Team extension: a team you direct, or a team we run
Team extension is engineering capacity you add without hiring: senior engineers who work on your product, inside your workflow, for as long as the roadmap needs them.
01Work
Four models, and only two of them are ours
The question is not whether to add engineers. It is how much of the managing you want to do. The four below answer that in order, least to most, and in our experience the bad outcomes here are mismatches between the two.
Staff augmentation: you manage them
Individual contributors joining your team under your lead, your process and your planning. Cheapest per head and it consumes your management capacity, which is usually the constraint that was already binding.
Dedicated team: you set the priorities
A standing team that runs itself: its own lead, its own internal process, and the quality of what ships is on us. What it works on, and in what order, stays with your leads. This is a dedicated team, and it is how a European retailer's e-commerce replatform ran: our engineers embedded in the work, the client's own IT department setting the direction.
Managed team: we run it and answer for it
A cross-functional team we staff and run, with one named delivery lead who answers for the outcome you set. It is the furthest you can hand the managing over. This is managed teams.
Project delivery: we own the outcome
Not this category at all. Where the thing to buy is a finished result against a written scope, that is engineering, billed against the scope rather than per person per month.
02Services
Two ways to buy a team here
Two service pages, and the line between them is who is accountable when a sprint goes badly.
| Service | What you are actually buying |
|---|---|
| Dedicated development team | You keep the roadmapDirection and priorities stay with your leads. Ours is everything that keeps the team standing: who is on it, how senior they are, the process it runs on, and whether what it ships is any good. The right buy when the work does not end and somebody on your side wants to steer it.Dedicated development teamOr book a meeting |
| Managed teams | You want it ownedYou hand over the running of it: the plan, the cadence, the reporting, and the answer when a date is at risk. What you keep is the outcome you set and the code at the end of it. The right buy when you can describe the outcome and have nobody free to chase it.Managed teamsOr book a meeting |
03Fit
When adding people is the wrong move
Capacity is one of the most commonly misdiagnosed problems in software, in our experience. Several of the rows below are not a team purchase at all.
| Your situation | What we recommend instead |
|---|---|
| Releases are slow, and everyone assumes it is headcount | Not more peopleIf deploys are manual and frightening, more engineers produce more waiting. Release automation first: it makes the existing team faster, and it makes any team you add afterwards worth more. |
| A fixed deliverable with a hard date and a clear scope | Buy the outcomePer-person billing puts the schedule risk on you. Where the scope can be written down, project delivery against that scope is the honest structure, and the incentives point the same way. |
| Nobody internally has time to answer questions | WaitEvery model here needs someone reachable who can decide. An unanswered team is the most expensive idle capacity there is. If nobody can be freed up and it still cannot wait, the only version that works is the one where the deciding is ours too: a managed team, with our delivery lead holding the priorities. |
| One niche skill needed for a few weeks | Advisory, not a teamA few weeks of specialist input is technology advisory or a targeted audit. Standing a team up for it costs more in onboarding than the work itself. |
| A permanent capability you will still need in five years | Hire, and bridgeHire for it. We will say so, and we will bridge the gap while you recruit rather than pretending the bridge should be permanent. There is no recruitment or placement fee on that arrangement. |
| Real ongoing work, and hiring is not fast enough | This categoryThe clear yes. Recruiting, vetting and the pre-interviews are ours to solve rather than yours, and the team moves up and down as the roadmap does, because managing that is our job instead of another standing item on your calendar. |
How this is bought
Team extension is billed monthly per team member, so capacity tracks your roadmap rather than a fixed scope. The other two models we bill on, where the work suits them, are time and materials, billed hourly, and fixed price against the outcome, both quoted per project. ISTQB-certified QA sits inside every sprint, on every engagement, and every engagement runs under our ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015 certifications, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK.
04Models
How a team actually starts, and what the first month looks like
Four steps. The failure mode in this category is a team that is technically present and functionally idle.
- Decide who is accountable before deciding who joinsThe model follows the answer. If your lead has capacity, augmentation works; if not, buying management is the point of the exercise, and pretending otherwise produces the idle team.You getA named model and a named owner
- Meet the actual peopleYou interview the engineers who would join, not profiles that get substituted afterwards. The sourcing and the pre-interviews are ours; the choosing is yours, and one client's difficulty was choosing between the two or three developers we came back with.You getEngineers you have met, agreed
- Read the codebase, then ship something smallCodebase, domain, and one real change through the whole pipeline. A team whose first task is a large feature is a team guessing at your architecture on your budget.You getA merged change through your own release path
- Fix the reporting line, then leave it aloneOne standing meeting, one place decisions are recorded, one person who can unblock. Settle that in the first month and it stops being a topic; leave it implicit and every delay turns into an argument about the engineers.You getAn agreed cadence
People ask how quickly we can put four engineers on something, and that is the easy half. The question I would ask a vendor is who decides what those four do on a Tuesday when the plan turns out to be wrong. If the answer is you, you have bought hands and you now have a management job you did not have before. That is a fine thing to buy. It is just worth knowing you bought it.
Andrii BurdaSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew05Proof
Teams that stayed long enough to be measured
SaaSWaiverKing: Software Development for Waiver Form CreatorWaiverKing is a document management business serving primarily the health and fitness industries. The platform is partnered with MindBody Online, one of the largest business-systems providers for gyms and yoga studios.Weeks to hoursTime for an update to reach live- SaaSAWS costs down 30%+ for a US B2B SaaS platformunicrew became the programming team for a B2B SaaS platform that had run for over a decade, streamlined how it used AWS and Heroku, and sped up rollouts.30%+Lower AWS costs
06Clients
Five clients on what an embedded unicrew team was like
Artelogic anticipates our needs and meets them before we even identify them. My team lead wants to keep both of Artelogic’s developers on the project until the product’s release. We have a backlog of 40 big projects, so I only see Artelogic’s involvement increasing.
Communication with Artelogic is straightforward. They establish a clear understanding of our requirements and request additional details about tasks when needed. I find it amazing that they can finish before our deadlines. They deliver high-quality work, as well. Artelogic’s developers are the best we’ve collaborated with.
Up until a year and a half ago, I handled all the development and support of our application myself and I needed help. I brought in Artelogic, and it was one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made.
I’m consistently humbled by Artelogic’s performance. Projects of this caliber are hard to outsource. Teams come and go, and this type of work almost never gets done. They’ve kept their priorities straight as they’ve grown and always deliver.
The work is ongoing, but the impact that Artelogic has had on our development team has been substantial. They can work on developing other projects while still seeking guidance from Artelogic. Artelogic always provides our team with solutions backed up with the right research and analysis.
07Questions
What teams ask before bringing engineers in
By how much of the managing you are buying. Staff augmentation gives you individual engineers to direct yourself, under your own lead and process. A dedicated team is an autonomous unit with its own lead: it runs its own process and answers for quality, while your leads set the priorities and the roadmap. Managed teams go a step further, with a named unicrew delivery lead owning the plan and the outcome too. The answer follows from how much managing you have capacity for.
Most engagements start within two to four weeks. After that the size tracks your roadmap rather than a scope, which is what the monthly billing is for. One European retailer typically works with us in three to six month pushes, scaling down between them and back up when the next project lands.
Cost follows the shape of the team rather than a headline rate, and what changes the shape most here is whether a delivery lead of ours is in the team or your own lead does that job. After that: the roles, the seniority mix, and how long you need the capacity. So we scope it with you before quoting. Team extension is billed monthly per team member, and there is no recruitment or placement fee: nothing separate is charged for sourcing, vetting or placing an engineer.
The same people, which is what a dedicated team is rather than a pool that gets reassigned as other projects need it. What makes that checkable is that you meet them first: you interview the engineers who would join, and one client went through the recruiting with us and interviewed the candidates himself. It is the question worth pressing every vendor in this category on, because a profile shown at sales and the person delivering in month three are not always the same.
Say so early. We change the person or the model, and there is no minimum engagement period, so what you are inside is a monthly arrangement rather than a scope you have to see out. In our experience a struggling engagement in this category is usually a communication structure nobody agreed rather than a skill problem, so that is the first thing we look at.
What teams usually pair this with
All servicesTell us who would be managing the work
That one answer decides the model. You get a straight recommendation, including the version where you hire instead and we bridge the gap.