Which engagement model should you choose?
| Model | Who directs the work | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated team | You: backlog, priorities, reviews | Ongoing product development with evolving scope |
| Staff augmentation | You, with individuals joining your existing team | Filling specific skill gaps for a period |
| Fixed-scope project | The vendor, against a specification | Well-defined, short projects with stable requirements |
OLYMP BPO works with the dedicated team model: engineers are OLYMP employees, work only on your product and follow your engineering process.
How do you onboard remote engineers quickly?
- Prepare access before day one: repositories, tickets, documentation, communication channels and environments
- Pair each new engineer with someone on your team for the first two weeks
- Start with small, real tickets that touch different parts of the codebase
- Write down the unwritten rules: branching, review standards, definition of done, deployment process
- Hold a short retrospective after the first sprint and adjust
How much working-day overlap do you get?
Kosovo uses Central European Time, so UK and EU teams share the whole working day, apart from a one-hour difference with the UK. US East Coast teams are six hours behind: the European afternoon overlaps the US morning, which leaves room for stand-ups, planning and reviews. West Coast teams have less overlap and usually rely more on written updates and recorded walkthroughs.
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What should the contract cover?
- Assignment of all code, designs, documentation and other IP created for you
- Confidentiality obligations for every team member
- Work only in your repositories and systems, with access removed when people leave
- Data processing terms if engineers can see personal data in any environment
- Notice periods and a handover plan if the engagement ends
Which roles can a team include?
Teams are composed around your product: frontend, backend and full-stack developers, mobile developers, QA and test automation engineers, DevOps and cloud engineers, UI/UX designers, data engineers and a delivery lead or Scrum master where useful. Most teams start with three to five engineers and add roles as the roadmap needs them.
How do you judge whether the team is performing?
- Delivery: are sprint commitments met, and is cycle time from first commit to production falling?
- Quality: escaped defects, test coverage of changed code, review comments that recur
- Collaboration: questions raised early, clear written updates, ownership of problems
- Use the DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, time to restore service) if you already track them