In an age of remote work, contingent workforces, and software outsourcing, companies need to put more thought than ever into how they assemble and manage software development teams. This applies to more than just internal teams. If your organization leverages software outsourcing, you must consider how your potential partners organize their teams and how they will fit with your existing software development resources.
Software outsourcing companies that leverage contingent workforces may be a great fit if your organization is looking to support an agile software development lifecycle and leverage cutting-edge technology such as generative AI and cloud computing.
Contingent workforces Fractional (i.e., elastic workforces) bring niche experience and technical know-how to expedite software development cycles, improve the quality of output, and bring greater efficiency.
Contingent hiring is the practice of engaging workers for a fraction of the time you’d hire a traditional employee. It can be on a project basis or even by phase of a project and fractional workers can be freelancers, consultants, contract workers, or other outsourced service providers.
Compared to traditional full-time employment, the contingent worker engages in specialized tasks for a period of time, depending on the needs of the company. They are flexible and often work remotely using digital platforms.
This efficient use of resources is cheaper for the company and provides flexibility to the fractional worker to take on varied projects as time allows.
The adoption of fractional workforces has experienced significant growth in recent years, driven by the changes in work preferences, the impact of events such as the pandemic and the Great Resignation, as well as the need to stay ahead and even survive a weak global economy.
Contingent workers can and should be part of your company's hiring practices, especially for quickly filling highly specialized roles. However, many companies find they aren’t yet equipped to fully leverage the benefits of large freelance teams, which require a change in management styles and AI-powered project management tools to facilitate asynchronous, distributed work.
Software outsourcing to a fully-managed service provider is a more turnkey solution. However, choosing a software outsourcing partner that leverages contingent workers can give your organization many of the associated benefits.
The fractional strategy involves employing on-demand workers and experts, giving way to a more agile team that can boost efficiency in the software development process. This avoids idle time observed with traditional full-time employees by only using the workers you need when you need them. This enables software outsourcing to avoid unnecessary costs during an unstable economic environment.
For example, if an outsourced software team is building a health-related software application, they would need team members who can test the app on the market, a health expert to plan the technical requirements of the application, and engineers who have experience designing applications to meet the standards of the health industry and any relevant regulatory agencies. However, the project wouldn’t require all of these experts to be working on the project at the same time.
Contingent workers are hired to bring in specific skill sets regardless of where they are located. This model allows you to hire them remotely for a set timeframe or until their assigned task is complete.
The key is this model enables access to a global pool of experts for specific – or even – niche skills to aid in a project and avoid paying idle time of traditional employees. With this model, an outsourced software team can be distributed around the world and despite being in different time zones can deliver desirable outcomes by utilizing technologies such as online communication channels, collaboration tools, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Contingent workers improve software development delivery by filling gaps in projects quickly, leveraging a talent pool beyond the locality of your company.
Bringing in fractional hires also gives the company and development team an outside perspective – fresh eyes and ideas that could improve the work processes, the quality of the product, and how it can be viewed by prospective markets. This scenario will save the company resources and help the development team augment the quality of their output.
Scaling up software outsourcing can be done quickly when working with a company that hires contingent workers. Because these distributed workers are equipped with specific skill sets needed for projects they are enabled to tackle the work almost instantly. They can seamlessly integrate into the existing team and contribute to meeting the increased workload efficiently.
By hiring contingent workers, companies can engage professionals on a flexible basis, matching their resource needs to the demands of the business in response to ever-changing market conditions.
Engaging contingent workers also allows the software outsourcing company to tap into individuals globally with diverse backgrounds and specialized expertise in emerging technologies.
If a company hires these professionals, they can also have backgrounds in different niche fields such as AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, or QA automation that may help improve the software the team is working on.
By tapping into their knowledge and skills and being a second set of eyes on the project, the software development team can benefit from fresh ideas and enhance the quality of the software accordingly.
Contingent workers usually work remotely and can work wherever, whenever, and however they want. This brings a sense of freedom, which can make them feel valued and incentivized to give back to the company.
According to Constellation Research, [1] fractional or elastic staffing is 30% more productive compared to traditional workforces. By having the freedom to do their work, contingent workers have higher work satisfaction, and when appropriately engaged with the team, can be productive and produce higher-quality work. This can contribute to the team delivering higher quality and innovative software development projects.
To foster this environment, leaders and managers need to learn the importance of and how to exhibit intentional and relationship-based leadership. Remote work requires a people-centric focus, rather than a company-centric approach.
By caring about their workers and valuing their input even in the decision-making process, companies and leaders can harness the full potential and productivity of their workforce, and both companies and workers can thrive on a give-and-take culture.
This is the most common benefit of leveraging the human cloud. By opting for a contingent workforce, companies can save costs. Rather than paying salaried employees whether they are assigned or not, a company can pay per output or project. For example, Virtasant offers cloud optimization with outcome-based pricing models. Rather than paying for a large cloud management team or locking into a traditional cloud MSP contract, companies like Virtasant that leverage contingent workers allow you to pay for the specific solution or benefit you’re looking for and see a guaranteed ROI.
Elastic workforces can help the company’s return on assets [2] materialize sooner. This is especially true when one takes into account not only the costs associated with hiring but also training. Companies spend around $4,700 per hire in the US and take an average of 36 to 42 days to fill a position. They also have a cost of $702 to $1,105 for training [3] per employee. This means it will take up to six months for a company to make up for the costs it spends on a new hire.
Rather than investing in extensive training programs for in-house employees, companies can tap the ready and diverse expertise of fractional workers who already possess the required skills and experience to quickly contribute to the tasks at hand and get the job done.
By embracing new technologies and effectively managing a fractional workforce, companies can harness the potential of the human cloud as well as the fractional or elastic staffing model as the future of work.
Gigster’s on-demand, elastic development teams are set up to quickly add or supplement expertise for software outsourcing. Our global talent network and established development processes allow us to build a team in 3-7 days and quickly execute. These global experts can help development teams increase their efficiency and speed to deliver software applications, as well as enhance collaboration and achieve greater flexibility in adapting to changing project requirements. Get started with elastic software outsourcing today.
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