Flexible Engagement Models for Modern Product Teams

Every client is unique, and your partnership model should reflect that. We've designed three distinct engagement approaches that adapt to your organisation's specific needs, whether you're scaling rapidly, building new capabilities, or delivering a targeted initiative. From fully managed pods to seamless team extensions, our models provide the flexibility and structure today's product and engineering leaders require.

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Three Approaches to Partnership

Selecting the right engagement model is critical to project success. Our three core models have been refined through years of client partnerships across industries, from early-stage startups to established enterprises. Each approach offers distinct advantages in terms of governance, integration, and delivery structure.

Pod-Based Delivery

Dedicated, self-contained teams with sprint-based outcomes and robust delivery governance

Extended Teams

Individual engineers or small groups that integrate seamlessly with your existing organisation

Fixed-Scope Projects

Defined deliverables and milestones, managed comprehensively from inception to completion

Pod-Based Delivery: Your Dedicated Product Team

Pod-based delivery provides a complete, self-sufficient team aligned to your strategic objectives. Each pod operates as an autonomous unit with product managers, designers, and engineers working in coordinated sprints. This model offers the structure of an internal team with the flexibility of an external partnership.

Ideal for organisations pursuing sustained product development, platform modernisation, or multi-quarter roadmap execution. Pods bring established delivery rituals, quality frameworks, and velocity that typically takes months to build internally. Leadership receives regular updates through structured governance touchpoints, ensuring alignment with broader business objectives.

Best suited for:

Long-term product development initiatives
Ongoing platform maintenance and evolution
Organisations seeking predictable delivery velocity
Teams requiring end-to-end capability from discovery through deployment

Extended Teams: Seamless Capacity Augmentation

Extended team engagements embed skilled practitioners directly within your existing structure. These engineers attend your stand-ups, work in your repositories, and collaborate through your communication channels. It's talent augmentation without the overhead of traditional hiring.

How It Works

You maintain complete operational control whilst we handle recruitment, onboarding, and professional development. Extended team members integrate into your culture, adopt your standards, and deliver against your priorities. This model provides the agility to scale teams up or down based on project demands without long-term employment commitments.

Perfect for organisations with established development practices that need additional hands on deck, whether for a few months or several years. You get immediate access to vetted talent without recruitment delays or benefits administration.

Engagement Benefits

Rapid onboarding—typically within two weeks
No recruitment fees or benefits overhead
Flexible engagement duration from months to years
Direct integration with existing team rituals and tools
Access to specialists across diverse technology stacks

We ensure cost transparency and budgetary flexibility.

Fixed-Scope Projects: Defined Outcomes, Managed Delivery

Discovery & Scoping

Collaborative requirements gathering and technical architecture planning

Milestone Definition

Clear deliverables mapped to timeline with acceptance criteria

Execution & Delivery

End-to-end project management with regular progress updates

Handover & Support

Documentation, knowledge transfer, and post-launch stabilisation

Fixed-scope engagements suit organisations with clearly defined outcomes and finite timelines. We assume full project ownership—from technical design through deployment—delivering against agreed milestones and budgets. This model works exceptionally well for proof-of-concept builds, MVP development, migration projects, or standalone initiatives with concrete success criteria.

You receive the benefits of experienced project management, quality assurance, and technical delivery without needing to allocate internal resources to coordinate the work. Risk is shared, timelines are transparent, and delivery is our responsibility. Ideal when you need something built well, on time, and with minimal internal coordination overhead.

Pod-Based Delivery in Detail

Structure and Governance

Each pod comprises cross-functional talent: product management, engineering, design, and quality assurance. Pods operate in two-week sprints with clearly defined ceremonies including planning, daily stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives.

Governance occurs at multiple levels. Sprint-level updates provide tactical visibility into progress and blockers. Monthly business reviews align delivery against strategic objectives and adjust priorities as business context evolves.

Predictable Velocity

Established teams deliver consistent story points per sprint, enabling reliable roadmap forecasting

Quality Frameworks

Built-in QA practices, automated testing, and code review standards ensure production-ready outputs

Minimal Overhead

We handle team coordination, resource management, and delivery operations

Extended Teams: Integration and Flexibility

Extended team engagements prioritise seamless integration. Our engineers adopt your development workflows, toolchains, and communication norms from day one. Whether you use Jira, Linear, or Asana for project management, Slack or Teams for communication, or GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket for version control—we adapt to your environment rather than requiring you to adapt to ours.

Week 1

Onboarding: Access provisioning, tooling setup, and introductions to team members and processes

Week 2

Integration: First meaningful contributions, participation in team ceremonies, knowledge transfer sessions

Week 3-4

Productivity: Full velocity achieved, autonomy in task ownership, proactive collaboration with peers

Ongoing

Long-term value: Deep context, mentorship contributions, continuous improvement suggestions

The extended team model provides unparalleled flexibility in scaling technical capacity. Need to double your backend engineering team for a critical launch? We can source and onboard qualified engineers within two weeks. Once the peak demand period passes, scale back without severance costs or organisational disruption.

Fixed-Scope Excellence

When Fixed-Scope Makes Sense

Fixed-scope projects work best when requirements are well understood, success criteria are measurable, and outcomes can be defined upfront. Common scenarios include:

Building a proof-of-concept to validate a business hypothesis
Developing a minimum viable product for market testing
Migrating a legacy system to modern infrastructure
Creating a standalone tool or internal application
Executing a time-bound initiative with regulatory deadlines

We begin every fixed-scope engagement with comprehensive discovery, ensuring shared understanding of objectives, constraints, and definitions of done. Ambiguity is resolved before development begins, minimising scope creep and budget overruns.

Choosing Your Engagement Model

The right model depends on your organisation's current state, project objectives, and internal capacity. Consider these guiding questions as you evaluate which approach best serves your needs.

What is your timeline?

Short-term initiatives favour fixed-scope. Long-term roadmaps benefit from pod-based delivery. Ongoing needs align with extended teams.

How defined are requirements?

Crystal-clear scope suggests fixed-scope projects. Evolving requirements suit pod-based or extended team models with iterative delivery.

Where is your capacity gap?

Missing entire capabilities? Consider pods. Need more hands? Extended teams. Lack internal bandwidth for project management? Fixed-scope.

What's your risk tolerance?

Fixed-scope provides predictability. Pod-based delivery balances flexibility with structure. Extended teams offer maximum adaptability.

Many successful partnerships blend multiple models over time. Start with what makes sense today, knowing that as your organisation evolves, so too can the engagement structure. We're here to provide the flexibility, expertise, and delivery excellence your product initiatives deserve.