Team as a Service (TaaS) is more than just a team

When you work with a dedicated team outside of your own organization, you get so much more than just a group of skilled individuals — you get business value beyond compare. Value that you’d typically spend onboarding new staff members, but at a fraction of the cost. In this post, we’ll explore several ways in which Team as a Service (TaaS) differs from a full-time, internal team, and how to leverage the biggest benefits from this in-demand service.

Team as a Service (TaaS) groups are comprised of people who already know one another professionally. These are individuals with highly specialized roles, spanning several categories, who have already spent a good amount of time working together. This kind of constant collaboration can be a boon for your business because it saves you a world of time not having to bring new hires into the fold.

Business leaders often make the mistake of thinking they can hire three different people to tackle a project — but it’s not that easy. New employees require a period of time learning each other’s working styles before they can get to the team-level of working together in a truly collaborative manner. This onboarding approach is basically like looking at your project and saying, Hey, it’s fine if this thing takes twice as long as we expected. And that’s assuming you find the right folks to fill the roles right away.

With TaaS, your team has already been hired, they’re used to working together, they have all of the tools needed to collaborate, and their process is well understood. This means they get to focus on your project, your needs, and your deliverables from the get-go. Furthermore, a tightly aligned external team can inject fresh energy and perspective into your organization, creating a more innovative and collaborative culture for everyone involved.

Speaking of innovation, Team as a Service (TaaS) team members can often see what’s working and what’s not across many industry verticals that your employees don’t see, simply because your employees are in it every day; they’ve grown accustomed to it. Having a team that’s used to working on different projects in different verticals means you get more design and technical specializations than you normally would with your internal people. As an added bonus, a trusted external team can train your key staff and expand their skill sets, too, leaving your organization with even more value when the project is complete.

Let’s face it, it’s just easier to hold an external team accountable than it is your own employees. Hiring a dedicated, ready-to-hit-the-ground-running team means that your new initiatives don’t get interrupted or delayed by daily job duties. Nobody is being pulled away from important projects, and you get to focus on whatever thing needs your attention the most. A trusted outside team can help you become more accountable, too, and push for holistic thinking to reduce overall technical debt.

Team as a Service (TaaS) should always bring to bear whatever role you need, at the time that you need it. At Brightly, we maintain anywhere from eight to ten specialty roles on a dedicated team. This type of diversity and fluidity allows you to switch up the team members based on your needs as they evolve. For example, sometimes your project might be more research-heavy, so you’ll rely heavily on a business analyst. Other times, you might need more design or development, and that’s when folks with those skill sets would step in.

It’s whatever you need, exactly when you need it.

At Brightly, we love emphasizing the specialist roles of Team as a Service (TaaS) because they can’t be found without directly recruiting and onboarding new hires. Dedicated teams bring in immediate cost-saving benefits by eliminating the need for this type of overhead. The long term collaboration of TaaS also means that you can call on this team as often as you need.

Projects are always moving and needs are always changing. TaaS is designed with this in mind and can be molded to fit your exact needs. This process happens over a period of time, so your team for the first half of your month or quarter could look completely different from what you end up with in the latter half. This dynamic dance happens all on the same contract, keeping your deadlines intact and your costs within budget.

Brightly provides dedicated teams that ensure best practices and processes are tailored to meet your organization’s needs. Get in touch with us to learn more about whether or not Team as a Service (TaaS) is a good fit for you.