Part Dedicated Hiring

Lutfal and Champa and their team (Remote Programmer) in Kolkata have been working with me since 2003.

Andrew R. Taylor

I personally went to India to visit Lutfal and his team in 2007 to start off our project and they made me feel very welcome. I was impressed by their set-up and professionalism. I would highly recommend Remote Programmer to anyone.

Martin J Smith

We have used Remote Programmer for last 13 years (as on Jan 2020) and have always been impressed by the quality of the service they provide. We have a fairly complex website with more than 500 MySQL tables which requires a lot of work on an ongoing basis so we opted to use dedicated resources from them. It is a great value for money.

Martin Gibbons

https://www.peoplemaps.com/

From insightfulness to exquisiteness, RP proved to be an excellent partner on all aspects. Flexible work schemes, dedicated developers plus an advisory role indirectly.

Mohammed Moulay

We worked with Remote Programmer for several years and they provided great service.

Developers are reliable and supported by a flexible, capable and collaborative management team as needed.

Ian Gordon

Part Dedicated Hiring - Part-time but with Control

A part-dedicated developer will work on a predefined weekly schedule on your project(s). We are saying it is partly dedicated because he will work only on your projects during the work schedule and you will have full access and control over the developer’s work priorities. He/she will work on other projects too but of course during other times.

There will be a minimum monthly commitment hour. You can hire for more hours and those will be billed as per hourly rates. You can stop anytime on a minimum notice period.

Highlights

Monthly Deal

As agreed  (Minimum of 60 hours)

Work  Place RP Office at Kolkata, India
Working Mode

Remote

Working Schedule

Part-time:  as agreed

Billing

Monthly (for the last month work)

Communication Skype, Slack, Email, Phone, etc
Availability During scheduled hours
Techniques / Models LEAN/DevOps/Scrum/CMMI/TDD
Project Management Tool Agile - Jira / A4W (Our own System) / Anything else you prefer
Daily Scrum / Retro / Performance Tracking Agile4World (our end to end product/product mgt system)
Advance to start 15 days work
Cancellation notice 15 Days (We will refund any unused money)
Replacement On a request and availability basis

Key Benefits

  • You have full control over his activities priorities
  • Your ideas, developed codebase will be your own intellectual property.
  • A Scrum Master quill be assigned to monitor his works and help him to sort out any problem related to setup, project management, technology, etc.
  • If the project requires different expertise, we will arrange on an SOS basis without charging you the Moon.
  • We will provide you access to our Agile Product / Project / Test management tool - free
  • You will enjoy lifetime use/edit/resell licenses for code originally written by us  
  • We will ensure the right  code quality, right architecture, and the right processes
  • You can always report us if something seems not right - we will get it right
  • Long term support assurance - we have clients of  more than 12 years  
  • 100% ethical practices - zero risk that roots from dishonesty
  • Web application development since 1999 - you will benefit from years of  knowledgebase


When to Hire a Part Dedicated Developer

Part Dedicated Hiring is recommended only when you have a live project that requires ongoing support. You do not have a budget for a full dedicated developer but still, you need control over the daily schedule & work priority of the developer.
 

Why hire an Offshore Developer?

  1. Reduced Cost - If you are from a country where the cost of labor is significantly higher than in India, with us,  you are likely to get better developers at 1/5th (or even less) price.
  2. Reduced Headache - Running an in-house team does not only add 5 times but a lot of headaches too.  Here you will not have to bother about the recruitment, HR activities, operational processes, office management, hardware, and software, etc. You can simply concentrate on your project only. 
  3. Expert Overnight - It takes years to build an organizational knowledge base over the software development process for an organization. We are in the industry for over 20 years. The moment you choose us as your development partner you can claim that your team is backed up with 20 years of experience.  
  4. Ready Platform -  We will give you free access to our end-to-end software development cum agile team management platform. There you can see the full picture of the team activity or project development progress or software documentation required for future maintenance. 

Why not  Hire a Freelancer?

Freelancer hiring often looks lucrative. But you may have to spend a lot of time getting reliability from a freelancer because of some inherent problems. Here are those.

  1. Uncertain -   Most freelancer works fulltime somewhere and you do not know when he will be suddenly off to save his permanent job. You do not know when he/she will leave.  If you hire him/her even dedicated, there is every chance he will have to continue to support other clients. You do not know when he will get a better deal and leave you.
  2. Unsafe - Your codes, data privacy, and IP rights may not be in a safe hand.  There is a possibility that your code / IP rights are being re-used in other projects, particularly when a freelancer leaves.  You can never catch a freelancer.  An ethical company never does it who thinks long term. Employees working for a company do not dare to do it because of legal action.
  3. Limited Talent -  Software development is teamwork. Building a professional application that will provide value to its customers requires many experts. An architect, analyst, server admin, designer, developer, test analyst, etc. It is never possible to get someone with the skills required to play all these roles. So other than developer skill you will have to compromise. With a company like us, you can hire them on an SOS basis and pay only for limited hours. In fact, for the smaller issue, the help comes absolutely free.
  4. Dead End -  With a freelancer, your growth option is a dead end. Initially, you may start with something small a developer might be apparently sufficient for you, but soon your application may become bigger and more complex. You may need help from experts or new resources. A freelancer will pull you back.
  5. No Organisational Tracking - We have an organizational tracking system. We will do the activity tracking, work tracking on your behalf, and rectify in the background to yield greater output. If you hire a freelancer you might have to hire another manager (or spend a lot of time of yours) to track him.
  6. No Organisational Knowledbease - We are in web application development since 1999.  We have several people who are in the organization for more than 14 years. We know more than a freelancer what works and what does not work. You will lack it when you hire a freelancer.
  7. Knowledge Transfer Crisis - A developer may leave. Whether you hire from us or hire a freelancer.  And the worst situation normally comes when he/she leaves. When a freelancer leaves you to have to manage the knowledge transfer yourself. It may not be possible for you.  But we will easily manage it. The scrum master will have a high-level knowledge of the system.  Plus we have a standard documentation process to transfer it to a new developer.  

Part Dedicated Hiring - How does it work?

  1. Hire a Part Dedicated Developer - We will discuss with you your requirements, projects, skillset required, and then recommend developers accordingly. You hire a dedicated developer if you are happy.
  2. Create an Agile Project Team - To build a product that we need an agile team. To have a working agile team we need a product owner, scrum master, and a minimum of one developer. The development will be done by the developer but the requirements will be decided by the product owner. The scrum master’s job is to clear any roadblocks through direct or indirect involvement.
  3. Setup Project Management Software - We need to set up a team in a standard project management software like JIRA or in our own in-house agile product cum project management software.
  4. Software Environmental Setup  - The scrum master with the developer will setup software environments/technology stacks required for your development. It will consist of the local environment, DEV  server at the cloud, deployment setup (GIT), etc.
  5. The Team Operation-  Both the offshore and onshore teams will work hand in hand. However, the onshore team will concentrate more on gathering projects/requirements and development teams in the execution and defectless delivery. Anyone can be contacted anytime. The development process will be 100%  transparent. Requirements, test cases, templates, system architectures, tasks, projects, work reports, retro reports, plans, estimates, progress reports, delivery reports - everything can be accessed anytime.
  6. Shared Resources - It is quite likely that all types of jobs can not be done by a developer. But at the start, you may not know who more to hire, when, and for how many hours. When the situation comes we will inform you in advance and you can hire a particular type of resource (say, a web designer)  on an SOS basis (on hourly billing). Later should you need full-time, you can hire someone on a dedicated basis.
  7. Billing & Payment  - To get started for the first time we will require just 15 days’ cost of the first month as an advance deposit. The billing will be always done in the next month the 1st week for the work of the last month. You should make the payment within seven days. This can be changed as per mutual agreement.
  8. Replacement - If you are not happy with a dedicated developer you can always get a replacement. We will try to make a replacement as soon as possible but some wait time can not be denied if a proper replacement is not available right at that moment.
  9. Termination - You can terminate a dedicated developer from his/her duties with a 15 days notice. You can rehire again but rehiring the same resource will be subject to availability.
     

The Agile Team Roles

  1. Product owner - Says the final word on any requirement issue
  2. Scrum Master - Responsible to solve any problem that slows down the development.
  3. Team Members (Development Team) - They actually executes the tasks. Contact product owner on any requirement point and contact scrum master if faces any roadblock. Developers, designers, testers, etc.
  4. Stakeholders - They actually do not belong to the team but somehow will be benefited from the system.  Example: final clients, shareholders, etc.

The Product Development Life Cycle

  1. Concept building - Define the value and value stream. Value means what unique benefits will cheer users and value stream refers to the processes associated with it.  The product owner will define mainly on three points -
    1. what to build
    2. how will it work
    3. how it will benefit the stakeholders
  2. Prioritize - As per product development dynamics 20% of features adds 80% values. So it is important to choose the top 20% features for phase-1 development. In phase-2 choose 20% of the rest 80% features and so on.
  3. Create the Task Backlog - Once the top 20% features are decided the next step is to create a backlog of the tasks. The phase 1 product will be developed once tasks will be completed.  All features may not require fresh development.
  4. Establish the development process & feedback loop- Just plan how the will project is completed. How much to develop, how much to buy. Decide the technologies and platforms. Decide how the system will work and architect accordingly.  Decide the tools and techniques for requirement development, modeling,  testing, project management, and so on. Develop a closed feedback loop with the stakeholders/team members.
  5. Develop each in the agile process - Simply pick a feature, develop/customize it, test it, deliver it for feedback, and improve the feature as per stakeholders’ feedback. Mark them as done once accepted. Repeat the cycle until all features are done.
  6. Launch the PHASE-X - Once all done launch it and monitor in production- preferably through telemetry. Fix/implement any reported error or improvement. A continuous improvement process.
  7. Next Phase Development - Choose the next top 20% features for development. And repeat the cycle.

Team Management Workflow

We have an automated agile project management system (Agile24) to manage the team management processes. We will not mind using 3rd party software like Jira too if you prefer.

  1. Create a Team - The administrator of the project management software will do it for you. A team must have a product owner, a scrum master, and members. Members can be added or removed when necessary.
  2. Create a Product - The product owner creates a product that is to be built. The proposed system is considered to be a product. It will be there until the product is removed from the market. The product owner defines it in terms of features and stories (functionalities).
  3. Create  Projects - The scrum master creates one or more projects to build the proposed system when the project. One phased development can be considered a project too.
  4. Create Backlog - Once the product concept is built and the features to be developed in a particular project are decided,  the ScrumMaster and product owner jointly create the backlog of the tasks that project. All stories are converted as tasks. Apart from stories, there can be other tasks too - general tasks, test runs, test suites, test runs, defects, etc.
  5. Create Sprints - The ScrumMaster does a rough estimation of the full project and full development time is divided into manageable chunks with a fixed duration (say, two weeks or 1 month). Tasks are moved to sprints as per priority. Many tasks may not be moved will lie in the unscheduled backlog.
  6. Assign Tasks - Now the ScrumMaster assigns tasks to members considering the availability and capability of the developers / other resources.
  7. Sprint Meeting - A meeting is done to convey the sprint objective and decide the gameplan to complete the tasks of the sprint.
  8. Daily Scrum - There will be a fixed time when all members of the DEV team will meet together to discuss just 3 points. What was done yesterday? What is to be done today? What are the impediments that slow the development process? The work plan of the day is planned accordingly.
  9. Execute Tasks - The members execute their duty as planned. The product owner must be available to remove the impediments related to the requirements. Everyday a scheduled meeting with the product owner is recommended to avoid any sort of technical debt.
  10. Day end work entry -  Everyone makes work entry - what has been done today along with time to track hours to complete each task.
  11. Test, Review, and done - The initially done work is tested by the developer first and then reviewed by the product owners/scrum master. It may further undergo testing by testers as the situation demands. Once passed it is marked as passed.
  12. Sprint Retro Meeting- Everything cant goes well. In the sprint end, a blameless meeting is done to review what went wrong and what right. Then ScrumMaster takes action to repeats that went right and avoid that went wrong.
  13. Analyze Reports -  An automated delivery report for a specific duration available for the team/user/project to assess the ground reality.  Work reports are available for further analysis.  Estimate change reports are available to determine when and how a project is delayed.

Rate Chart:  Part Dedicated (60 hours)

Resource Type 

Monthly Hours

Cost($)

Web Developer 
(For  E-Com & Generic  Websites using PHP)
60 500 - 600
Web Designer
( Photoshop, HTML & CSS)
60 500 - 600
Backend API Developer 
(PHP/Node.js)
60 600-700
Front End Web Developer
(React/Angular/Vue)
60 600-700
Mobile App Developer
(React Native)
60 600-700
Full-Stack Developer
(React + PHP/Node.js
60 650-750

Note ** -  Costs may vary with the technology and skill level of the developer. It may also vary with the amount of the monthly committed hours. Higher is the hours lowers will be the rate.

Rate Chart:  Hourly Rates

Resource Type 

Approx Experience

Hourly ($)

Web Developer 
(For  E-Com & Generic  Websites using PHP)
2-6 Yrs 7-12
Web Designer
( Photoshop, HTML & CSS)
4-8 Yrs 9-12
Backend API Developer 
(PHP/Node.js)
3-7 Yrs  10-14
Front End Web Developer
(React/Angular/Vue)
3-7 Yrs 10-14
Mobile App Developer
(React Native)
3-6 Yrs 10-15
Full-Stack Developer
(React + PHP/Node.js
5-10 Yrs 12-15
Routine Tester 3-8 Yrs 10-14
Load & Security Tester 3-10 Yrs 10-14
Test Analyst 7-15 Yrs 12-15
System Architect 10-15 Yrs 15
Scrum Master 10-15 Yrs 15
Server Administrator 10-15 Yrs 15
Database Administrator 10-15 Yrs 15
Data Entry Operator 4-15 Yrs 4-7

Note ** -  Cost will vary  with the technology, skill level, and order volume

The Team Hiring Process

  1. Tell your Requirement - Tell more about your plan, area of your work, associated technologies, type of projects to be done, number of people to be hired initially, etc.
  2. Feasibility Check  - We will review your requirement and check the feasibility. We will check the feasibility on technical ground, on resource ground, and on daily work schedule ground. If we are convinced that we are able to provide the desired level of quality service in the long term then only we will say yes.
  3. Agree on the Terms and Cost - Once it has passed the feasibility test, we will discuss the terms and cost aspects. Immediate costs and all future possible costs. Agree on general concerns on both ends - IP rights, privacy, termination, resource hiring, etc.
  4. Sign the Service Agreement  - Once we agree on everything we just sign a formal service agreement to remove unnecessary concern on both ends - also as proof o our professional relationship.  We will not need to refer to this document until there is a dispute. We believe in a win-win trust relationship.
  5. Pay the Initial Deposit - To get started we will need a nominal fee equivalent to just 15 days work-bill since our billing system is a post-paid basis. We always bill in the next month for prev month work.   We will also schedule a date to start at this moment.
  6. Start the Operation - Start operation as agreed.