Very often in order to reduce the risk of a project failure client company hire not just one team of developers but several teams. This way it secures itself in case one team will opt-out or won’t be able to cope with the requirements or simply go out of business.

Such an approach looks rather reasonable, especially if you are running a big project or if this is a subcontract. However customer faces several challenges when more than one outsource developer participates in the project: poor project management, insufficient communication, coordination gaps.

It is recommended to spend more time for searching and hire a single but more reliable developer. This will help to avoid a confusion of putting all those ends together from several performers. You will probably pay a bit higher than average rate but you will get confidence and reliability in return.

Still this is not the only way you can ensure your development process. You may consider crossbred model: Inhouse-Outsource. This model is advisable for complex, complicated, long-term projects. This model will allow reducing costs of keeping a big inhouse team still ensuring that you have your own specialists to pick your project up on any stage or take care of the most confidential parts.

Here is how major tasks can be allocated between inhouse and outsource teams.

Tasks for outsource developers

• Main development process and delivering final product to an inhouse team.
• Routine development assignments or specific parts of the project according to the specialization, expertise and experience.
• Synchronizing a development process from a different time-zone to provide a continuity of the project.
• Outsource team may share workflow with inhouse team when it is needed to meet the intermediate schedule or finish up delivery in time.

Tasks for inhouse team

• Project management and quality control, responsibility to meet dead-lines and final product delivery.
• Communication with the outsource developers and ensuring that they understand main project goals and requirements.
• Taking care of a confident information, data sharing and monitoring compliance with intellectual property rights.
• Initial testing and implementation of the product.
• Updating outsource team on any changes or additional requirements.

Conclusion

The main advantage of this model is that a customer can efficiently allocate resources between inhouse and outsource developers. He also ensures risks of project failure in case if outsource developer will suddenly opt-out. He will still have specialists who know the ropes. After all, this is a more cost effective model (also see other advantages) comparing to the one where a customer takes all expenses and keeps an excessive inhouse development team.