An External Product Design Partner Should Enhance, Not Complicate, Your Internal Team’s Performance
By now, you’ve likely heard of the value of leveraging external resources to get you closer to your annual goals.
Industry analysts and researchers, including McKinsey, Bain & Company, as well as the Design Society, have reported that bringing in outside expertise can lead to significant reductions in development costs, an accelerated time-to-market, and enhanced productivity.
An outsourced engineering team can provide specialized services, relieve under-resourced internal teams, and tackle new priorities. They give you the ability to drive growth that would otherwise go untapped.
As a leader, the business case for bringing on an external team is clear. What isn’t so clear is how to vet a team that adds value without creating culture, morale, and performance issues that ultimately diminish productivity and increase the very costs you hope to reduce.
What Your Internal Team Is Thinking When You Hire an Outsourced Product Design Team
Ideally, your internal engineers who are stretched thin with daily production work should feel relieved that they’ve been given additional resources to fill out their team and tackle projects that haven’t been addressed because of limited resources.
At the same time, they will likely wonder what an outside team has been brought in to do and whether this is a sign that leadership has lost confidence in them. If they’re partnering on a project with your outside product design team, they may wonder how much control they’ll be able to maintain over the work. This is especially true if the initiative that requires more resources would bring a new product to market or create yet-unrealized cost reductions.
Management may also have concerns. Although outsourcing your engineering is intended to create more capacity and secure wins for the team, managers worry that they’ll end up spending the time they’ve gained by answering questions, locating files, and reviewing work. The wrong external team simply becomes a new group of people to manage.
The question becomes, how do you create additional capacity without disrupting the people and processes that have driven your success thus far?
Communicating With Your Internal Team
As a leader, being able to communicate your “why” makes a significant difference in how teams respond to your decision-making. When a clear “why” aligns teams around a strategy to reach a shared goal, your team is more likely to embrace outside help.
However, your “why” shouldn’t focus primarily on your business’s bottom line. Take the time to understand why your internal teams aren’t able to fully resource the project you’ve earmarked for an outside team. Let them know you’ve observed the fact that they’re buried in custom requests and production issues.
Transparency and understanding go a long way with teams whose initial reaction might be negative. They should feel that your decision keeps them on stable ground and has been made with their interests in mind.
Communicating With Management-Level Personnel
For managers, your communication should center on why you’ve chosen contract-based product design engineering services. You should be able to explain that you’ve vetted the team closely and are confident they can handle the work without significant management or oversight. Managers shouldn’t feel as though you’ve handed them another team that requires constant onboarding and direction.
Vetting Your Outside Product Design Team for Maximum Impact
The ideal contract-based team allows your engineering department and business to accomplish more. Your internal engineers can remain focused on the work that depends on their knowledge of products, customers, and manufacturing environment, while a strong outside team takes ownership of clearly defined work.
Alongside deep experience as consultants with engineering specialization, the team you choose should also understand how to work alongside an internal team. They should be as aware of the potential for challenging team dynamics as you are and seek to mitigate any concerns.
To ensure the team you’re vetting is up to this task explore the markings of a strong outsourced engineering firm:
- The team you choose should have a track record of producing results for internal teams. Examine their product design case studies first. Do these studies begin with a defined scope and end with measurable results? Can the team deliver quickly and effectively?
- Look at how they communicate their approach to outsourced engineering projects by reading about their services. Do they understand how to limit friction with your internal team? Do they have a robust project management approach that lessens the workload on in-house management?
There are many product design engineering teams looking for work. However, the ones that deliver strong results for their clients understand how they fit into an internal team and how to work independently to maximize growth and reduce internal complications.
Your Game Plan for Hiring Outsourced Product Design Engineers
- Identify backlogged, stalled, or delayed projects that would add value if resourced.
- Vet an outside engineering team based on their ability to take ownership and provide solutions without significant oversight.
- Communicate the rationale for bringing on an outside team with your internal engineering team.
- Consider a single internal touchpoint with the outside team to reduce the burden on management.
- Set boundaries around scope so your internal team understands where the outsourced team’s role begins and ends.
- Remind managers that their internal engineers may have institutional knowledge that would help make an outsourced team’s work effective. Empower your internal team to contribute to the external team’s success when possible.
Outside Engineering Should Give Your Team More Room To Succeed
Creating a valuable partnership depends on the team you choose and how you integrate them with your internal talent.
A strong outside team gives your organization room to pursue new opportunities and bring specialized expertise to the table. From a people perspective, it should make your internal team feel valued, understood, and more effective in their current roles.
Selecting external product design engineering services requires more than a comparison of capabilities and rates. Look for a team that can take ownership, communicate well, and respect your internal team’s expertise.
With this approach, your internal team will understand that your goal isn’t to replace them, but to give them more resources, while extending your organization’s potential.
