10 — Dedicated teams
A development team on contract, not on your payroll
Hiring a permanent developer takes months, costs a recruitment fee and locks in a salary before you know how much work there really is. For a small business there is a saner shape: contract developers plus project management, working as one team, for exactly as long as the work exists.
The problem
What usually goes wrong
A permanent hire takes months of adverts, interviews and notice periods — plus a recruitment fee — and you only find out whether it worked long after the money is spent. A small business rarely gets a second try.
When they are ill, on holiday or busy with a bigger client, your project simply stops. And because nobody reviews their work, you discover its quality only once it is load-bearing.
Without a project manager, the owner becomes one by accident. Requirements live in WhatsApp, priorities change mid-week, and "nearly done" stays nearly done for a month.
A fixed quote suits a defined build — that is exactly our one-week offer. But ongoing product work has no defined end, and getting a fresh quote for every feature is slow, expensive and exhausting.
How we solve it
Our approach
- 01We scope the capacity, not just a project
First we work out what you actually need: how many developer-days a week, which skills, and whether you need project management at all. That shape — and its monthly rate — goes in writing before anyone starts.
- 02You get a small, named team
You know exactly who is working on your product: developers, and a project manager who owns the plan, the priorities and the weekly report. No anonymous bench, no silent substitutions.
- 03The work runs on a visible process
A shared board you can open any time, short weekly reports in plain English, and a demo whenever something ships. You always know what was done, what is next, and what it is waiting on.
- 04Leaving is easy — which is why staying is a choice
The code lives in your repositories from day one and documentation is written as we go. You can end the engagement with notice and keep everything. Teams that make leaving hard are hiding something.
Project work inside the engagement runs through the same five steps — investigation, understanding the problem, development, testing, then launch and automation. See how we work.
What you get
Included from day one
- Named contract developers, with a project manager who runs the work
- A shared task board and a weekly progress report you can forward
- Code, accounts and infrastructure in your name — you own it outright
- A written agreement covering team shape, monthly rate and notice period
Scale the team up or down as the workload changes, or stop with notice. There is no recruitment fee and no lock-in beyond the notice period.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is this staff augmentation or outsourced development?
Both fit under this service. Staff augmentation means our developers join your existing process and report to your manager; outsourced delivery means our project manager runs the process too. Most small businesses want the second, because they do not have a spare manager.
How is this different from hiring a freelancer?
A freelancer is one person; this is a team. Work is reviewed by someone who is not its author, the project does not stop because one person is on holiday, and a project manager keeps the plan honest week to week.
Do we have to commit for months?
No. The agreement runs month to month with a notice period agreed up front. Scale up when there is more work, scale down when there is less.
Who owns the code and the accounts?
You do, and the agreement says so explicitly. Repositories, hosting and store accounts are created in your name from day one — there is nothing to hand over at the end, because you always had it.
Can the team take over an existing product?
Yes — that is the most common starting point. We begin with a short audit of the code and infrastructure, so the first month is spent fixing the right things instead of guessing.
Related
Often needed alongside
Contact
Tell us what capacity you need
Describe your product and the gap in your team, and we will come back with a proposed team shape and monthly rate. We reply from info@nileapps.co.uk, usually within one business day.