Whether external dev teams are worth it depends on several factors, including your project's specific needs, budget, and management capabilities. External teams can be beneficial for short-term projects or when you need specialized skills that your in-house team lacks. However, they can also introduce challenges such as communication barriers, cultural differences, and potential intellectual property risks. To make the most of an external dev team, it's crucial to clearly define project requirements, establish effective communication channels, and set measurable goals.
Key Takeaways
Clearly define project requirements and expectations
Establish effective communication channels and protocols
Set measurable goals and milestones for the external team
I keep running into mid-sized, established product companies with decent internal teams that still move at a crawl-huge backlogs, tech debt nobody touches, features slipping quarter after quarter. Hiring isn’t the fix anymore, so they bring in external dev teams… and half the time it feels like adding more cooks to an already confused kitchen.
Are there cases where external teams really do outperform scaling internally?