Gone are the days when organizations focused on hiring everyone as in-house permanent employees. Firms are finding it incredibly rewarding to embrace the future of work which is characterized by remote employees. Where the organization cannot entirely run remotely, most HR managers have come to appreciate the essence of hiring a mix of both remote and permanent product development teams. Doing so translates to a high-performing team that successfully overcomes challenges associated with the traditional workplace setup.
One key aspect of product-led tech companies is responding faster to ever-changing consumer needs and market structures. Hence agile development methodologies remain popular, enabling product development teams to respond faster. However, the biggest hindrance to true agility is the agile team itself. You are stuck with a team that doesn't change as fast as your product roadmap changes.
Historically, companies tend to favour an in-house software development team over external teams. They prefer permanent employees over freelancers. They think that having permanent developers within the office premises can give them the best outcome and they would be able to control the costs.
We believe this is a fallacy.
Recruiting in-house takes longer and can easily take 3-6 months. It's expensive and takes a lot of effort to get the right candidates. To overcome these challenges, many large companies have relied on big tech consultancies such as TCS, Infosys, and Deloitte. But these companies are expensive and have complex legal and project governance structures. It's not for everyone. An alternative could be staffing companies, but that introduces newer challenges.
So what do you really need? You need a product team that changes as fast as your product roadmap:
1. You get all the skills to deliver your immediate priorities
2. You can get skills faster just-in-time when you need them
3. You can remove the skills that you no longer need
4. It has retained the core product knowledge
5. It doesn't create unnecessary overheads and disrupt your ongoing deliveries
6. It's not overly expensive
Long before covid-19, many successful companies had already adopted remote working with both permanent and freelancers. These companies include Crowe (accounting, consulting, and technology firm) and GitLab (enterprise software startup that worked over 1,000 employees remotely). The mentioned companies and others such as Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter are now actively adopting remote work. They have demonstrated that you can set up the best product teams for your needs by carefully designing your team structure.
Here are some of the tips for the same.
1. Recruit your senior product leader – The senior product leader is in charge of your product strategy as part of your core team and has incentives aligned with the product's success. Some organizations may be daunted by the prospect of having a remote team leader owing to the complexity associated with this important role. The reality is that modern communication and collaboration tools simplify remote work, and product manager can successfully execute their roles from anywhere on the planet. A platform such as Notchup gives you immense flexibility regarding getting the right product manager for your team.
2. Recruit your core skills permanently - If you have your back-end developed in Java Spring Boot, then get a few developers that are experts in Spring Boot permanently. The essence of doing this is to create consistency in how things are done pertaining to those core skills. Additionally, you want to avoid a situation where you are caught off-guard when the people you depended on for the main roles are no longer within the organization. One unavoidable fact is that even if you offer the best rates in the market, some team members can always move on elsewhere for different reasons. Thus, make sure that you have several people skilled enough to handle roles on the core tasks.
3. Recruit skills that you need for specific features on a short-term basis – It makes no sense to employ someone permanently when they handle a task that runs for not more than a few weeks and is one-time. For instance, if you need to do a complex integration with a certain platform, then possibly get a freelancer who is an expert in such integrations on a short-term basis. That may cost your business less as you do not have to worry about onboarding expenses, among other complexities.
4. Recruit skills that you need regularly but not continuously on a freelance basis – There are some specific skills not needed regularly, but you will often require them several times of the year. Do not depend on permanent employees for such. For example, if you need security audits to be done frequently, hire the same person on a freelance basis on a recurring contract.
5. Outsource skills that are difficult for you to manage – As a manager, you cannot claim to know it all. There are certain things that are simply out of your reach, and an outsourcing firm can better handle them. E.g., if you need some product features to be manually tested, it is best to outsource such testing to a specialist QA company that can better manage it for you. That gives you the peace of mind that you have contracted the most skilled and domain-specific company to handle the roles for you.
You can do all the above on-site or remotely as per your preferences and budget. At Notchup, you can easily create your product development team as you like without any complexities and overhead. You can source from 100s of skills from our vetted global pool of developers and hire them on a short-term or long-term basis, either as freelancers or on a permanent basis as follows:
Hire top vetted Developers, Designers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and more, as and when you need. These could work as individual contributors or part of your extended teams.
Build bespoke delivery teams to build your product, supported by our hands-on delivery management. This would be an ideal set-up when your product roadmap has priorities identified for short-mid term that cannot be fulfilled using your core skills.
Hire remote developers on a permanent basis with our Global Employer of Record (EoR) / Professional Employer Organisation (PEO) service. This would be an ideal set-up for the skills you need on mid to long term basis.
Get your project delivered on time, within the set budget, and without compromising on quality using our fully managed delivery methodology. An ideal setup for ad-hoc projects that can be delivered in silos without disturbing your ongoing priorities.
You can easily mix and match these as desired. Regardless of the mix, you will always pay a single monthly invoice without the hassle. Choose Notchup as your preferred source of diverse talent. Get started today, and you will never look back again.
