Outsourcing: Everything About Team Extension Model

There are lots of questions about outsourcing in the business world. Before we start, let’s answer some of them. The history of outsourcing dates back to the early 1990s. So, it is not a new business model. It is an effective cost-cutting strategy for companies. It simply aims to complete the processes that a firm is responsible for by hiring a party outside. Thus, they get rid of the cost of employing personnel in-house to carry out the processes in question. On the other hand, today, team extension is a modern outsourcing model preferred by firms. Let’s take a closer look at what team extension is.

What is Team Extension

It is a customized outsourcing model according to today’s modern companies. Under normal circumstances, business processes are completed by a patchwork fulfillment of roles. However, in many cases, firms need to integrate the experience and skills they need into the development process. This is where team extension comes into play. It ensures firms complete this process efficiently. So, how does an extended team work?

The way an extended team works is no different than a team you employ in-house. They use the same tools and report to the same people, just as a team you employ within your firm. Above all, an extended team shares the same goals as every employee in a company. In short, we can say that they’ll work on the same codebase just as a team you will employ in-house.

The Rise of the Team Extension Model

Until a few years ago, you could’ve questioned whether team extension is an effective model. However, despite what it has taken away from our world, Covid-19 has also caused us to gain many advances. Above all, this challenging process has shown us how beneficial a remote working model based on mutual trust can be. Video chats made it possible for extended teams working remotely just productive as in-house teams. And for this, we can thank advances in communication techs. So, today, it is quite possible to work with a team on the other side of the world.

Outsourcing vs. Team Extension

Most of the community has an opinion that team extension is no different than outsourcing. This misbelief causes team extension to be often misunderstood. Let’s get down to the origins of this misbelief first. An extended team consists of out-of-office employees. This is the basic feature that makes it similar to outsourcing. But what makes them similar does not make them identical. Because despite this similarity, there are many features that make them different business models. Here are some of them:

• Team extension allows you to maintain full control. However, with outsourcing, you delegate the whole process, including the control mechanism, to a third party.
• You may also include the extended team in meetings and planning with your own team. On the other hand, in outsourcing, all planning related to the processes is carried out by a third-party firm.
• In outsourcing, the service provider you hand over your business to will also do the same job for other companies along with yours. In contrast, the extended team dedicates themselves only to your project.
• Since you’re in full control, you can dictate to your extended team what to focus on.

As you can see, there are many differences between outsourcing and team extension. So, to get the efficiency you expect from team extension, you must first have the ability to manage a higher headcount. Besides, it is essential to be skilled in matters such as prioritization, communication, and scheduling, as a manager.

What are The Team Extension Models

• Dedicated Team Model

  If you’re going to work with a dedicated team, it is important that you have the managerial skills we mentioned earlier. Because they only work on tasks and projects that you’ll define. A dedicated team works for a certain period of time. So “prioritization, communication, and scheduling,” remember? These skills are critical to managing a dedicated team and getting the most out of them.

• Managed Team Model

  This model is perfect if you need an extended team for a long-term project. In this model, the service provider is responsible for the project management along with the tasks. On the other hand, the project owner is responsible for three important things:

  • Making critical decisions about the project
  • Being in consistent communication with the team running the project
  • Checking the notifications that the team will send in the process
• Outsourced Team Model

  It is the most preferred team extension model. Unlike an integrated team, an outsourced team is responsible for the entire project from top to scratch. If you want to achieve maximum results with minimum effort, you should prefer this model. In this model, your service provider is responsible for:

  • Building a team of qualified developers suitably for the project
  • Managing the project
  • Preserving deadlines
  • Delivering a final solution

Outsourcing, which marked the last decade of the past millennium, is now the most preferred business model in the IT sector. Because nowadays, when digital transformation is reshaping the business world from top to bottom, companies need qualified developer teams for their projects. Here at Skylab, we help companies to form mobile development teams in Turkey. If you need a software developer, we want you to know that we’re ready to find the ideal candidate you’re looking for and fulfill the legal requirements for recruitment.

Advantages of Team Extension

There are managers who consider increasing the headcounts as a magic formula for completing a job faster. No one can deny that this is true in theory. However, every experienced manager knows that things can go differently in practice. Problems may occur during the hiring period and slow down the business rather than boosting it up. Of course, the most important factor in this is the skills and experience you will demand. It still may take several months to wait for the right candidates to apply and conduct interviews to select the most suitable one among them. This process is slower, especially if you are hiring to build a team. That is where team extension comes in.

In team extension, all you need to do is determine what skills, experience, and profiles the expert you are looking for has. Then the third-party firm you decide to work with will hire the ideal staff for you. The best part is that you don’t have to deal with any administrative procedures related to hiring. Let’s take a closer look at the other benefits of team extension.

Flexibility

Flexibility One of the biggest advantages of team extension is that it provides a great degree of flexibility. First, it allows both parties to negotiate the right terms of assistance. Thus, firms may snatch the talent that best suits their needs. On the other hand, developers have the chance to work with firms that offer the right model for them.

Access to niche skills

Access to niche skills Tech is advancing day by day. As a result, every company is chasing the latest tech in order not to fall behind in the competition. However, non-tech firms are unlikely to find the best talent in such areas of expertise. For example, let’s say you have a project that works with techs such as IoT and AR. In this case, finding experts in these areas will be quite hard for you if you’re not a tech firm.

At this point, the best move you can make would be to go for a team extension. Let us tell you one last time that, at Skylab, we offer solutions for exactly these kinds of issues. If you need developers to tackle complex solutions on your project, we may help you find the ideal candidate you’re looking for. At Skylab, we have developers in our talent pool with the hardware and software skills required for this kind of work.

Scalability

Scalability There is something you should know about third-party firms that offer team extension services. Most of them are quite experienced in team management. Especially those who offer services in regions where there are many developers also provide the most benefit. The best examples are Eastern Europe, including Turkey, and the Far East.

Team Extension Model, In Short

Today, firms need expertise in different tech fields. However, if you’re not in Silicon Valley, it is quite hard to find and employ tech personnel in certain areas of expertise. In today’s business world, the practice that brings a solution to this issue is the team extension model. So, in this article, we have discussed the team extension model at length. We hope this article has helped you in hiring the right qualified staff.