What are the pros and cons of adding external software developers to an existing developer team for a small project? What are the pros and cons?
For me:
Pros:
- Development should in theory be faster overall than the existing team
- As good devs are hard to find for employment, it is an option to get developer power fast
- Maybe good constructive input from the external devs, as they are new to the product
Cons:
- Expensive
- Not sure who will be responsible for the code of the external devs
- External devs need to learn about the existing code. Someone needs to constantly check what they´re producing, so they don´t build their own parallel product in the existing product
- Much more need for code review, talking, meeting, refining product concepts
So all in all, I think it could work for bigger, new parts of the product. For something small that takes an existing dev 2-4 days, it will be not worth it to school the external devs how to do it.
What are your pros and cons? Do you have some real life experience with this kind of 'hybrid teams'? Please share!