Top 5 mistakes to avoid when building an extended development team
An extended tech team is your on-demand dream team working on the other side of the country or globe. Therefore, you should be wary of choosing a service provider and professionals in your software development extension team.
The USA tech talent shortage is growing steadily and making business owners step up to find the best talent. Here are a few reasons for talent shortage.
- The limited local talent pool
- Difficulty in finding professionals with advanced skills
- The cost of hiring and retaining talent
According to the Manpower group, 46% of U.S. employers reported finding tech talent as their primary concern.
Due to the above challenges, more and more US tech companies have adopted the concept of establishing extended development teams. However, collaborating with an ETM services provider doesn’t promise you state-of-the-art products.
On the flip side, if your approach is unclear and expectations are misaligned, the end result could be even more detrimental. And that’s why we bring some common development team extension mistakes you should avoid.
- Thinking short-term production instead of long-term collaboration:
If you are serious about filling the missing pieces in your core team, you should look at the bigger picture instead of short-term benefits.
If you enter into a collaboration with the mindset of this is a one-time project, you would no longer make the partnership successful.
Building an extended software development team is more like a permanent solution that ensures the best talent as if you were hiring on-premises employees.
When you work with a software development outsourcing vendor, typically, you can get access to the best talent. However, developers of your outsourcing team might juggle various projects at the same time.
With little to no focus on your project, you end up with a substandard software product with no control over the project.
2. Focusing on the cost rather than the value:
Irrespective of the business, the cost is one of the dominant factors in deciding whether to outsource development or hire an extended team. With some attractive marketing strategies, companies are likely to opt for outsourcing with the lowest costs.
Not surprisingly, this is usually the wrong choice because the lower rates don’t guarantee you the best resources on board. Instead, look at the value that remote teams can bring to the table.
Assess their portfolio, tech resources, and success rate to build a pragmatic extended tech development team.
3. Treating extended teams as a different team:
Having an extended development team is an asset for your company. It helps in meeting your business goals within the specified time frame and budget.
While working with extended tech development teams, remember that they’re part of your organization sitting in a different office space. Not treating your extended team developer well could bring down their morale, motivation, and in effect, productivity.
That’s why it is necessary to build a management layer between your in-house team and extended team. If you want to get the best out of your extended development teams, include them in important discussions, ask for reviews, and conduct brainstorming sessions regularly.
4. Unclear expectations and roadmap:
Signing a contract with an extended development team doesn’t guarantee success. You must have clear expectations, a roadmap, and a delegation of work among development teams.
To make your collaboration successful, define their roles and responsibilities beforehand, track the deliverables, and communicate timely to ensure transparency.
Remember, building a remote team of dedicated developers is to free up your core team and devote their time to strategy building rather than revolving around mundane tasks.
5. Cultural differences:
It is one of the mistakes many companies commit while establishing their remote extended teams. Companies usually search for low price outsourcing partners rather than the cultural fit.
Let’s consider, your company is in the USA, and you partnered with an outsourcing company from a non-English speaking country.
In this scenario, would it be possible to establish seamless communication among teams? The answer would be unclear.
So, to ensure better collaboration, choose a service provider that aligns and amplifies your culture.
“To build the workforce post-pandemic, focus less on roles and more on tech skills and attitude. We help organizations build tech teams that can develop state-of-the-art software products.”
- Ajit Manjappara, VP- Product Engineering Services
Why do extended team models beat outsourcing? Extended Teams Vs Traditional Outsourcing
Amid the ongoing tech skills shortage, both hiring and project managers are going the extra mile to establish remote extended teams now.
They are looking for solutions that can help in building tech teams quickly with advanced skills. Amid the growing tech talent shortage, organizations can opt either for an outsourcing model or an extended team model to fill the talent gaps.
Let’s look at how extended software development teams outperform the traditional outsourcing model.
- You will be in charge:
Even if your offices spread across countries, you can still have control over your teams and bring them to the same page to ensure better communication and productivity.
Whereas with outsourcing, you have little control over the team and even struggle to communicate with developers directly.
2. Long-term relationship:
Usually, companies outsource a small part of their project to an external vendor and terminate contracts post-development. Most businesses consider outsourcing as a one-time project or commitment.
With an extended team model, you can hire a team of tech professionals and continue the partnership post-development to support you with maintenance and application migration.
3. Prioritization of your project:
As the outsourcing partner works on several projects simultaneously, your project might not get enough priority. Of course, this is one of the major pitfalls of the traditional outsourcing method.
With an extended tech development team model, you will get dedicated resources that work exclusively on your project. Therefore, you can get good value for the invested money.
4. United goal:
In traditional outsourcing, the external vendor is not concerned about your business goals and objectives. They usually develop, deliver, and move on to the next project.
In the extended team model, the remote developers align with your business goals and work as your in-house team. Therefore, you need not worry about productivity and efficiency.
5. Less stressful:
Project management is crucial for any organization’s success. In the traditional outsourcing method, you have to spend more time tracking employees and project status.
Whereas extended team developers work like your core team, making project management hassle-free across countries.
Are you planning to hire a dedicated extended development team?
As a growing business owner, you are always busy building product and marketing strategies for business growth. To make your vision come true, you need a tech team with advanced skills.
Therefore, collaborating with a vendor like Amzur can help you in many ways including, talent acquisition, team building, development, and post-development support.
Take a look at our success story.
Amzur’s development approach:
- Requirements:
Our approach starts with analyzing your project scope, understanding the future needs and technology requirements. Amzur’s tech experts explain the challenges you might face and make you understand the development lifecycle.
2. Development:
Here comes our technical expertise. Our team of extended developers works closely with your in-house team, shares knowledge, and develops your product with advanced tools to stay competitive.
Be it Ruby on Rails (RoR) developer, DevOps engineer, IoT developer, UI/UX developers, or QA experts, we ensure you have the best resource on board.
3. Support:
We develop futuristic applications and extend our services to improvise them to live up to future needs.
Amzur has extensive experience of more than 15 years in building remote working teams that align with your business goals. We have helped several SMEs in the USA through our bespoke extended team services.
Instead of onboarding a team of full-stack developers, we evaluate and understand the project requirements and build an extended tech team. We are experts in building scalable and efficient software development teams for SMEs and growing businesses worldwide.
Using our expertise and direct access to a vast talent pool, you can hire dedicated developers as per your needs. Our recruitment team will provide constant support and help you handle challenges down the road.
Now you’ve learned everything about extended development teams, how about scheduling a call to discuss your tech talent requirements with our team and understand how Amzur can be your perfect ETM solutions provider?
Collaborate with us for your extended team.
Source: Extended Tech development teams
