Team as a Service Solution

Engaging an Effective Technologies remote team is a simple way to expand the capabilities of the customer's IT department. The customer can add any type of necessary assets to the team: analysts, programmers, testing experts.

Fast transition

System Development
Diversification of Development

IT team follows business requirements

Scope of work

Modern business is based on large IT projects. So, the first question that needs to be addressed by the client company is how to organize the implementation and maintenance of these projects?

Let's start with the fact that there are several approaches to the implementation of IT projects that companies have been practicing for decades: creating their own development team within an organization, outsourcing, and outstaffing.

Solution

The Effective Technologies team offers an approach that seems optimal, has been successfully implemented and used in conjunction with our customers.

Issues with in-house development

The first scenario is creating your own software development service. For companies that are not usually engaged in development, this task seems feasible and even simple.  It seems there is not so much to do to create your own trading platform, or a production automation system, or an online store.

The issues only arise when the company tries to hire employees fit for the task. Unlike many other professions, finding and hiring the necessary specialists from the IT industry (programmers, testing engineers, system analysts, system administrators) is much more difficult and takes much longer. It takes much more effort, money and time.

But even more problems arise when the project starts: the timeframes expand (by 2 times on average), the planned budget expands (by 3 times), and the final product turns out to be not as convenient as you would like. And to top it off, it often turns out that the competitors have already released a similar product, or implemented similar ideas, even added new features.

Outsourcing problems

The second approach – outsourcing a project – is often chosen by those who have already suffered through a failed development team organization project from scratch. They start by searching for an outsourcing company that would take the project. At that, the customers often go to another extreme. They describe their idea in general terms to the representatives of the outsourcing company and are confident that in a month they will receive a working product that will be at all the workplaces, and grateful employees will start each morning with the mantra “how did we ever live without this.”

But in real life, there is already an old system that needs to be updated by the coming year (e.g., legislation has changed again), and the invited outsourcers said that in order to start working on the project they need to assemble a team. The team will enter the project in, say, 3 months, but it is better to count on half a year, if you need real deadlines.

Many problems also arise during the implementation of the project. Unclearly described functional and technical specifications on the part of the client give rise to the fact that after several months of work, the product turns out often far from the one that can solve business problems. But money and resources have already been spent, and so the customer and the outsourcer start to settle disputes, sometimes turning to legal enforcement.

Outstaffing problems

From time to time, companies use outstaffing. On the outside, the idea looks attractive – the necessary experts are “rented” without actual hiring. At first glance, the benefit is obvious – you can quickly add the necessary number of specialists to the team, and only pay them for the duration of the project.

In practice, this approach often combines the disadvantages of outsourcing and internal development. Namely, you have to completely manage the entire process, that is, to keep a large staff of technical managers, technical writers, etc., and at the same time you have to manage people who do not always share the values of the company. For them, active participation in the project does not mean growth in the company, but only additional efforts and obligations for the same salary. Isn’t it that the whole IT industry is based on the right motivation?

Team-as-a-Service approach

Effective Technologies offers an approach in which the customer has the opportunity to hire a ready-made team of experts and work with it directly. This approach consists of several components, each equally important.

What is a team?

In IT projects the “combat unit” is called a team. The team has regular contributing programmers and testing engineers. The following team composition is used most often: 2 to 7 programmers and 1–4 testing engineers. Other participants: technical writers, system analysts, managers – can participate on several teams.

The interaction procedure with the team in the TEAM AS A SERVICE approach

The customer interacts with the team as if it were his own development team. Unlike outsourcing, and this is a crucial point, the customer has the opportunity to interact directly with each team member. Undoubtedly, there is a manager who performs routine organizational work within the team, but the final choice of who joins the team remains with the customer.

Organization of interaction between the customer and the team

In the customer’s teamwork system (in IT, this is often called a tracker), tasks are set for the contractor team. In this case, these tasks can change priorities, be postponed to other due dates and change along the way. The team follows business requirements.

Effective Technologies offers a work organization approach that is applicable both to new projects and to the task of expanding existing customer development teams.

It is important to note that this approach works equally well on all technologies that are used in Effective Technologies.

More information about the technologies we use when developing software is available on the Technologies page.

Technologies

Implementation of the Team-as-a-Service approach in practice

What steps are required to get the Team-as-a- Service, and so that the TEAM AS A SERVICE methodology really works?

The customer and the contractor must consciously decide to transit to such an interaction. It is important to understand that the level of mutual trust should be somewhat higher than when outsourcing. The customer trusts the team managers, and the contractor is confident that the specialists will not be head-hunted to work for the customer.

The Team-as-a-Service can work in conjunction with existing customer’s teams. It is necessary to jointly overcome the psychological issue of trust and not start developing competition between the teams. You may need to adjust company values and accept third-party teams as an important reinforcement and support tool. Even more so, because modern IT projects have enough work for everyone. There are always more ideas than opportunities for their implementation.

The Team-as-a-Service approach works most effectively with long-term projects in which the team will increase its expertise in the subject area and will adopt the values of the customer.

For interaction on the Team-as-a-Service principle, other types of contracts are required. On the outside, this contract resembles a framework agreement, but with some important details describing the subtleties of the Team-as-a-Service.

Advantages and experience of real implementation of the Team-as-a-Service approach

It would seem that the differences between the new approach and outsourcing and outstaffing are insignificant, but in practice the positive effect is striking. Instead of endless disputes, discussing the fact that “this is not described in your TOR”, you will be summing up the tasks with the resources actually spent (man-hours). Instead of long planning sessions for half a year ahead, you will have weekly short meetings, describing what were the actual issues when the tasks were done and what should be highlighted. After all, life is changing, tasks do too, and everything needs to be constantly adjusted.

Effective Technologies has several years of experience working with customers in the Team-as-a-Service format. Many problems of outsourcing and outstaffing are forgotten. We do not have to fight with the customer, the customer does not have to spend a lot of time writing technically and legally verified TORs.

With the Team-as-a-Service approach, the customer has everything necessary for the implementation of large IT tasks – motivated, expandable teams from a reliable service provider. And it really works.

Results

The team works, accumulates subject expertise, solves the tasks of support and development without increasing costs.

+7 (800) 555-58-59
Submit an application

Got a project? Contact us and we will help!