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Your company has made a strategic decision: we are investing in a new digital product to revolutionize the market. The board has given the green light, the budget is approved. A key operational question arises that rests on the shoulders of the CEO, CTO and Chief Procurement Officer: “Who will build it?” The answer to this question will determine not only the pace of the project, but also its final cost and risk.
The most common mistake made at this stage is to simply compare the developer’s gross monthly salary with the monthly rate for renting a completed team from a technology partner. This is like comparing the price of the engine itself with the price of a fully equipped, ready-to-run car with a manufacturer’s warranty. Such a superficial calculation ignores the dozens of hidden costs and risks that make up the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
A truly strategic decision requires deeper analysis. It’s important to understand that building your own team is a long-term investment with significant risk, while Team Leasing is a strategic tool to achieve your goals quickly and predictably. Let’s take a look at the numbers and facts that rarely make it to the spreadsheets, but which have a key impact on the profitability of the entire venture.
Deconstructing TCO: The hidden costs of building your own IT team
“The cost of fixing a defect grows exponentially the later it is found in the software development lifecycle.”
— Barry Boehm, Software Engineering Economics | Source
The Total Cost of Ownership of an IT team is the sum of all expenses - both obvious and hidden - related to its acquisition, implementation, maintenance and management over a certain period of time. When analyzing the TCO, we quickly discover that salary is just the beginning of expenses.
- Recruitment costs: It’s not just the fee for the recruitment agency (often 15-25% of the a
ual salary). It’s also the cost of ads on job portals and, most importantly, the hundreds of hours spent by technical managers and HR departments reviewing resumes, conducting interviews and vetting candidates. This time could be spent on product development.
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Implementation (Onboarding) costs: A new employee is not 100% productive from day one. The period of adaptation and implementation into the project, learning the systems and processes, is an average of 3-6 months, during which he achieves only a fraction of his target productivity, drawing his full salary. On top of that, there is the cost of hardware, software licenses and the time that current team members have to spend training him.
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Maintenance and administration costs: Gross salary is not everything. The employer incurs additional costs for contributions (in Poland, about 21% over the gross amount), non-wage benefits (medical care, sports card), HR and payroll services, and office space maintenance costs.
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Cost of risk and turnover: Turnover in the IT industry is high. The departure of an employee during the course of a project is one of the biggest risks. It generates an immediate need to restart a costly recruitment process, and worse, it leads to the loss of invaluable project knowledge, which directly translates into delays and a drop in quality.
The table below shows a simplified but illustrative simulation of the a
ual TCO for a 5-person development team.
| Cost category | Building an internal team (a
ual estimate) | Team Leasing (ARDURA Consulting) |
| Recruitment costs (5 people, agency fee) | 125 000 PLN | 0 PLN (included in the price of the service) |
| Gross salary + employer’s costs | PLN 1,452,000 | 0 PLN (included in the price of the service) |
| Costs of benefits, equipment and licenses | 75 000 PLN | 0 PLN (included in the price of the service) |
| Administration and office costs | 60 000 PLN | 0 PLN (included in the price of the service) |
| The cost of lost productivity (Onboarding) | 180 000 PLN | 0 PLN (team ready to work) |
| **A
ual service invoice** | - | PLN 1,680,000 |
| **SUMA (estimated a
ual TCO)** | PLN 1,892,000 + cost of rotation risk | PLN 1,680,000 (expected cost) |
Note: The above amounts are estimates and may vary depending on the specifics of the project and the market.
Team Leasing as a strategic investment in speed and quality
As can be seen in the table, the apparent difference in monthly cost is obliterated when all components of TCO are taken into account. Moreover, the financial analysis does not fully capture the strategic benefits brought by the Team Leasing model. It’s an investment in key business assets: time, quality and flexibility.
1 Radical Time-to-Market Reduction: Instead of waiting 6-9 months to build and integrate a team, you get a tight-knit, high-performance unit from ARDURA Consulting that starts delivering business value in a matter of weeks. In today’s economy, that kind of time advantage can determine the success or failure of a product.
2 Quality guarantee and risk transfer: In the Team Leasing model, the responsibility for quality, productivity and team retention rests with the partner. ARDURA provides not only specialists, but also proven processes, coding standards and a team leader who manages the work and ensures that goals are met. The risk of turnover, job burnout or declining productivity is on our side.
3. Flexibility and scalability: your project suddenly requires the support of a DevOps specialist or automation tester for three months? With Team Leasing, we can flexibly adjust the team composition to meet your current needs without going through the entire hiring and recruitment process. That’s an agility that can’t be achieved in a traditional hiring model.
4 Access to a broader pool of expertise: When you work with ARDURA Consulting, you gain access not only to a dedicated team, but to our company’s entire knowledge base. If your project encounters an unusual technological problem, our team can consult with other experts inside the organization, which significantly speeds up problem solving.
When to build and when to “rent”? Decision-making matrix for leaders
The decision to choose a model depends on the strategic context. To make it easier, we have prepared a simple decision matrix.
Choose Team Leasing when:
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Time is critical: You need to get your product to market quickly and ahead of the competition.
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You need niche competencies: You are looking for specialists that are hard to find in the local market.
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The project has a specific time frame: You want to avoid the problem of “what to do with the team” after the project is completed.
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You care about budget predictability: You want to turn variable costs (CapEx) into a single, fixed operating fee (OpEx).
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You want to ease the burden on your managers: You’d rather have your leaders focus on product and strategy rather than managing staff.
Consider building an in-house team when:
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The function is absolutely a core, long-term competency of the company: for example, the development of a flagship, multi-year system at the core of your business.
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Time is not a key constraint: You have the comfort of quietly building a team over many months.
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The required competencies are readily available on the market: There is no problem finding and retaining the specialists needed.
Look at the value, not just the cost
The most expensive team is not the one with the highest invoice rate, but the one that fails to deliver results on time and within budget. A Total Cost of Ownership analysis absolutely shows that Team Leasing is often not only a faster and safer option, but also more cost-effective on an a
ual basis.
At ARDURA Consulting, we view Team Leasing as a form of strategic partnership. We don’t deliver resources - we deliver results. Our goal is to enable your company to achieve its business goals by providing an elite, close-knit and fully managed technology team that allows you to focus on what you do best - growing your business.
****Facing a decision to build or rent a team? Don’t base it on superficial calculations. ****