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As companies seek leaner development teams while at the same time prioritizing highly-skilled and experienced development talent, we are seeing the rise of hybrid teams that pair top-notch internal developers with reliable and experienced development partners.

Haven’t companies always used outside partners?

Don’t get me wrong, from small startups to multi-national enterprise companies, using outside development partners has been a staple to accelerate projects, or fill incremental development needs. These outside development partners can be deemed temporary necessities and therefore expendable when the budget gets tight.

What’s the difference with Hybird teams?

With the rise of the hybrid IT team, we are seeing companies using software engineering and development partners as an EXTENSION OF their current team’s capabilities and experience without incurring the financial and professional commitment of a new full-time team member. In other words, you get the development talent you would like to hire without the salary, benefits, infrastructure and on boarding process to it takes to recruit and retain top-tier talent.

Great partners help you retain great talent
While there is a clear business objective for engaging with a development partner, the addition of an external partner may be a perceived threat to your existing team. As a result, the best situation for a development partner is to help you achieve your goals by extending and complementing your best developers.

I know what you are saying… if I have great developers, why do I need a development partner?

The truth is that to keep top development talent, you need to continue to challenge employees and grow their talents. In fact, software engineering has one of the highest turnover rates of 21%.

The truth is that to keep top development talent, you need to continue to challenge employees and grow their talents. In fact, software engineering has one of the highest turnover rates of 21%.

This means that to maintain your talented team some of the project-based, non-critical development work needs to be repositioned. While you could hire another junior developer to fill this void, the time, financial and training resources you will need to allocate to a new employee can easily be offset by a well-experienced development partner.

Similarly, allowing the rising stars of your development team to work with and, when appropriate, oversee projects with outside software engineers that are highly skilled and have a variety of experiences encourages them to stretch their own abilities.

Selecting the right partner to compliment your team

When you start to look for a software development partner that will help you extend your team, you need to establish confidence with the partner’s technical and business experiences. In addition to the usual technical demonstrations and process questions that you ask a potential development partner, consider these to assess the ability of your partner to strengthen your team:

  • Tell me about a time where you recommended a fresh or different technical approach to a project than originally proposed by the client you were working with.
  • Tell me how you help companies be nimble and flexible life while maintaining processes and best practices.
  • What is the most common new skill or capability that you bring to a project or team that you are working with?
  • Please describe a time where a development project led to a specific impact on business objectives.
  • How do you align your processes with existing processes of an internal team and projects purpose and objective?
  • Tell me about a time where a project did not go as planned and what are the corrective actions?
  • What are the strengths of the development team that we will be working with?
  • Do you have consistent communication and feedback process?
  • What will make this partnership a success?
  • What is your response time and process for corrective actions?
  • How fast can you ramp up to be productive?
Offsetting risk with balance

When you decide to work with an outside development partner there are assumed risks that you and your company take. You risk your reputation. You risk project quality. You risk disruption to your team.

Investing the time to find a hybrid partner that can do the development work and add to your team is an investment in your improving your business.

As a result, the right development partner will understand the dynamics of your team, the technical needs of the project, the lean approach to finances and the impact expected on business objectives.

How to pick a development partner that strengthens your team and your business?

When choosing a development partner, there are three aspects to the engagement

  • Business Aspect
  • Technology Aspect
  • Personnel Aspect

All three aspects are equally important. When I first sit down with a potential client, I work with the client on all three.

Business Goals
  • What are the purpose & objectives?
  • What is the current state?
  • How far are we from attaining the goal?
  • What is the timeline and budget?
Technology Goals
  • What is current tech stack?
  • What are current tech pitfalls
  • What are the development practices and processes?
Personnel Collaboration
  • What are the strengths and specializations?
  • What is the development management processes?
  • What has been their experience working with outside development partners?
  • What was and will be their involvement with this project?
  • What are the expectations of an outside team?

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