Engagement Models
Most offshore engagements go wrong before any code is written — at the point where the wrong commercial model gets chosen. A team that needed two engineers under their own tech lead ends up buying a fixed-scope project, or a company with no engineering leadership tries to manage augmented staff they have no capacity to direct.
Three models cover almost every requirement. Here’s a straight comparison, including where each one is the wrong answer.
The Three Models Compared
| Dimension | Staff Augmentation | Dedicated Team | Fixed-Scope Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| You manage | Yes, directly | Shared with our lead | No, we deliver |
| Best when | Clear roles, existing team | Whole workstream, no capacity | Defined scope, fixed outcome |
| Flexibility | Highest — scale monthly | Medium | Lowest — changes cost |
| Your time | Daily involvement | Weekly checkpoints | Milestone reviews |
| Risk sits with | You (delivery), us (people) | Shared | Us |
| Minimum | 1 engineer, 1 month | 3 engineers, 3 months | Per scope |
Staff Augmentation
When it’s right. You have engineering leadership — a CTO, a tech lead, someone who sets direction and reviews code — and you’re short of hands. The roles are clear enough that you could write the job description yourself. You want the people embedded in your standups, your repo, your sprint board, working the way your team already works.
When it isn’t. If nobody on your side has the capacity to direct someone day to day, augmentation fails quietly. The engineer waits for input, you get invoiced, and three weeks later everyone is disappointed. This is the single most common mismatch we see, and it’s why the discovery call asks who the engineer reports to before it asks about the stack.
What typically goes wrong. Under-briefing. An augmented engineer has none of the accumulated context your existing team takes for granted, and the first two weeks are mostly about closing that gap. Teams that budget for onboarding get productive people quickly; teams that expect day-one output get frustrated.
Dedicated Team
When it’s right. There’s a whole workstream nobody owns — a mobile app, a data platform, a migration — and you need a group that takes it on rather than individuals you slot into existing work. You want a single point of accountability without giving up visibility, and you’re comfortable with weekly checkpoints instead of daily direction.
When it isn’t. If the work is genuinely one or two people’s worth, a dedicated team is overhead you’re paying for. The three-engineer minimum exists because a smaller group can’t absorb a team lead’s coordination cost. Below that threshold, augmentation is cheaper and no less effective.
What typically goes wrong. Ambiguity about who decides. A dedicated team has our lead and your stakeholder, and if the split isn’t agreed up front, decisions stall between them. Worth an explicit conversation in week one rather than a discovery in month two.
Fixed-Scope Project
When it’s right. The requirement is genuinely well defined, the outcome matters more than the process, and you’d rather buy a result than manage a team. Delivery risk transfers to us — if it takes longer than estimated, that’s our problem, not a larger invoice.
When it isn’t. If the scope is still moving, fixed-scope is the most expensive way to discover that. Every change becomes a negotiation, and the pricing carries a contingency margin to cover exactly that uncertainty. Exploratory work, early-stage products, and anything where “we’ll know it when we see it” applies should not be fixed-scope.
What typically goes wrong. Scope defined in a sentence rather than a document. “Build us a customer portal” is not a scope; it’s a category. The estimating work that happens before a fixed-scope contract is signed is the part that makes it succeed, and it’s worth taking seriously.
We’ll say plainly: if your requirement fits fixed-scope, that’s usually the better deal for you, and we’d rather quote it that way than push augmentation because it bills longer.
Which One Is Yours
Choose staff augmentation if you have engineering leadership but not enough hands.
Choose a dedicated team if you have a workstream nobody owns.
Choose fixed-scope if the requirement is well defined and you’d rather buy an outcome than manage a process.
All three run month-to-month where the model allows it, and all three carry the same 30-day replacement guarantee on the people involved. Rates by region and seniority are on the pricing page; how we find and vet engineers is covered in our sourcing model.
Not Sure Which Fits?
Thirty minutes on a call is usually enough to tell. If your requirement is a better fit for a model we don’t offer, we’ll say so.