Being outside: 5 reasons to launch the project with the external R&D team

4 min readFeb 16, 2021

Since the very beginning of the company, MIL Team has been working as the external service team in cooperation with the large companies’ R&D centres, like Huawei and Samsung. We have successfully implemented 16 R&D projects so far, including large open-source projects and small MVP decisions.

Here comes the question, why the companies possessing valuable human and technological resources choose to initiate the projects with our team? In this article, we are going to discuss 5 main reasons to get involved with an outsource-team in developing an internal product. This discussion may help you to decide on cooperation with MIL Team.

1. Money

First of all, let’s talk about financial cost. It is quite normal that everyone wants to get the job done paying the lowest possible price. However, the development of a novel R&D project inside the company requires a large number of the involved resources, ranging from computing power and office rent to HR departments overtime and quarterly team bonuses. That is why recruiting an external team may become a quick and cheap solution.

The cases when the money factor should work:

The task does not require rare competencies which are complicated to find on the market;
The decision has to be prepared at short notice;
The financial cost of the project is limited;
Low risks in case of not getting the expected result.

2. High risks

We have analysed the advantages of cooperation with an outsourced team in launching a low-budget project with low risks. What about peculiar high-risk projects? Why it will be more profitable to engage an external team? Most of the pitfalls are concentrated in the recruitment process. High financial and time expenses on hiring, adaptation, struggling a staff turnover and phasing out perspectiveless areas are too much to ask from a project in a novel high-risk direction. Checking the hypotheses with the help of a reliable and competent external partner may be a much quicker process. Moreover, it will be easier to stop the development process if hypotheses are proven to be false. Therefore, if successful, it is possible to consider different options ranging from building an internal team to buying the partner’s unit.

The cases when the high risks factor should work:

The direction of the project is new for the company;
The members of the team can not be divided up among other units of the company if the project fails;
High risks of phasing out perspectiveless areas in the company.

3. Recruitment

What about the case when the goal is to attract the new competencies in the existing direction? In an unstable market situation, the better solution is also to cooperate with an external team. Hiring a candidate with similar skills or training the staff may take lots of your time and money. If the company lacks novel unexplored approaches here and now, you should consider working with an outsource team.

The cases when the high risks factor should work:

You need to test new ideas and hypotheses using the absent in the company technologies;
The lack of resources in staff training.

4. Technologies

Let’s imagine that you have enough budget, the project has low risks and there are all of the inevitable competencies. What about the absence of technologies? All the successful experienced outsource teams have unique technological decisions created for their own needs and tested by the time and experience. Using the external team’s decisions will lower the risks and shorten the time of R&D project development.

The cases when the technologies factor should work:

The presence of powerful and unique solutions inside an outsource team;
The absence of your own infrastructure inevitable for R&D tasks solution.

5. Acquisition

Sometimes a company creates an R&D unit by acquiring an already formed team. The most transparent way to test its competencies is to launch a joint project.

The cases when the acquisition factor should work:

You need to create a new unit for the company’s R&D direction;
There is a potential acquisition candidate.

We have considered five main factors of making the decision to work with an outsourced team:

The money factor — launching the low-risked project in conditions of time and money lack.
The high risks factor — starting a novel for the company direction with high risks.
The recruitment factor — attracting new competencies in the existing direction.
The technologies factor — the absence of the inevitable technologies in the company.
The acquisition factor — testing the competencies of the potential candidate for acquiring.

These are just examples of situations when cooperation with an external team is a wise solution. And the key to productive cooperation is time: a long-term collaboration helps to build the requisite level of trust and evaluate a team level in real-time. The best way to decide whether cooperation with an external team worthies it is to check it in action.

We are looking forward to discussing your view on cooperation with an external team!

Cooperate with us: https://machine-intelligence.ru/projects