| With a company OP's size, I'd definitely look at it from this perspective. Funding (and related longevity) are key drivers of technical debt. If a team has to constantly pivot projects to politically justify their existence, bad technical things happen. So figure out a budget model that works, is sustainable, is justified on ROI (as logistics dev will be compared to capex alternative investments). As a "halfway" solution, you could find 1-2 senior inhouse architect type people (ideally, who have reasons to stick around like quality of life) and pair them with project-based freelance/outsourced development teams. (Hard to find good small dev firms, but they exist) That way, if dev screws up the project because they're incompetent, you have more options. But you retain the core institutional knowledge and some dev ability inhouse. And it maximizes budget flexibility and gives you time to find the right people for the inhouse team. I would caution... the goal of this arrangement should always be to grow the inhouse team until it's big enough to ship projects on its own. But it's easier to slowly grow a good team than to hire one all at once. |