Software, and a team to run it

What they had

A manufacturer replacing the software their business ran on, with one critical engineering role they could not fill. That single gap was holding back the launch of a new product.

What we did

A dedicated team started full time in August 2024, and the first work was not features. It was the way work would get done: a project management system, training on agile methods for the existing staff, and a development process where there had not been one.

Then the product, a React based admin platform. Then the permanent structure, with engineers recruited, employed and equipped through our talent engine so the capability stayed inside the business after the senior team stepped back. Five dedicated specialists are still building features with them today.

The vacancy was the visible problem, but it was not the whole one. They had no engineering organization for a new hire to join, which meant that even a successful search would have delivered one person into a company with no process to make them productive.

That is why the process came before the product. Putting five engineers into an environment with no project management, no agile practice and no development process produces five engineers waiting. The order was not a preference, it was the only sequence that would have worked.

The two layer staffing is where most of the saving comes from. A manufacturer does not need senior architects permanently, but it does need permanent engineers. Renting expensive senior people for the weeks when their judgment is actually required, then employing a permanent team to run what they built, is a substantially different cost base to hiring senior people outright, and it is the main reason development costs fell by 65% rather than by a little.

Recruiting and employing that permanent team on their behalf also kept the capability inside their business. The alternative, a contract team that stays indefinitely, would have left them dependent on a vendor for a product that is now core to what they sell.