Team Extention in 2023: Everything You Need To Know

Software development outsourcing is on the rise, and the flexibility of this model is one of the reasons why companies worldwide decide to run their tech projects remotely. The global growth market is expected to reach $82 billion by 2025, making team extension one of the most popular approaches.

Tech team extension is a way to go for companies that need to bridge the talent gap quickly, meet pressing deadlines, and launch a top-notch product in the highly competitive market. 

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That’s why in this article, we suggest finding out more about team extension, its pros and cons, the possible challenges, and the ways to streamline your in-house development process with remote programmers with maximum efficiency. 

How Does Team Extension Work?

Before discovering how team extension works, let’s briefly recap its essence. Team extension, team scaling, or team augmentation are all the same things standing for enlarging your in-house tech team with remote software developers. Team extension services are perfect for small businesses that need assistance with their tech needs but don’t have the expertise or the time and resources to hire in-house employees. Extended teams work closely with your in-house developers, following the best practices of software development outsourcing, remote communication, and Agile development methodology. 

Due to the flexible nature of team extension, this approach can help you with short-term tasks or processes, such as data entry or quality assurance. Scaling your team with remote developers also fits long-term projects such as full-fledged product development or streamlining your IT operations.

Team Extension vs. Dedicated Development Team

Since team extension can be suitable for both short and long-term projects, some business owners and first-time startup initiators mix it up with a dedicated development team. So, how does an extended development team differ from a dedicated one? 

The main difference is that a dedicated team is a separate and independent unit that works on your project development from A to Z. An extended team, in turn, is involved in coping with specific tasks, for example, QA and testing, while your in-house programmers handle the core development processes.. 

One more difference is that a dedicated team only makes sense for long-term projects since, in this case, you hire a full-fledged and cross-functional team of IT specialists. Extended teams, in turn, are usually skilled with specific and narrow processes or technologies. You are also welcome to find out more about the essence of a dedicated team engagement model in our separate guide. 

Benefits of Team Extension

The team extension model isn’t a new approach in the software development outsourcing world, and it has a great variety of benefits. Check some of the major ones below.

• Extending a team with remote developers is more cost-effective than hiring them in-house. This benefit is especially relevant for projects on a budget or those with no tech talent recruitment experience. 
• You can hire tech talent with a highly-specific skill set. For example, if you need machine learning engineers to create an algorithm that will power your solution, you can hire them as extended team members while the front- and backend will be developed in-house. 
• Team extension helps you keep your project running. Extending your team with remote developers makes sense to cope with increasing traffic loads or repetitive and time-consuming tasks. 
• You can scale your extended team on demand. The scope of the team’s work can change over time depending on the stage of the project. Team extension is designed to be flexible and allows your team to scale up and down on demand. This way, you can adjust the size of the team according to your project plans and bring in resources part-time when needed. 

Disadvantages of the Team Extension Model

In addition to the advantages of development team extension, keep in mind possible team scaling challenges when deciding on this model for your project.

• Developers’ onboarding takes time. While extending your team with remote developers is faster than hiring in-house employees on your own, onboarding new team members will take some time. Keep this point in mind if you have to address your project’s challenges as quickly as possible since, in the case of urgent tasks and pressing deadlines, sometimes it is wiser to reassign your most important issues to an in-house team and outsource routine work to remote developers. 
• You have to align in-house and remote processes to maximize efficiency on both sides. In addition to developers’ onboarding, aligning the workflows and processes between the main and extended teams will take time as well. However, if you’re partnering with an experienced team augmentation vendor, establishing effective collaboration will be easier. However, this is where one more possible team augmentation challenge hides. 
• You have to be careful with choosing a tech talent vendor.  Choosing the right company to hire additional team members can be a daunting task, especially for first-time startup initiators. There are many different vendors out there, and it’s important to find one who matches your company’s needs and works closely with you as needed throughout the process.

Nevertheless, if you choose a reliable tech company with a proven track record, the benefits of this approach will outweigh the possible drawbacks. 

When Should You Consider Team Extension Services?

Extending your in-house team with remote software developers is a battle-proven way to cope more effectively with the project’s challenges. Below are the cases when team extension makes the most sense from a business perspective.

You lack the necessary tech expertise

If you can’t find the tech expertise you need in-house, or if your project is too specific to find the necessary talent quickly, consider team extension services. When hiring talent on-demand in this way, you can augment your current team with the tech expertise that’s needed for your specific business needs. From this perspective, team extension is the wise solution to get the job done without having to spend the resources on time-consuming candidate searches or re-training your current team members.

You face an increased workload

If you’re facing an increased workload, you may need to consider team extension services. For example, if your goal is to launch a project into the highly competitive market faster, or if you need to build additional features for your product and better address your business needs, supporting your development team with remote specialists is an opportunity to keep your project running. 

You have no hiring expertise

Recruiting tech candidates becomes especially challenging, given the tech talent shortage and Great Resignation. For companies with no hiring experience and automated talent sourcing toolset, finding the right people is now harder than ever. So, if you’re struggling with hiring additional team members or want to avoid a recruitment headache, getting in touch with a team extension vendor will be the right decision. 

You aren’t ready to scale your in-house team

Hiring new team members in-house requires you to provide them with workplaces and equipment, invest in onboarding and training, and deal with additional paperwork, which is costly and time-consuming. The team scaling model, in turn, allows for avoiding overhead costs since your additional team members work remotely and are only assigned to your project to deal with specific tasks. 

You need additional team members for short-term tasks

If you have short-term or one-time tasks, scaling your team with remote specialists also makes more sense than hiring them in-house. In this way, you can quickly fill a talent gap if your task is too specific, avoid hiring costs if you only need one-time help, and still get your job done without any hustle. 

Extended Development Team Integration and Management – How to Do It Right

The essence of a team extension model sounds easy – you just have to hire more software developers to assign certain tasks to them and let your in-house team get their job done without fuss. However, when it comes to practice, integrating, onboarding, and managing your augmented team becomes a little more challenging. Below are some tips for establishing effective collaboration between in-house and extended teams from the beginning. 

Discuss the communication approaches and project control practices in advance

Your team extension vendor is likely to have the communication and collaboration approaches that make remote work effective. Your task, in turn, is to discuss them in advance, ensuring you can communicate to an extended team, quickly adjust their work scope and count on a quick response if the project’s course changes. Also, discuss the project management tools – in the perfect picture of the world, an extended team should be skilled with the ones you use in-house. 

Set SMART KPIs

To make sure your extended team is as effective as you would like it to be, set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) KPIs that will clearly show your remote developers’ performance and productivity. When setting key performance indicators for your remote team, keep in mind that lines of code, tasks closed, bugs fixed, or hours worked tell almost nothing about the actual value your extended team brings. Instead, measure their performance with such metrics as deployment frequency, lead time, cycle time, tasks-in-progress, and change failure rate. 

Work on developers’ onboarding closely with your vendor

While your development vendor will do their best to bring in additional team members and introduce them to your workflows in the fastest way possible, this is the point where you have to be closely involved in an onboarding process. Before hiring an augmented team, prepare onboarding plans and documentation, assign a person responsible for developers’ onboarding, and communicate the upcoming changes in the team structure to your in-house programmers. 

How Much Does Team Extension Service Cost?

Team extension service is a great way to quickly solve your project’s challenges, but it can be tricky to know how much it’ll cost. There are several factors that directly influence the cost of expanding your in-house team with remote developers. 

The main one is the location you want to hire remote talent. There is a huge salary gap between the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East, so you have to find the destination with the best value for money and the necessary tech talent available. 

Ukraine is a great country to consider for team extension services. As of the globally leading software development outsourcing destinations, it stands out with an exceptional quality of programming talent, strong engineering education, high level of English language proficiency, competitive cost to hire software developers, and convenient location. 

The seniority level of the remote developers, their skills, experience, competencies, and background also affect the cost of the team augmentation service. The final price is based on the size of the extended team you would like to hire. You are also welcome to take a look at our dedicated guidelines for software development cost estimation to get a clearer picture of the possible expenses. 

How to Choose the Right Team Extension Partner?

Choosing the right team extension partner for your business can be one of your most important decisions. Here are four steps to help you choose a reliable software development company offering a team augmentation service. 

1. Decide on which country or region you want to outsource your project to, and research companies in that area. If you’re going with more niche-specific tech expertise, be sure to find a company that has experience working with clients in your target industry.
2. Choose a tech company with niche-specific tech expertise. It’s important that your augmented team members have a solid grasp of what they’re doing. For example, if you want to get started with DevOps transformation, look for a software development partner with deep and specific DevOps expertise. 
3. Consider only companies with a good reputation. Filter them by location and expertise on such platforms as Clutch or Goodfirms to get the best picks for your project. 
4. Scale your team up step-by-step to make sure your work with the tech partner is actually effective. It’s important to start small and scale up slowly so that everyone can get used to working together before taking on any major projects—this will prevent any major disruptions from happening halfway. 

Get in Touch with Relevant For Top-Notch Team Extension Services 

Relevant Software would be happy to help your team grow by providing team extension services, sourcing the best tech talent available on the market, and sharing our latest programming knowledge. Our software developers have collaborated with more than 200 projects from different industries, contributing with their web and mobile development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud development skills. 

Build up your team without worrying about training them on new tools or technologies. You’ll be able to hire top talent who already know the language of your business and how it operates, which will help them hit the ground running. Get in touch with us now to strengthen your in-house team with Silicon Valley-caliber software developers!