Team extension, the new way of outsourcing

Team extension and outsourcing are two different approaches at solving the same problem in the software industry.

We want better products. Preferably in a short and reliable timeframe, and it would not hurt to save some money along the way.

When a company wants to reduce cost, or increase efficiency both of these solutions can be a game changer. However, one might be better than the other depending on your goals and what you would like to avoid.

Outsourcing

As opposed to the team extensions, outsourcing your projects to other companies means that they provide you with a complete software solution at the end of the collaboration. Some outsourcing companies can provide you with a whole IT department and not just a single project. When you are in need of large scale outsourcing, you would want to weigh the benefits and the disadvantages of outsourcing carefully.

Thanks to agile development there can be multiple discussions along the way while outsourcing a project. You can see the progress and the direction of the software development, and make some changes occasionally. Outsourcing can be convenient if you do not have your own team, and don’t want to handle the management of the project by yourself. The benefits of outsourcing also include cost savings, and having a specialised partner to count on. However, you have to consider the disadvantages of traditional outsourcing:

You may lose quality, or have no way of having efficient quality control over the product that you are outsourcing.
Outsourcing may take control away from the management of your project.
While outsourcing a project you may lose sensitive data and confidentiality. With large scale outsourcing it is harder to keep track of the employees who can access your company information and systems, creating security issues.
Communicational issues with the outsourcing company. Adding a third party into your communications will always cause you trouble, and the less you let them integrate with your own company the harder it is to keep the communication flowing.
The hidden costs of outsourcing can be hard to navigate, and you might just end up spending more money on it than what you save.
Outsourcing IT projects can cause further security vulnerabilities. You might not be able to track the developers of the outsourcing company as well as you would want to. Not being able to integrate them securely, or taking a long time to do so, will also cost you in terms of development time. You might end up finishing slower than without outsourcing the project.

If these make you doubt whether you want to get into outsourcing, read on, team extensions might be just what you need. Team extensions are designed to be less risky and more scalable than whole department or project outsourcing.

Team extensions

Team extension services are made for you, if you like to stay behind the wheel instead of being the passenger (project outsourcing). You will face tough challenges when it comes to setting up a team or upscaling a software development project:

It is increasingly harder to find senior software developers and experts on the market today.
It is even harder to find developers whose knowledge you can trust.
You are always at the mercy of a few months’ notice when your developer experts leave the project. Would you be able to keep your deadlines if that happened?
You hired some juniors but dont have the capacity or means to train them. (You also don’t want your code bases to look like mama’s spaghetti)
Developers like their coffee, so you have to pay them. Scaling up your development means more costs. Not just that! Have you checked the amount of money you are spending on recruitment? Having a trusted partner who helps your team dynamically scale will reduce your costs down the line.

This is how team extensions can help you keep your projects and timelines stable and improve the quality of your product along the way.

Team extensions try to remedy the developer shortage from a different perspective than outsourcing. The project management stays completely in your hand through the development process. You might even want to have your own architects and some developers to keep the knowledge you gain from us in-house, while still getting the job done and reaching your market in time. Our developers with a wide range of experience, skillset, and field knowledge can help to boost your project and the professional development of your team.

We can provide you with a variety of team extension solutions:

You can select one of our developers who is currently available to integrate into your team to help out with different tasks and support your team in various areas from frontend to cloud development.
You can hire a developer to teach and mentor your developers, as well as to keep the project going while your devs grow professionally. This way our knowledge will stay with you.
You can hire architects and seniors to be faster at delivering the right product the right way. We are experts and as such we understand that reliability, scalability and on point estimations are the key for successful development and happy customers.
Not seeing what you need? We might still be able to help you, our models are entirely flexible.

Meanwhile these stay in your hands:

You manage your own timelines, deadlines and we provide you with accurate estimates. You can plan ahead with a peace of mind.
You can check the quality of our work anytime, we are completely transparent with our code and actively participate in code reviews and walkthroughs to boost your static analysis. Quality is in your hands.
You design the software and you set the software requirements. Do you have a design system you love? Or do you have your own UX experts and managers to lead the way? We are happy to follow and work with them to deliver the product you have in mind.

By now you can probably feel the difference between the team extension model and traditional outsourcing services. While we are happy to provide you with as many software experts as you need for your project, we do not take on project leading or management roles (traditional outsourcing).

Who is team extension for?

This outsourcing alternative would fit you the best if you want to take the first step to scale up your development but you also want to keep the leading roles, and want to stay away from the disadvantages of outsourcing.

Team extension is the safest form of outsourcing for small companies and start-ups who cannot afford to take on the bigger risks of larger scale outsourcing. Having one or two new team members will not feel any different than hiring a new developer, however it is more flexible since you decide the contract length.

We also recommend it to large companies. Keeping the leading roles in your company could be a large benefit compared to outsourcing everything. Yes, you probably save less money as you would by just giving everything to a third party, but you stay in control and we have no hidden fees. When it comes to software development, managing and reaching your milestones in time is key. If you are working in a field that is very sensitive to quality, having developers who can comply with your quality assurance processes is a must. With team extensions you can stay confident in the quality of your software. Having an integrated team member poses less security risks and is easier to manage than managing the activities of a whole outsourcing company. Lastly, our developers become part of your team, so communication is just like being in a virtual office and working together.

You could start out with a single developer for your team to test the waters with the team extension model, and if you like the collaboration you can always ask for more.

How does the team extension process work?

When you write to us this is what you can expect:

We set up a short meeting to get to know more about who you are and what your needs might be, we will also introduce our company and the team extension model.
If you are happy to go forward, we write an NDA (which protects you and your projects and our developers) to discuss the project needs in more detail, and to be able to select developer candidates who we think could be a good fit for you.
After this, we give you the profiles of some of our developers and you have the chance to interview and then select the developer(s) you would like to expand your team with.

The technical details of integration of our developers is dependent on your infrastructure and your needs. We strive to make your team extensions seamless, you can add the developer as a new team member, or you can set up special access rights, which we are happy to help you with. Our developers commonly get access to the git repositories, management tools (such as Jira), communication channels and depending on the project AWS, CI/CD pipelines or databases.

How much team extensions cost?

The financial details of team extension also depend on your needs and is calculated from mainly two factors:

How long you would like to have our developers. We like to build long term collaborations with our partners, but if we have available developers we gladly take on shorter projects as well. The price is lower the longer you would like to expand your team with us.
The seniority level of the developers. While we do not have juniors, our senior developers have various years of experience which would be taken into consideration when giving you a price.

Team extension

Software development

BOT - Build Operate Transfer