Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a dedicated team and staff augmentation?
Assembly and coordination. In both models the engineers work only on your product and you own the roadmap. With staff augmentation you add individual engineers into a team you already run. With a dedicated team we build the group around what your product needs, staff every role in it, and assign a project manager on our side to coordinate it at no extra cost. Augmentation is usually the better answer for one to three people when your own team is working well. A dedicated team is the better answer when you own a product area and want the whole group staffed and run as a unit.
What time zone does the team work in, and how much overlap will I get?
Our teams work 10:00 to 19:00 Uruguay time, which is UTC minus 3. That covers the entire US East Coast working day, five to six hours of live overlap with the West Coast, and three to four hours with the United Kingdom, in their afternoon. The hours are set that way on purpose, to widen the West Coast overlap without pushing anyone into a night shift. This matters more for a team than for one engineer: sprint planning, demos and standups have to sit in normal working hours on both sides, because a team that meets at 7am or 9pm stops meeting by month three.
Can I interview the team, and can I choose who is on it?
Yes, all of them. You get a named CV for every candidate, with the projects they have worked on and the experience behind them, and you can interview each one with your own process. We propose the shape of the team and argue for it, and you can turn down anyone we put forward without giving a reason. What we ask in return is that you tell us early rather than in month two.
What happens if someone on the team is not working out, or leaves?
We replace the person at our cost and the squad keeps delivering. There is no charge for the search and no penalty for asking. The outgoing and incoming engineers overlap for ten business days, and those ten days are not billed: during the handover you keep paying exactly what you were paying before. Context transfers inside the team instead of landing on you. This is the structural advantage of a dedicated team over hiring directly: the person leaving is our retention problem, and the rest of the team, which already knows your codebase, keeps delivering while we solve it.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property?
You do, exclusively. Source code, application logic, APIs, integrations, data models, configurations, UI and UX designs, documentation and derivative works are assigned to you with full title guarantee, as they are created, not conditional on final payment. We warrant that what we deliver does not infringe any third party's intellectual property. For our own pre existing components that were not built specifically for you, you get a non exclusive, irrevocable, royalty free licence to use, copy and modify them, so nothing the team brings with it can be used to lock you in later. Every CodigoDelSur employee signs a non disclosure agreement and an intellectual property assignment as a condition of employment, and the team works inside your repositories and your cloud accounts, so in most engagements the code never lives anywhere else.
What is the minimum commitment and how do I end it?
Two weeks, one sprint, under a single standard services agreement. We do not layer a master agreement plus a statement of work on top of that unless your procurement team requires it, and if they do, we sign it. After the first sprint the engagement runs continuously with two weeks of written notice on either side to reduce the squad or end it, and the agreement gives you the right to terminate for convenience, without cause, on fourteen days written notice. There is no annual lock in and no termination fee, and you can change the size of the team inside the same agreement without renegotiating it.
Who does the technical onboarding, and what do I have to do?
Your team owns product and codebase onboarding, and our project manager coordinates everything around it. What we need from you is access and one person who knows the product. Week one is codebase, domain and accounts, run with whoever on your side has the context. Everything else is on us: equipment, accounts, background checks (where required), payroll, time off coverage and performance management. Your ongoing commitment after that is a product owner in sprint planning and the demo, and someone who can unblock decisions during the week. If you cannot commit that, this is not the right model, and it is better to find that out now.
How much does a dedicated team cost?
Each person is billed between $50 and $99 per hour in US dollars, by role and seniority, and the team costs the sum of the people in it. Every role is priced and visible in the proposal, there is no management fee or platform fee on top, and the project manager assigned to your team is free: that role is already inside the hourly rate. Teams of 5 people or more get a 5 percent discount, and teams of 7 or more get 10 percent. The minimum commitment is two weeks, one sprint, so you can see a team ship before committing to a quarter of it. Invoicing is per sprint, Net 14, or monthly if that suits your accounting team better.
