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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Grouped by service, because that is how people usually land here. Scan to the bit you care about, skip the rest. If your question is not below, say hi via contact and we will answer properly.

Product development

Senior engineers taking a product from idea to something your users actually open. Discovery, build, ship, keep it alive.

What does product development at Alongside actually cover?

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.

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

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.

What happens after launch? Do we lose the team?

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.

Team augmentation

Our senior engineers joining your team, not the other way around. Same standups, same repo, same code reviews.

How is this different from regular outsourcing?

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.

Can you cover US timezones from Portugal?

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.

How senior are the people you send in?

Most engineers on augmentation have eight plus years of experience. Not because the website says so, because junior plus new codebase plus new team is a bad combination. If you need a specific stack or a specific shape (say, a staff engineer, or someone who has done payments before), we say so upfront. No bait and switch.

Technical advisory

Someone who has seen a lot of architectures, tech debt, and bad decisions, available on a sensible cadence.

When does it make sense to bring in advisory?

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.

What does it look like day to day?

Usually a weekly or biweekly session with the technical leads, plus async questions in Slack. We read the code, sit on the architecture reviews, flag risks, and put the important things in writing so they do not drift. We do not run your team. We stand next to the person who does.

How is this different from a full code audit?

An audit is a point in time deep dive. Advisory is ongoing and more conversational. Think of the audit as a checkup and advisory as having a good doctor on call. A lot of clients do both. One tells you where you are, the other helps you not wander off a cliff next quarter.

MVP development

Fast, production shaped MVPs. Enough polish to demo, enough structure to not throw away in three months.

How fast can you actually ship an MVP?

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.

How do you balance speed with not creating future tech debt?

We cut scope, not quality. Fewer features, but auth, basic observability, a sensible data model, and a deploy that is not duct tape. You can always add a feature. Ripping out a rotten foundation three months in is the part that kills startups.

What happens after the MVP is out the door?

Two typical paths. You keep us for the next phase (most common) or you hire in house and we help onboard them. Either way, we leave docs, a handover session, and a short list of what we would tackle next. No drama, no hostage code.

Code audit and review

An independent look at your codebase. Security, performance, tech debt, and what to fix first.

What is actually inside a code audit?

Four angles, usually. Security risks, performance bottlenecks, tech debt and where it actually hurts, and developer experience (is this repo bearable to work in). We read code, we run tools, we talk to your engineers. Findings land in a written report with severity and a rough effort estimate.

How long does an audit take and who needs to be involved?

Usually one to two weeks, depending on codebase size. We need read access to the repo, a short intro from someone who knows the system, and maybe a couple of calls when we hit something weird. Your engineers do not have to babysit us. That is kind of the point.

What do we walk away with?

A written report that a non technical founder can skim and an engineer can act on. Issues ranked by severity and effort, plus a rough 30, 60, 90 day roadmap. No fluff, no 80 page PDFs nobody will read. If you want us to help execute the fixes after, we can. If not, the report stands on its own.

Scaling consulting

For teams past the scrappy phase. Org design, process, infra, hiring, culture. The stuff that breaks when you grow fast.

When does scaling consulting actually help?

Past about ten engineers, once the old habits start creaking. Deploys slow down, hiring feels random, architecture decisions happen in Slack and nowhere else. If you are there or about to be, it is a good time. If you are still five people, you mostly just need to ship.

Is this about people or infrastructure?

Usually both, and they are more connected than teams admit. A brittle deploy pipeline is often a management problem. A team that keeps burning out is often an architecture problem. We look at org structure, on call, hiring process, and the infra side (CI, observability, incident response). Pick a thread, it pulls all the others.

What kind of outputs do we actually get?

Concrete things. A hiring plan, a revised team topology, a short list of infra investments with rough costs, and an on call rotation that does not punish the same three people. Plus weekly working sessions while changes land. If we cannot measure it in a quarter, we probably should not be doing it.

Next steps

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