When is staff augmentation better than team extension?

Staff augmentation is the better choice when you are looking to fill short-term talent gaps while bringing on fully integrated talent. This is a good option for businesses that see a sudden spike in demand, or need to finish a particular piece of work, but want to keep project management and permissions in-house rather than outsourcing.

How to keep extended teams loyal?

You should use the same retention strategies that you use for your current at-home team, including learning and development opportunities, a competitive salary and benefits package, recognition and integration, well-being initiatives, and flexible working arrangements that support work-life balance.

When should a startup choose an extended team over hiring locally

Startups should consider building an extended team when they are unable to find the talent they need locally, or the cost to hire locally has become prohibitive.

How do you ensure communication, security, and quality with remote members

This will largely depend on the quality of your onboarding processes for remote team members, your team’s ability to align meeting times and standups with remote colleagues, the maturity of your offshore development partner’s security protocols, and their ability to find high quality talent abroad that have all of the hard and soft skills you are looking for. Make sure to look for an offshore development partner that has a proven track record of building high performing, secure global teams.

What are the best tools for extended team management?

Remote collaboration and communication tools like Slack, Asana, Notion, ClickUp, and Google and Microsoft workspaces can keep distributed teams on the same page. If you already have remote or hybrid team members working from home, you can use the same tools with your extended team.

Extended Development Teams: Expert Playbook & Common Mistakes to Avoid

So you’re thinking of extending your development team. You’re not alone: we surveyed 100 CTOs and found out that 76% of them are either already offshoring or planning to.

But unfortunately, not every extended development team project is successful. Many CTOs fall into common traps that slow progress, run projects over budget, and suck up precious time.

To ensure you don’t get derailed by these same missteps, we’ve prepared this expert playbook. It includes best practices, plus common errors and actionable tips to help you avoid them.

If you follow the advice laid out here, you’ll be guaranteed to get a development team that helps and not hinders your roadmap.

But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what an extended development team is in the first place.

What is an extended development team (and how does it differ from a dedicated, augmented, and outsourced team)?

The extended team model is a way to scale development operations by adding additional team members in another location, typically abroad. It’s sometimes confused with staff augmentation, but while staff augmentation can be for one developer, by definition an extended team has multiple members.

Extended teams are typically hired by a third-party offshoring partner who recruits talent, sets teams up with a place and the hardware they need to work, and handles all other operations on the ground, like payroll and HR.

It’s most common for team extensions to be a longer-term solution to offer continual support to an at-home development team. For short-term or project-based work, the staff augmentation or outsourcing models are typically the better choice.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each model to help align your strategy to your needs and roadmap:

Mid-to-long term offshore development

Dedicated team: A complete offshore development team hired by a third party, made up of full-time employees who work exactly the same as your in-house devs do.
Team extension: Multiple team members provided by a third party to scale an in-house development team, typically on an ongoing basis.

Short-term and project-based offshore development

Staff augmentation: Hiring additional talent from a third-party provider to fill short-term skills gaps in an in-house team; can be as little as one team member.
Outsourcing: Contracting external talent from an outsourcing provider. Devs are typically assigned to your projects from a “bench” of available talent. They are external to your company and move on when the project is done.

When to choose an extended team: Common decision triggers

So when should you set up an extended team? From our experience, these are some key signs that building a software team extension is a good option to consider:

Your development goals outstrip your budget.
You need specific development skills that you can’t find locally.
You can’t hire enough quality developers locally.
You need to scale your development operations to get ahead of the competition.

If any of these statements apply to you, hiring extended team members with the right model will help.

The exact benefits you can expect depend on the specifics of the model you adopt. There are, however, some general advantages you can count on, including access to niche skills and lower overheads when going offshore in talent-rich hotspots.

When approached the right way, these benefits provide strategic advantages for IT leaders to hit development deadlines, optimise their tech budgets, and cover short and long-term skills gaps.

How to implement an extended team: From decision to first release blueprint

Considering the scenarios above (and the horror stories you may have heard from your colleagues that tried and failed to go offshore), what’s the best way to build an extended development team that lasts?

Based on our experience building more than 130 of them, we’ve established a proven, step-by-step playbook that avoids common pitfalls. This approach has provided value-adding team extensions for businesses whose previous efforts failed, as well as those going offshore for the first time.

Here are the key steps:

Identify your needs and goals: What roles are you looking for? Where are the bottlenecks in hiring and development? What does your roadmap look like and how can an extended team accelerate it? How many development cycles worth of work do you have for your team extension?
Identify the right extension approach for your business: Are you looking for a short-term project or a long-term product approach? Do you want to hand over project management to a third party or keep it in-house? Don’t take this part lightly. Picking the right model at the beginning is the most crucial factor to offshore success.
Draw up a list of possible locations: Gather a selection of partners in different locations to ensure you make the right choice. For example, a UK-based business could consider Eastern Europe countries such as Poland, Romania, and Ukraine for nearshoring options and more time zone overlap at a higher overall cost, or more distant locations like India or the Philippines for a lower overall cost but fewer overlapping hours. US companies on the other hand often offshore to distant locations to gain extended coverage, as their offshore teams continue working while they sleep. In general, compare locations based on talent pool quality and depth, costs, and overlap in working hours.
Vet possible partners thoroughly: Don’t settle for the first partner you find. Be sure to weigh fully-loaded costs, including taxes and other fees, not just developer salaries, in each offshore location to get a better idea of the total cost to your company. Check their models, certifications, and case studies, paying special attention to their approach to IT security, compliance, and IP protection. Ask them challenging questions and notice their approach to communication; this will show you how they’re bound to operate in the future.
Make an informed decision: Go back to your original assessment and check how each partner holds up. Stay