Extended Development Team: The Essentials, Benefits, and Process
According to analysts, global employers are unable to fill about 40 million IT vacancies due to a shortage of technical specialists in their region. And the situation is expected to worsen further. For example, in the USA, it is projected that by 2030, there will be a shortage of over 85 million programmers.
What to do? The solution is simple: consider an extended development team as an alternative to in-house developers.
What are these teams? What are the benefits of this approach to creating digital solutions? We will discuss this and much more in this article.
What Is an Extended Development Team?
An extended software development team consists of specialists who work together on a single project, but can be located anywhere, even in different time zones. This type of work organization is typically designed to combine the internal team with external specialists.
In other words, by involving an extended team in your project, you can gain all the advantages of outsourcing while saving budget and maintaining full control over the development process.
According to research, 92% of G2000 companies use tended teams and other forms of outsourcing. Now is the time to consider involving freelance specialists and experience all the benefits of this approach for your business.
Key Benefits of an Extended Team Model
Integrating external specialists into an internal team helps achieve even the boldest business goals through the following advantages:
Access to Global Talent Pool
Do you want to create a truly innovative product that no competitor offers? Be prepared for the fact that the local market may not have a programmer with the relevant experience. Alternatively, a lack of personnel may make it very difficult to attract the right specialist.
The number of developers varies from country to country. In fact, the difference can be significant even within the same country. For example, in the USA, the highest number of software engineers resides in California. There are over 628,000 in this state, while in Michigan and North Carolina, the number of specialists barely exceeds 100,000.
In such a situation, extended development teams can be a real lifesaver. With their help, you will be able to attract experts from any corner of the world to your project.
Cost-Effective Scaling
Hiring an employee in-house is always costly. According to numerous studies, it can cost a company anywhere from $28,000 to $35,000. And this is just the cost of provided benefits, insurance, vacation, and additional payments (such as overtime). In addition, you'll need to spend on training and onboarding staff.
Apart from the high costs, all of this takes a lot of time, and the need for scaling sometimes cannot be delayed.
However, if you consider involving external specialists, these problems can be easily avoided. A reliable provider will quickly find the right specialist, and your expenses will be limited to payment per hour or based on the actual volume of work completed.
Additionally, with the extended team model, you have another opportunity to save. This is possible due to the lack of regional constraints—as the cost of labor for developers is evaluated differently in various countries. For example, in North America, the average software development hourly rate is $77. In Eastern Europe, the same service can be obtained for $58 per hour, and in the Asia Pacific region, developers charge even less—around $28 per hour.
Faster Development and Delivery
An extended software development team helps accelerate development cycles. Here’s how this happens:
- Involving developers from different time zones allows such a team to work on the project almost around the clock. Is this possible with in-house specialists? Hardly.
- By expanding your team, you can save time on hiring and staff training. On average, the recruitment process in the IT field takes 35 days.
- You can hire several extended teams to handle different tasks. They will work on the project in parallel, thereby reducing development time.
Flexibility and Adaptability
The hiring model discussed in this article allows you to be as flexible as possible when it comes to changes in project needs. Let’s break it down further.
- Have the project goals changed, and you need to scale quickly? As you know, finding an external specialist is much faster than hiring an in-house employee. Additionally, you can adjust the requirements for candidates as the product evolves.
- Geographical flexibility also plays a role here. If you're experiencing a shortage of the right talent in your region, you can look for experts in the required technology stack overseas. With extended development teams, anything is possible.
Hassle-Free Management
When working with external specialists, you can fully control the process of developing a digital solution. At the same time, managing such a team is economically efficient and requires less time.
Why?
- When turning to trusted providers, they take on all the responsibilities for staff selection. You don’t spend time and money on searching, interviews, and hiring.
- The high qualification of extended teams frees you from the need for micromanagement. This allows you to focus on project management and achieving global business goals.
- Outsourcing service providers typically have established communication channels. They use specialized tools like Slack, Trello, or Jira to bridge geographical distances. Moreover, such companies often provide a project manager. It’s their responsibility to ensure smooth collaboration.
Operational Process of an Extended Development Team
To ensure the seamless integration of external specialists into your internal team, several stages of organizing updated workflows must be followed. Remember, your team is the foundation on which the creation of the software product will be based. Therefore, no detail should be overlooked.
Initial Planning Stage
This stage is crucial for the success of the project. Clear planning is the key to knowing the direction you need to move in.
It includes the following steps:
- Formulating business goals. Start by defining the product you want to create and how it will benefit your business. It is also recommended to immediately outline the required features to be developed. This will help clearly define expectations for the final product and avoid misunderstandings between stakeholders and the team.
- Assessing internal resources. Identify what knowledge and skills are needed to achieve the set goals. After that, assess your internal team. Are there enough specialists? Do they have the necessary expertise?
- Project timeline and budget planning. Set realistic deadlines and determine the expenses you can afford. Consider development costs, project management, and potential unforeseen issues.
- Choosing the collaboration model. If the project requires external developers, you have several options. Among them are outsourcing, dedicated teams, and the extended team model discussed in this article. We will discuss the differences between these three approaches later.
- Risk assessment. Suppose you have chosen the extended team model. Think in advance about the risks you may face, such as communication gaps and potential time zone differences. In addition to the risks associated with engaging external specialists, consider other possible problems, including technical ones.
Finding the Right Tech Partner
Opt for a proven company with a good reputation. This guarantees that highly qualified professionals will be selected for you, whose expertise fully matches the project requirements.
Here are a few tips to help you choose a reliable provider:
- Study the company’s website, focusing on its portfolio.
- Read reviews about the provider online.
- Compare the specialization of the potential partner with the plan for your project.
- Assess the cost-to-quality ratio of the services offered.
- Ensure that the company’s values align with yours.
Building the Development Team
The main task at this stage is to ensure smooth integration of the new specialists into the existing team. To do this, it is important to clearly define the roles they will perform on the project.
And a few more recommendations:
- Work on staff selection together with your technical partner. This does not mean total control or direct participation in the interviews. Just stay in the loop to ensure the candidate matches your requirements as closely as possible.
- Balance the size of the extended team. Make sure the number of employees corresponds to the goals of the project and its budget. A team that is too large may lead to unnecessary costs, while one that is too small can increase time-to-market.
Onboarding and Integration
This step involves introducing external specialists to the nuances of your internal processes:
- Familiarization with the project specifics. Before starting work, make sure the hired developers fully understand the project’s goals and its specific requirements.
- Setting up communication channels. Inform the extended development team about the communication channels used in your team. Set up tools like Slack, Trello, or Jira for project management and daily communication.
- Providing access to technical infrastructure. Ensure that all team members have access to the tools necessary for efficient work. These may include version control systems, code repositories, etc.
- Discussing internal procedures and rules. Communicate to the team how you plan to measure project progress, which metrics you will use to evaluate performance developers, and how often you expect feedback from them. This will help avoid misunderstandings and conflicts.
Establishing Clear Objectives
What do you think is the most important thing at this stage? The answer is simple. You need to ensure that both in-house and external specialists are working towards the same goal. To do this, you should:
- Clearly define the project goals. This may involve creating a product from scratch, implementing new functionality, or maintaining an existing system.
- Set milestones. Break the project into smaller segments. Each segment should have specific deadlines and deliverables. This will help track progress.
- Define KPIs. Predefine metrics to measure the team’s performance. These should relate to both the technical characteristics of the product (e.g., code quality or delivery speed) and the achievement of business goals (e.g., return on investment).
- Discuss communication issues: Frequency of meetings, reporting formats, communication channels—all of these should be discussed with the extended software development team at the very beginning of the collaboration. This will ensure you always know what stage of goal achievement you are at.
Project Kickoff and Execution
When all the details are discussed, it's time to start working on the project.
Project kickoff is the official start of collaboration. Now, the team needs to gather together (in whatever format possible), discuss the final details, and set the tone for the subsequent work.
The further work on the project includes:
- Prioritizing tasks. If the team uses an agile development methodology (which is most commonly used these days), this step involves planning the upcoming sprint. Specifically, it means defining the scope of work and aligning the team’s focus.
- Moving toward set goals. The team starts coding, testing, and building according to the project’s defined requirements.
- Monitoring progress and making adjustments. As the team completes tasks, it is important to track the status of the project. This allows for timely identification and resolution of problems.
The success of this stage depends on how accurately the previous steps for organizing the work with the extended team were followed.
Dedicated vs Outsourcing vs. Extended Teams: A Comparative Analysis
All three terms—dedicated team, outsourcing, and extended development team—refer to outsourcing work on a project to external developers. However, there are significant differences between them. Let's explore them further.
When to Consider an Extended Development Team?
There are several situations where it makes sense to consider the extended team model.
- Need for rapid scaling. Is your business growing quickly? Do you need additional staff but don’t have time for long-term hiring? An extended team can help.
- Need for specific expertise. If your internal team lacks certain skills, it’s not always necessary to hire a full-time employee. You can find an external specialist who will integrate into your team and contribute to the project.
- Risk of missing deadlines. Is it time to release the product, but your internal resources are exhausted? This is another reason to turn to external developers. Extra hands and minds can easily save the situation.
- Limited budget. Hiring external specialists is cheaper than increasing your full-time team. This is why extended teams are optimal for startups.
- A responsible project requiring personal control. Not every project can be fully outsourced. Often, the client wants to retain the right to control the development process themselves. This opportunity is exactly what extended teams provide.
Want to get the best global talent at your disposal? Need to relieve your internal team? Want to speed up time-to-market and beat your competitors? Create an extended software development team on your project, and all of this will become a reality.
Challenges of Managing an Extended Development Team
If you’ve decided to integrate external developers into your internal team, you should consider not only the benefits of this approach, but also the certain challenges that come with it. It’s better to know about these challenges in advance.
- Communication Barriers. If you’re bringing in foreign specialists, be prepared for language, cultural, and time zone barriers. However, some of these can easily be turned into advantages. For example, thanks to different time zones, work on the project can continue around the clock.
- Integration difficulties. External developers may use work methods different from yours. Therefore, it’s important to discuss all expectations for collaboration in advance.
- Limited visibility. It can be challenging to monitor the work of remote employees as closely as you would like. To avoid this, it’s important to use reliable communication channels, reporting tools, analytics, and project management systems.
- Risks related to data security. This is especially relevant for projects involving sensitive user data. To minimize risks, work only with a trusted provider who ensures the reliability of the provided staff.
- Team engagement. It’s logical that full-time employees are more invested in the company’s development and the project’s success. Therefore, when bringing in external specialists, make sure to focus on their adaptation and motivation.
As you can see, with a thoughtful approach to forming extended development teams, all potential challenges can be easily overcome, leaving you in a winning position.
Future Trends in Extended Development Teams
The popularity of the extended team model in the field of software product development is gaining momentum. What transformations can we expect for this approach to organizing workflows in the near future?
- Focus on the use of AI and automation. Innovative technologies will allow companies to optimize project management and minimize the risks associated with working with remote employees.
- Preference for hybrid work formats. Companies will become increasingly interested in combining internal teams with external specialists. This will allow them to tap into the global talent pool while still maintaining control over processes.
- Emphasis on Agile and DevOps. Recent practices show that more and more teams are abandoning classical development methodologies in favor of flexible approaches. This allows extended teams to integrate more smoothly into internal processes and stay on the same wavelength as the in-house team.
- Expanded integration of specialized tools. Collaboration platforms are an essential attribute of extended development teams. As this model of cooperation spreads, new tools will emerge, and existing services will be improved.
- Maximum focus on data security. This issue is critical for all companies that engage external specialists. As a result, improved security protocols will emerge, and decentralized development and blockchain will become more relevant.
In summary, the future of extended teams is closely tied to the implementation of progressive technologies, process automation, and the increasing spread of this work format.
Create Your Extended Development Team with Darly Solutions
Darly Solutions is your reliable partner in creating unique digital solutions that will become a competitive advantage and the hallmark of your business.
We are ready to strengthen your internal team with specialists in Web and mobile development, UI/UX design, and testing. A qualified project manager will seamlessly integrate our experts into your processes and ensure smooth operations.
Contact Darly Solutions for a personalized consultation and experience the full potential of an extended development team from a trusted provider.
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