How software development fractional teams can help your business

Would you rather trust your house renovation project to a team of highly-skilled, proven professionals in their respective fields to handle construction, electrical wiring and plumbing, or rely on a few know-it-all handymen who may not have expertise broad enough to complete the job properly? There is little reason to treat digital product development differently. Yet, it’s common to do so.

Creating a successful digital product or any custom software is a team effort involving many different roles with a particular set of skills throughout development. It doesn’t have to be nearly as big as Twitter to need more than one role. A typical web application development project, from an idea to a working solution, might involve UX specialists, graphic designers, backend developers, frontend developers, QA engineers, and infrastructure specialists to shape it.

Pitfalls of hiring full-time teams 

When working with a software agency, it’s widespread to discuss engagements in FTE (full-time equivalent) units. Companies seeking help with development work often ask for an exclusive team of engineers to be involved in their project, e.g., a team of two or a team of three people working full-time. Such teams are commonly assembled around roles needed the most or for an extensive period of time. 

This scheme works well for team augmentation arrangements when the team being augmented lacks single skills, and has confidence they can utilize new hires to the fullest for the time of the arrangement. The other case is when the team simply does not have enough resources to handle the workload. Working with a software vendor is then seen as a direct alternative to hiring, and by that logic, a similar approach seems like a perfect choice.

Applying the same approach to digital product development (either from scratch or to work on an existing solution) with a multitude of roles contributing to the product’s success can be limiting and quickly turn into a source of frustration. With partnerships centered solely around exclusive full-time teams, either some much-needed skills will be missing from the team, or costs for too big a team will skyrocket, or something in-between.

When achieving results and coaxing the most value from working together is the ultimate goal, getting out of this rigid framework and embracing more freedom in how teams are shaped can empower and open new possibilities.

What are software development fractional teams?

Fractional teams is an umbrella term for product development teams where members are not necessarily all involved in a single project on a full time basis. The team composition at any given time is built around the project’s best interest and can adjust over time to support the evolving landscape. 

The involvement of experts with different skills and roles can easily be shaped in increments as low as a tenth of a full-time equivalent and for non-continuous engagements.

The team is bound by the expected budget and desired, tangible goals for the project and not purely by per-role capacity expectations. Software fractional teams work best in smaller, nimble teams where covering all roles exclusively with full-time members would be prohibitive.

What are the benefits of working with software fractional teams?

This way of shaping teams concentrates on bringing the most value to the table in an open and flexible manner, thinking about the product’s success and not intricate formal arrangements and complex billing per-role number crunching. 

In digital product development specifically, this makes it not only possible but also easy to bring essential roles and skills to the project for a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost of full-time engagement.

Access to expert skills

For many projects having the support of senior engineers and specialized roles such as UX researchers, software architects, cloud engineers, machine learning engineers, or security experts is not required every day and throughout the whole project life. 

Even so, being able to tap into their expertise when needed freely can make a world of difference. Their experience can save the project from many hurdles and bring invaluable input and different perspectives. While some responsibilities can be reasonably covered by engineers outside their core area of expertise, others are best handled by experts in their respective fields.

In Makimo, our clients specifically value flexible composition of fractional teams, with agile boundaries, making it possible to efficiently benefit from the whole company’s body of knowledge for the project’s benefit. 

A way to retain supportive roles

In digital product design and development, some team members often have their hands full at first, but then their daily engagement wanes or becomes intermittent. An excellent example of this is UX experts and UI designers, indispensable when the product is first planned, researched, tested, and designed and frequently working full-time at this stage.

When the project hits development or matures and gets less frequent changes to the customer experience, their 100% engagement might no longer be viable. However, it doesn’t mean they are no longer needed and should leave the project. Quite the contrary! Their expertise stays crucial at all times, aiding the development and product design teams in building the best product possible.

A fractional approach to shaping the team composition makes it easy to retain access to team members in a smaller time proportion when their continuous involvement is invaluable.

Increased project safety and resiliency

In larger teams, most roles are covered by multiple people, providing redundancy and resiliency. Smaller teams built around, for example, a single backend and single frontend engineers don’t have that luxury. Vacations must be carefully planned, and unexpected illnesses can cause noticeable disruption.

In a fractional team, two engineers may work hand in hand, sharing responsibilities. While being virtually neutral to the budget, having two people know and understand the project well has benefits reaching far beyond simple resiliency in case one person goes on holiday.

It’s a great opportunity to spark discussion, contrast different perspectives, use collective experience, and employ techniques such as pair programming to solve complex problems more effectively. As the saying goes, “Two heads are better than one.” 

Simplified cost management

Team composition that can evolve with time and experts lending a hand when needed might seem like a budgeting nightmare. 

This could be true when applying the widespread approach of hiring specialists individually, each based on separate contractual terms and rates. Then, who was participating in the project at any given time has an immediate impact on the project cost, and it’s nearly impossible to plan budgets ahead of time if the effort of every team member is not known upfront. Additionally, engaging new team members necessitates further paperwork to outline the terms.

However, with fractional teams, a blended rate for the whole team, regardless of who takes part, is a preferred approach. In this scenario, the same rate is applied to every team member working on the project. As long as the whole team reaches an agreed effort in a timeframe consistently, the total cost can be reliably and easily estimated.

Flexibility in capacity planning

With the simplified cost structure outlined above, it’s easy to plan capacity with the software development partner when working with fractional teams. 

In projects where steady work is desired, an expected and often flexible range of monthly effort can be used to shape the team’s involvement, e.g., 240 to 280 hours of monthly work for the whole team. Alternatively, an upper cap not to exceed in a given timeframe can be outlined instead.

However, in moments where increased velocity would come in handy, with fractional teams, there is more room to boost the team capacity for a limited period or to increase it over time smoothly. Similarly, in moments where the project would benefit from a slower pace, the team effort can be planned for just a slowdown instead of stopping work altogether.

This flexibility caters well to different sizes and types of projects, from rapid prototypes, through projects easing into lower effort maintenance after a while to steady-paced development projects where a smaller but highly interdisciplinary team is an optimal solution.

Full-time is also a fraction!

Treating things literally can easily trick ones thinking into a logical fallacy. Fractional teams are not the direct opposite of the traditional, rigid form of thinking about team composition. Quite the contrary, they extend the concept with added flexibility. 100% is also a fraction, after all! 

Nothing prevents the fractional teams from having full-time members for roles that particularly benefit from this kind of arrangement. Their nature is to be flexible in the full extent of the meaning of the word and shape their way of working in the best way possible to fulfill the project’s best interests. 

When working with a fractional team, there is no need to relinquish the notion of working with engineers involved with the project full-time for good. Treat this freedom in how teams are shaped as empowering and not imposing a different set of constraints.

When to consider hiring software development fractional teams?

Fractional teams can bring much-needed flexibility and multiple benefits for development projects of many shapes and sizes, but they are not a silver bullet. 

If the goal is to: 

• Build an entirely new digital product or custom software solution
• Build a part of a software solution, e.g. a frontend application, or an API for a mobile app
• Further develop, or improve an existing piece of software
• Build a prototype, or test a business idea
• Work on a problem where a diverse set of skills is required or responsibilities change over time

Fractional teams provide a great balance between flexibility, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Working in that fashion can bring a wide range of perspectives and talents into the mix without the cost spiraling out of hand.

However, if the goal is to:

• Outsource a set of skills that are ultimate to be fulfilled by a direct hire
• Contract a specialist directly managed as a part of the existing team
• Build a dedicated team with full-time permanent members
• Work with a team with stringent formal requirements imposed on all team members

Choosing a traditional approach of contracting a full-time specialist or a dedicated team may suit the situation better.

Conclusion

Fractional teams can help bring the A-game of experts from different fields together to smaller teams and projects on tighter budgets. With that approach, it’s not necessary to cover all roles with full-time team members, miss on essential skills, or resort to a small team of jack-of-all-trades by necessity. 

Creating a successful digital product is, by nature, a team effort, and with this flexible approach to shaping a team, you can have the best one at your disposal at all times.