Why consider an extended development team?
Technology and development have long made it essential for companies to be adaptable, and for adaptability to be incorporated into the company's values and employees. Where previously one could rely on new projects and development being carried out by an in-house IT department and internal knowledge, there are today greater demands for adaptation to new technology and development, and therefore more frequent need to bring in external expertise. In this article, we aim to give you several tips on why you should consider using an extended development team, and how it can help your company specifically.
What does an extended development team involve?
An extended development team is an extension of the internal expertise the company already has. It is a group of external specialists brought in on the basis of the competence they contribute. The advantage: the specialist knowledge you need can be accessed without significant cost, and without the company having to hire anyone internally. This is especially relevant in IT environments, where specialised knowledge can be the difference between a small, demanding task being finished on time — or not.
In the way we work today, the extended team is not just people. It is people leading, agents executing, and specialised skills compounding across projects. Humans lead. Agents execute. Skills compound. That is the operating model, and it is what makes the modern version of an extended team materially different from what the phrase used to mean five years ago.
What can an extended development team bring to your company?
The advantage of an extended development team is that you can tailor the team based on the needs that actually arise. Starting from the expertise available internally, you can bring in specialists in various fields, in a far more cost-effective way than permanent employment. Complexity and the need for specialised expertise keep increasing, and the set of things any one organisation can reasonably staff internally keeps shrinking by comparison. Let's take a closer look at the benefits such an arrangement has for both the company and the project team.
1. Lower costs
One of the biggest arguments for an extended development team is cost savings. By using an extended development team, the necessary expertise can be brought in on a needs basis, meaning the company does not commit to keeping developers on a running contract. Nor are you left with a project team that lacks work after the product or service has been completed.
2. Increased efficiency
By having an extended development team, the company can focus on growth and continued operations, rather than directing its workforce toward external areas of expertise. Let specialists do what they do best, so internal resources can be used for what they were hired to do.
3. Cost-effective exposure to specialists
An extended development team provides the desired exposure to specialists, bringing with it access to highly competent knowledge. Very few small businesses have senior developers, engineers, or designers as part of their in-house staff, often due to costs and availability. By using an extended development team, you can gain exposure to this knowledge without incurring significant costs for the company.
4. Lets the company focus on business operations
Project management is an important part of development, but that doesn't mean the managing director is always the right person for this. By using an extended development team, the company can get help from someone with expertise in development and project execution, ensuring the project is completed in an efficient and budget-friendly manner. Here, the company can play an active role in shaping goals, milestones, and timelines, and then let specialists take over the actual execution.
5. Effective control over resources
The budget is often what forms the framework for a project, but it will also impose a number of limitations. It will therefore be important to find the most efficient solution, something an extended development team can often help with. Since the development team can easily be scaled both up and down, the project will achieve far greater flexibility during execution. This applies especially in areas such as design, service, UX/UI, system architecture, and software and app development.
An extended development team provides better control during the process
For years it was common to assemble a project group for development internally, with the outcome not really visible until the end. That arrangement is well understood now, and most organisations have learned its limits. With an extended team, it becomes possible to review, monitor, and — above all — see the progress of the work from every party throughout the process. That is the reason many companies have shifted to extended teams as part of their own development. Combine it with the rising pressure for cost efficiency, and flexible expertise has quietly become the default.
A good extended team offers tailored specialist expertise that fits the competence already in the company. Most companies have development and IT departments that can handle the groundwork but need specialists for the more demanding tasks, or the time-consuming ones that extend beyond the basics. With an extended team, you can adapt along the way and replace the expertise you no longer need as soon as a task is completed or a milestone reached.
Ownership stays yours
One concern that comes up whenever companies consider bringing in external delivery capacity: what happens to our ownership of the thing we are building? The honest answer is that this is a question of how the work is structured, not whether you use an extended team.
In the way we work, the customer owns all source code, documentation and artefacts. Customer-specific skills and workflows — the things tailored to one company's systems and domain — belong to that company. The method and the general-purpose tooling belong to us; everything that is yours, stays yours. The whole point of an extended team is to accelerate what the company already owns, not to create a dependency that hollows it out. A partner, not a recipient. A bridge has two sides, and both have to stand on their own.
Get in touch to find out more about what we can do together with your company, and what opportunities open up with an extended development team — and the modern delivery system behind it — from Seven Peaks on board.