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.
We provide companies with senior tech talent and product development expertise to build world-class software. Let's talk about how we can help you.
Contact usThat’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.
Table of Contents
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.
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.
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.
In addition to the advantages of development team extension, keep in mind possible team scaling challenges when deciding on this model for your project.
Nevertheless, if you choose a reliable tech company with a proven track record, the benefits of this approach will outweigh the possible drawbacks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
The Internet of Things (IoT) has created a vast network of interconnected devices that collect…
Is it possible to significantly reduce the long hours and intense workloads traditionally associated with…
It's sad to say, but today's businesses encounter numerous difficulties in their security routine. From…