IT outsourcing and outstaff development have long been a familiar tool for companies that want to launch a product quickly and save resources. However, in practice, many people face the opposite situation — projects with external contractors start to go slower than planned.

Development deadlines are shifting, tasks are accumulating, and IT project management is becoming less predictable. However, the problem is not always in the team — more often the reasons lie deeper in the organization of processes and the interaction of the parties.

In this article, we’ll look at what problems with contractors in IT most often slow down development and what you should pay attention to at the start of the project.

Outsourcing and outstaff development: what is it and what are the differences?

Outsourcing is a format of cooperation in which the customer company transfers part of the tasks to an external contractor, who takes over the execution of turnkey work. In the context of IT outsourcing, this can be software development, application creation, or product support.

This format is often used by banks and financial organizations when they need to quickly launch development or scale processes without expanding the internal team. For example, development outsourcing allows you to delegate certain areas — from backend to testing — to an external team.

Outstaffing is a model in which a company engages external specialists through an outstaff partner for a certain period of time and for specific tasks. At the same time, the developers remain on the contractor’s staff, but work as part of the customer’s internal team.

Outstaff development is more often used when it is important to maintain control over the processes and management of IT projects, but at the same time quickly strengthen the team with the necessary competencies.

Now that we’ve figured out the intricacies of working with external developers and teams, let’s see what points are really worth paying attention to. What is slowing down your projects and how to optimize your work with the outsourcing team.

Blurred project scope

One of the most common reasons why IT projects with contractors start to slow down is the blurred scope of the project at the start. The scope of work is not fully defined, the requirements are described too superficially, and key details are clarified already during the development process.

In such circumstances, the expectations of the customer and the external development team gradually begin to diverge. As a result, the contractor may move in the wrong direction, additional tasks appear, the volume of work increases, and the development time inevitably shifts.

It is clearly seen what this leads to in practice: even when limited functionality is initially planned, as the requirements are worked out, the project can significantly expand and become more complex. A detailed example of such a case can be viewed here.

In IT outsourcing and outstaff development, this problem is especially critical: without a clearly defined scope of work and the essence of the project, it becomes more difficult to manage tasks, and the predictability of deadlines decreases dramatically.

Contractor’s weak onboarding

Even a strong external development team takes time to immerse themselves in the product. This is especially critical in custom development: the contractor initially knows neither the architecture, nor the business logic, nor the internal processes of the company.

If you don’t have access to documentation, architectural solutions, and key team members at the start, the first sprints inevitably go to context analysis instead of actual development. According to various industry estimates, a full—fledged onboarding of developers can take from 2 to 6 weeks, depending on the complexity of the product and the maturity of the processes.

At the same time, companies often put more optimistic deadlines into planning and expect quick results in the first weeks of work. As a result, there is a gap between expectations and the actual speed of development.

An additional factor is the loss of efficiency due to the lack of a structured onboarding process. Research shows that teams without a clear immersion plan spend up to 30-40% of their time in the first sprints searching for information, clarifying and synchronizing.

As a result, not only the start slows down, but also all further development: errors in understanding architecture at an early stage lead to improvements, technical debt and repeated work.

There are no clear SLAs and areas of responsibility.

Another common reason why IT projects with contractors slow down is the lack of fixed SLAs and areas of responsibility at the start. It has not been determined who makes architectural decisions, who is responsible for setting and accepting tasks, and what response times to bugs and changes are considered the norm.

As long as the project is developing without critical situations, this problem may be unnoticeable. But as soon as difficult tasks, incidents, or controversial issues appear, time is wasted on coordinating and clarifying roles.

This is especially sensitive in custom development: without transparent rules of interaction, IT project management becomes more complicated, and the speed of decision-making decreases.

According to industry data, the lack of clear SLAs can increase the response time to tasks and incidents by 1.5–2 times, simply due to the need for additional approvals.

As a result, the team spends a significant part of its time not on development, but on coordination.: who should fix the problem, who makes the decision and in what time frame it should happen. This directly affects the development time and predictability of the project.

Result

Most of the problems with contractors in IT are not related to the quality of development, but to the organization of processes at the start. The blurred scope of the project, weak onboarding, and lack of clear SLAs create system bottlenecks that slow down the work of even a strong team.

To avoid disruption of development deadlines, it is important to build a basic structure of interaction in advance: fix the scope of work, ensure full immersion of the external development team and define transparent rules of work.

It is these factors that ultimately determine whether IT outsourcing will accelerate development or, conversely, slow down the project.