In past few years, companies eager to grow fast have hit a bottleneck problem of meeting the market potential at hand due to inability to hire highly skilled Software Development Teams that deliver results. Usually these companies have the money and business potential, but are not capable of attracting the best Software Development Teams. Due to it, companies are unnecessarily running late in product launch and giving competition a head start. Market has gotten wild and now there are tons of HR service providers that are basically “selling” CV’s without any knowledge of developers skills or personal desires. This is a big problem for real businesses and holds them back from capitalizing market potential. Thus, this problem is moving out of CIO office to becoming a CEO problem of not meeting set targets.

To solve this problem, we have created a model that supports the long-term partnership approach, gives our customers a possibility to manage the teams’ outcomes while focusing on their own product roadmap and business opportunity. We have figured out a way to attract highly skilled Software Developers who want to work with us and want to be part of building our customers’ business. Actually, we have an opposite problem to the market: we have the brightest minds in our industry and we’re looking for customers struggling to scale teams that deliver results.

To solve the problem, we’re introducing a model where we build the teams accordingly to our customer’s specific needs, manage and coach the team to learn our customer’s processes and methods, their business and business case, and eventually for the team to reach level where the team is fully managed by our customer and part of our customer’s company. We call this BOOT (Build Own Operate Transfer).

What is BOOT (Build Own Operate Transfer)?

A contractual model giving customer’s a chance to transfer a Dedicated Team to become an in-house team.

The basic principle of BOOT model is that our customer builds a Dedicated Software Development Team together with us where we hire the team and make sure team has the required skills, knowledge and ability to meet the quality requirements agreed. The employees are part of Coredo and managed by us where our customer focuses on the Product Owner role and the roadmap of outcomes. When the team’s and customer’s maturity reach agreed level, our customer’s have a pre-agreed right to take over the management of the team and have the team become part of customer’s employees. With this, a long-term investment in to the dedicated team is not at risk.

Key benefits of having a Dedicated Software Development Team?

We don’t believe in the current market trend of hiring individual developers from different places and form teams of people representing different companies. This is short sided and eventually has a built-in reason for failure since all team members are looking after their own company’s interest.

It’s like constantly hiring and firing new people in company and wondering why no one knows what needs to be done. This model might work in manual labor, but doesn’t make any sense in Software Development. Yet, this is still the main model in our industry – and we want to change it.

Key benefits of Dedicate Software Development Team

• Learnings are not wasted when people change projects/companies
• Team learns to understand the business and goals, not just the code
• Quality and Speed of the team increases
• Customer doesn’t have to fight with the global problem of hiring highly skilled Software Developers
• Adds scalability to company’s capabilities and time-to-market
• Quicker go-to-market
• Minimizing the hiring risk
• Easily introduce new technologies

With a Dedicated Software Development Team approach, we help our customer’s to build digital product and services quicker, push time-to-market down, increase quality and stop our customer’s from wasting time in interviewing possible applicants.

When is this a good idea for companies?

Dedicated Software Development Teams aren’t good for every company, but sure as heck work for the once looking to hire people at scale. Basic requirements for a company to consider a Dedicated Team and possibly the BOOT model is when they are looking to hire 10+ person teams quickly and want to keep growing fast.

In current market, especially in Finland and Australia, it is close to impossible to go on to the market and hire 10 experienced and motivated Software Developers in a time span of 6 months. Many companies haven’t been able to hire a single experienced developer in last 2 years.

Other reasons to work with us is to build Dedicated Teams that bring in skills to the company that don’t make sense to hire to the in-house development teams. Such can be the need to build mobile applications, front-end related design and development, localization and integrations. This comes from the logic that in-house team might need to focus in embedded software or the core system logics.

Why are companies opting for BOOT?

Main reason for opting for BOOT is the long-term dedication to the team’s ability to deliver results and to speed up hiring of the Teams. This model becomes extremely attractive for companies with a big vision, good budget, but no certainty of the exact way business goes. With the uncertainty, the employee risk resides with Coredo for first few years. Once business is stabilized and known, the dedicated team can be transferred to customer’s own management.

What kind of companies opt for the BOOT model?

BOOT is a common model for highly funded fast growth start-ups and Mid-sized companies going through a Digital Transformation. Historically the BOOT model has been most suitable for companies building their own Software Products. Now we have extended this services for the high-end Software Development Companies to add scalability to their operating models.

A common denominator to all companies benefiting from BOOT-model is that they are looking for highly skilled teams, they struggle to meet the market demand (meaning, they leave money on the table) and they see the Dedicated Team as a long-term commitment.

BOOT works for:

• High-end Software Development Services companies
• Fast growth start-ups
• Mid-sized companies going through digital transformation

What kind of benefits does companies get when working in long-term partnership model

What other options are there in general?

At the end of the day, BOOT model is a contractual approach which is done to making sure Team and Customer are dedicated to learn, grow and focus in the customer’s business growth. The team is still consisting of people who are highly skilled in Software Development.

Other models that customers have to thinking about are:

• Hiring in-house developers
• “Body shopping” = hiring individual developers, managing everything them selves
• Hire a team of developers, manage everything them selves
• Hire a team of developers and partner manages team’s daily work
• 
  

How does this differ from regular “body shopping”?

In Finland and Australia, “Body shopping” has been the main model of adding skills to a company for past ten years. Outcomes of these have varied over the years and in general, results have been poor to none. Reason for non-existing results is that in the “body shopping” model, customer bears all risk from poor code quality to delays. This generally is a results of not having the time or skills to manage such teams.

With the Dedicated Team’s, we carry the responsibility of quality and we manage so that delivery is in timely manner. With BOOT model, we offer our customers a chance to transfer the Dedicated Team to be part of their own organization.

What pitfalls should you avoid?

Be careful who you do it with. It is quite simple to calculate on an Excel, but when you hire people, you need to remember that they are not resources, they are people. A common pitfall is to go with someone who is too large partner for Your needs and end up getting unnecessary processes and slowness when you looked for the absolute opposite.

Second thing to consider is how close to the partner’s management are you? If you are in direct talks with owners/CEO, then you know the company will dedicate to meet your goals.

When is Coredo right partner for you?

We standout form the pack with our highly skilled and experienced teams. We’re right partner for you when you are looking for experience and skills and for you one key driver is to get products launched quicker. Our company operates in Helsinki, Finland and Sydney, Australia so your contracts will be made with local companies, with local laws and employment regulations.

We are not a right partner when you look to hire a single developer as cheap as possible.

How to get started?

Identify that you’re looking to grow fast, you want to invest in people and their skills, you value the quality of team’s output, you value good working conditions, and you want to be a good employer. You have realized the difficulty of hiring experienced and skilled software developers and you are frustrated that you are missing business because of wrong team or lack thereof.

Once those match for you, get in touch with me, Joona Puhakka, and let’s find a way to turn your problem in to your strength.