the right development team?
Talk to us
We’re a full-cycle mobility solutions provider having
experience in diverse engagement models and projects. We
are a team that believes in stakeholder-based approach, are
obsessive about processes, experienced in different
platforms and diverse genres and transparent to the core.

35. Different Collaboration Models
Industry Standard Tools For Each Process
Platform Agnostic

36. 100% Transparency
Ask for our portfolio, we believe in exchanging knowledge and would
love to provide free consultation on your ideas.

37. Get In Touch With Us

38. Let's explore how we can together
create the next big “tech” story...
Plot No. 5, CDCL
Sector 28-B
Chandigarh, INDIA
Phone: +91-172-319-3206
114 Sansome St
San Francisco
CA 94104, USA
Phone: +1 415-758-1
contact@click-labs.com
Skype: click.labs
www.click-labs.com