Question 1

What does product development at Alongside actually cover?

Accepted Answer

Pretty much the whole path. A small team of senior engineers plus design, usually four to six people, kicks off with discovery, then builds in short cycles. We do the front end, the back end, the plumbing, the boring DevOps that keeps it online. If you already have some of that in house, we slot in next to it. No islands.

Question 2

How does an engagement usually run and how long is it?

Accepted Answer

Most builds sit somewhere between three and nine months, depending on scope and how clean the requirements are. First couple of weeks is discovery and a rough plan. Then biweekly demos, working software, and honest status. We try hard to keep it boring in the good way. No Friday night heroics.

Question 3

What happens after launch? Do we lose the team?

Accepted Answer

You pick. Some clients keep a small squad on a retainer to keep shipping. Others want a proper handover so their own people take it over. We write the README like someone new has to read it on a Monday, because that is usually the case. No hidden knowledge, no hostage code.

Question 4

How is this different from regular outsourcing?

Accepted Answer

Outsourcing tends to happen behind a wall. We do the opposite. Your tools, your board, your rituals. Our people show up in your standup, push to your repo, take PR comments like everyone else. You do not get a project manager in the middle translating things. You get engineers.

Question 5

Can you cover US timezones from Portugal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, within reason. Most of our team is happy to overlap four to six hours with US East, a bit less with West. For EU based clients there is full day overlap. We are pretty direct about which timezones a specific person can cover comfortably, so nobody ends up pretending to be awake at 3am.

Question 6

When does it make sense to bring in advisory?

Accepted Answer

When you are about to make a call you cannot easily walk back. New architecture, swapping a database, splitting a monolith, picking a cloud, or hiring your first in house VP. Sometimes companies just want a second opinion because their CTO is stretched thin. All valid reasons.

Question 7

How fast can you actually ship an MVP?

Accepted Answer

Four to eight weeks is realistic for most ideas, assuming you know roughly what you want and can make calls fast. Ten weeks if the domain is messy. Anyone selling you a two week MVP is selling you a demo, not a product. We will tell you which one fits your situation.

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