OUTSTAFFING: DOUBLETAPP EXPERIENCE

Outstaffing is a service format where service companies provide development, design, analytics, ML, product, and project management for their clients. The client retains strategic product management while purchasing 100% of the necessary specialists’ time for the required period.

Outstaffing isn’t the only format for engaging an external team. Some clients find it more advantageous to delegate product management entirely – this is outsourcing. In this case, the contractor handles all processes: hiring, onboarding, and team development, planning and distributing tasks, meeting deadlines, reporting, launching, and supporting the product.

The difference between outstaffing and outsourcing lies in who manages the project. If the client wants a turnkey product and to hand over management to an agency, they need an outsourced team. If the client keeps management on their side and clearly specifies the required workforce, they need outstaffed specialists. For example, if we launch a new mobile app project and have management and design but lack mobile development, we quickly organize a team of outstaffed specialists with the necessary skills and grades.

If mixed interaction formats are convenient for our clients, that's also possible. For example, the client might interview and approve each team member, while the team might work in our office being fully immersed in the client’s processes. And management is performed by our outstaffed team leads.

Flexibility

With the economic shifts observed over the past four years, outstaffing helps adapt to economic realities and make quick staffing decisions. If 10-15-20% of a company’s workforce is outstaffed, it’s possible to painlessly let them go or urgently assemble a team to create a working product ahead of competitors. This allows companies to maintain market leadership, not slow down in creating IT products on which any modern business is built, and reduce costs at the right moment.

Outstaffing companies benefit from this format because there are many clients in the market, and they can quickly deploy people to various projects.

Outstaffed employees don’t need to fear being sent to the job market. When one project ends, the employee moves to another. The parent company always finds a new project because it specializes in this, has relevant cases, good reviews, many clients, and its specialists are in demand and trouble-free.

Cost Savings on HR

Hiring an in-house employee is a lengthy bureaucratic process. Specialists need to be found, interviewed, tested, and both HR and narrow specialists and managers need to be involved. Then comes onboarding, team integration... And what if there’s no one to assess the candidate's skills? Or if there are few or no such specialists in the market? Or if there’s no time to search?

The contractor already has vetted specialists with ready resumes, who can be interviewed and quickly integrated without lengthy bureaucratic procedures: on average, it takes 3-7 days to deploy a person to a project.

Our company usually has a contract with the client, and an additional agreement is quickly signed for each new specialist or team, or all rates and grades are immediately specified in the contract, allowing for quick deployment.

Specific Expertise

Outstaffing can quickly attract specialists with expertise that the client’s company lacks and would be difficult for the client to hire independently.

However, such specialists are usually only attracted from trusted contractors: they have been in the market for a long time, have good reviews, and have worked with large and complex clients. Often, the decision-maker on the client’s side is personally acquainted with the contractor and their team, ensuring quality personnel.

Time Savings

In today’s world, the later you release your product, the harder it will be to capture the market due to increased competition. Outstaffed employees save the client’s time at all stages: search and selection, interviews, hiring, support, onboarding, training, workspace organization, and termination of relationships.

Sometimes a client needs to quickly and immediately test a hypothesis, understand whether to invest in a project, and determine if it will succeed. Hiring in-house staff is time-consuming, but attracting a contracting company to invite specialists to do the work quickly and cost-effectively can be faster. After that, if the project succeeds, it can be partially or fully transitioned to in-house development; if not, it can be shut down painlessly.

Our Experience: When the development of the Yandex Travel mobile app began (at the end of 2021), it was difficult to predict how the market would behave a year later. At the time of product release, major foreign players had exited the Russian travel industry, temporarily freeing up the niche. Doubletapp mobile developers performed most of the work on developing and testing the first version of the applications for iOS (link to a Russian source) and Android. The applications were timely and well-received, with good ratings in app stores and a growing user base.

When we offer resources for outstaffing, we ensure that this cooperation is comfortable and beneficial for three parties – the contractor, the client company, and the employee.

As a contractor, we ensure that the specialist has enough experience relevant to the client’s requirements. We have mostly grown our specialists (link to a video about it in Russian), know their soft and hard skills, and can offer the right employee for specific tasks, ready for the client’s interview.

70% of client interviews end successfully, and the specialist joins the client’s project.

We invest in the professional development of our employees, and this doesn’t stop when they are outstaffed – they attend conferences, undergo training, and participate in internal meetups and one-on-one meetings. We ensure that their career growth remains interesting to them.

Answering the question posed at the beginning of the article, whether leasing employees is ethical, we can note that Doubletapp is a reputable employer in the service company market, taking care of employees’ health, professional development, workspace organization, equipment, vacations, sick leaves, and morale. If for some reason an employee is not ready to be outstaffed to a client company, their opinion is always considered.

Once employees join the dark side a client’s project, we monitor their success. Our managers interact with the client’s managers, usually through regular calls, discussing complaints, problems, and how to make the employee more effective.

For example, during work on the Yandex Travel app, the idea arose to immerse Doubletapp outstaffed employees in the corporate environment (link to a video about it in Russian) and establish teamwork with in-house employees. They were invited to work directly at Yandex’s office and participate in all internal activities, which proved fruitful.

We keep a close watch because it’s our collective work. If a specialist develops well and shows high results, the client’s project also develops. Our employee gains experience, the client is satisfied and inclined towards long-term cooperation, so it’s a win-win for everyone.

It often happens that the client shoots themselves in the foot and complicates the integration of an external specialist. A classic case: the NDA is signed, but access to the repository, task trackers, and documentation is not granted. If the client’s policy does not allow the in-house team to be fully immersed in the service being created on their behalf, without close integration with the client’s processes, or if the security service does not provide necessary access, then don’t expect rapid results.

Another component of comfortable work is creating a work atmosphere where external employees do not feel like second-class citizens, ensuring no difference between regular employees and outstaffed employees.

Both the contractor and the client need to explain within their companies: we are working on one project, we are equally motivated and involved, and we have the same rights and opportunities to influence this project and express our opinions.

We have been involved in outstaffing for over 4 years since 2020.

Our employees have worked on projects for both Russian corporations and various companies in the USA, EU, and UK. For example:

• From 2020 to 2022, our outstaffed employee worked on a project for Seagate, creating and supporting a desktop application for Mac OS for their gaming RAID array, allowing for display pattern management.
• From 2020 to 2023, we worked on the Kinopoisk Android app.
• From 2020 to 2021, we developed the Yandex Music iOS app.
• From 2020 to 2022, four Doubletapp developers helped develop the main Sberbank Online app for both Android and iOS.
• From 2021 to 2023, more than ten developers, testers, and analysts worked on the Yandex Travel project and its mobile app.
• Since the end of 2022, we have been collaborating on the Yandex Go iOS app.
• Since 2022, we have been handling frontend for Yandex Market.
• Since 2023, we have been working on the Okko mobile app for Android and iOS.
• Since 2023, we have been closely collaborating with the Toloka project, which spun off from Russian Yandex into an independent foreign company. Six Doubletapp employees helped set up and launch task trackers, rewrite part of the core functionality from Yandex’s proprietary solutions to open-source technologies, and organize teamwork.
• Outstaffing at Rubbles: On most of their projects from December 2022 to January 2024, Nikita Anchutin worked as the primary DevOps engineer.

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