When Laurent, CTO of an SMB that publishes a SaaS product, saw his roadmap stretch further month after month, he realized his team of two developers would no longer be enough.
His product, a fleet management SaaS platform, had won over its first customers. Feature requests were pouring in. But his team was spending more time fixing bugs and maintaining existing code than building new features.
“We were at a dead end,” he says. “Hiring took too long. The freelancers we tried didn’t stay. And the product wasn’t going to wait.”
An internal team overwhelmed by its backlog
The SMB had an in-house technical team of two PHP/Symfony developers, occasionally supported by freelancers. The backlog kept growing, some tickets had been waiting for months, and the features new customers asked for were slow to arrive.
Laurent estimated he needed six more developers to absorb the workload and catch up on the roadmap. Hiring six developers in France, with the lead times and costs involved, was not realistic in the short term.
Choosing a dedicated team over individual hires
“A fellow CTO told me about Etixio and their dedicated team model. At first I was skeptical: to me, offshore meant a ticket factory. But he explained the difference with staffing: a real team, with a tech lead, working in our tools. I decided to give it a try.”
The need was clear: six Symfony developers and a tech lead to own the technical choices, run code reviews, organize the team day to day and act as the link with Laurent’s product team.
Eight weeks, from the first meeting to full capacity
Week 1: scoping the project and needs
We analyzed the product, the stack and the existing processes. The goal was to understand not only the technical skills required, but also how the team worked: how decisions were made, how quality was ensured, what the rituals were.
Weeks 2 and 3: building the team and preparing the environment
We put the team together with engineers from our teams in Madagascar, around a tech lead. Laurent met the team and its lead before the start. “I was surprised by the level. And above all, I didn’t have to manage six hires: I had a team, with a technical lead.”
The team then received access to the SMB’s environment: the Git repository, the ticketing tool, the messaging platform. The code, the access and the tools remained Laurent’s. The tech lead spent two days with the internal team to understand the product and its architecture choices.
Weeks 4 to 8: onboarding and ramp-up
The dedicated team started with simple tickets to get to grips with the codebase, with every change reviewed by the tech lead. From week six, it was handling complete features. By week eight, the SMB had eight developers working on its product: two in-house and six in the dedicated team, coordinated by the Etixio tech lead.
What changed in the following months
The following months showed the impact of this extra capacity. The backlog shrank, the oldest tickets were resolved and new features started shipping again at the pace of the sprints. The time between a ticket being created and reaching production became noticeably shorter.
“What stands out most is that the dedicated team doesn’t work in its own corner,” Laurent explains. “They’re in our chat, they join our daily stand-ups, they know the product. Day to day, we don’t really see a difference between the internal team and the dedicated team anymore.”
On the budget side, Laurent got the development capacity he needed without going through six hires, or the months of searching they would have taken.
Laurent’s takeaways from setting up a dedicated team
“If I had to do it again, I’d do it sooner. We lost months trying to hire before looking for an alternative. Today, my internal team focuses on architecture and strategic decisions. The dedicated team handles a large share of the delivery. It’s a split of roles that works.”
Laurent adds some advice for CTOs who are hesitating: “Don’t see a dedicated team as a stopgap until you can hire. See it as an extension of your team. Stability, quality, product knowledge: all of that is built over time.”
A dedicated team that became a lasting extension of the SMB
The dedicated team is still working on the product. The tech lead has become a central contact for Laurent’s team: he owns the technical choices with Laurent, runs code reviews and documents what is delivered, so that knowledge stays within the company. The platform keeps evolving, and Laurent can focus on product strategy rather than hiring.
Is your backlog slowing down your product roadmap?
Is your product falling behind, your backlog growing, and hiring not a short-term solution? A dedicated team, with a tech lead, may be the answer.
We build teams tailored to your stack, your organization and your delivery goals. Your code, your access, your tools: everything stays yours. Our teams work in your environment, under your rules. Explore our other case studies, including the e-learning platform built with Symfony.
Let’s talk about your dedicated team needs.
FAQ
Can an offshore dedicated team take over an existing application?
Yes, an offshore dedicated team can take over the maintenance and development of an existing application, including on a complex codebase such as PHP/Symfony.
However, a technical onboarding phase is essential to analyze the architecture, set up access, understand the business rules and start with well-controlled tickets before taking on complete features.
How should roles be split between the internal team and the dedicated team?
The internal team generally keeps the product vision, architecture decisions and strategic priorities, while the dedicated team takes on part of the delivery.
This split isn’t set in stone: a tech lead or a proxy Product Owner can complement the offshore team to manage the backlog, coordinate developers and ensure continuity with internal teams.
How do you ensure development quality with an offshore team?
The quality of an offshore team depends mainly on the steering and processes applied, not only on where the developers are located. The essential practices are code reviews, automated tests, continuous integration, precise acceptance criteria and regular monitoring of delivery indicators, such as cycle time, defects or commitments met.
Can a dedicated team evolve with the SMB’s needs?
Yes, a dedicated team can be expanded, reduced or complemented as the product and backlog evolve. An SMB can start with a few developers, then gradually add a tech lead, a QA engineer, a DevOps engineer or a Product Owner.
This flexibility makes it possible to adapt skills and delivery capacity without restarting a full recruitment cycle.
Which indicators should you track to measure a dedicated team’s performance?
A dedicated team’s performance can be measured using cycle time, the number of tickets delivered, backlog trends, defect rate and the regularity of production releases. These indicators should be complemented by qualitative criteria: autonomy, code quality, product understanding, communication and respect for business priorities.
