Co-development is a way of working that addresses a need well known to organizations with in-house development teams: accelerating the delivery of a project without settling for a one-time gain. At Nexapp, we work directly alongside your teams to deliver value faster, while incorporating best engineering practices. The result: by the end of the collaboration, you’ll not only have a delivered product, but also a stronger, more autonomous team.
In this article, we demystify co-development in software engineering, as we practice it at Nexapp. Our exploration is based on real projects, drawing on the insights and lessons we’ve gained during these valuable collaborations.
There is a well-known law in software engineering, formulated by Fred Brooks: adding people to a project that’s already behind schedule only delays it further. Every new hire must be trained, coordinated, and integrated, and the effort this requires slows down the entire team before it speeds them up. This is precisely the limitation of simply adding resources: you add manpower without addressing what’s actually holding up delivery.
Co-development is based on a different approach. We don’t come in to bloat the workforce; we come in to improve without disrupting operations. Better yet: we work alongside your teams. The goal is to tackle problems from a new angle to develop better products and processes. We believe that co-creation is a powerful tool for innovation and can drive transformation for businesses. This is what sets our approach apart from both resource deployment and traditional consulting, where a specialist observes from the outside and makes recommendations without getting hands-on with the product.
The difference comes down to two words: involvement and commitment. A Nexapp developer doesn’t just carry out the tasks assigned to them. They understand your organization’s guiding star and want to reach it alongside you. Because they grasp the business objective behind every feature, they can challenge you and propose better solutions—tailored to your specific context—rather than blindly carrying out a task.
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Nexapp |
Hiring |
Resource Placement |
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Onboarding Time |
1–2 weeks |
1–4 months |
2–4 weeks |
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Recruitment Cost |
$0 |
$10–40K |
$0 |
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Success guarantee |
Yes |
None |
None |
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Termination fees |
None |
High |
Moderate |
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Access to an ecosystem of software expertise (architecture, data, AI, etc.) at all times |
Yes |
No |
No |
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Project workload and resource management |
Nexapp |
Organization |
Organization |
Co-development in a software project offers a multitude of benefits, which vary from one company to another depending on specific needs.
At first glance, these two goals seem to conflict. Delivering quickly requires moving fast, whereas building a team’s skills takes time and patience. How can we balance the two without sacrificing one for the other?
The answer lies in how learning takes place. At Nexapp, skill development doesn’t happen through separate training sessions disconnected from day-to-day work. It happens on the job, using real tools, real scenarios, and your team’s actual constraints. That’s what makes it sustainable: what your developers learn, they learn by delivering your product—not through a theoretical example they’ll then have to apply in practice.
In practice, this knowledge transfer happens through close collaboration. By pair programming, participating in the same code reviews, and leading workshops and katas, Nexapp developers share best practices as they work on real projects. Every release becomes an opportunity to learn, and every lesson learned makes the next release stronger. Speed and autonomy are no longer at odds: they feed into one another.
Generally, Nexapp developers submit their first pull requests in less than ten days. We quickly integrate into your team, familiarize ourselves with your context and your ways of working by diving right into real tasks. This isn’t just an observation phase: it’s by getting hands-on with the product right from the start that we build trust and truly understand your challenges.
Integrating into an existing team and helping it evolve its methods is a human challenge before it’s a technical one. Our principle: never impose anything. That’s why we move forward gradually and with care. We create momentum, start with small steps, and make progress over time. Depending on the context, this might mean introducing pair programming, adopting a full-stack approach to break down silos, breaking down user stories vertically, or leading katas to practice together.
Newforma is a pioneer in information management software for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, with over 500,000 users across 1,500 companies. By working in co-development with one of their teams, we set a twofold goal: to quickly deliver a key feature and to leverage the collaboration to refine their development practices.
Both goals were achieved. In five months, the team transformed its delivery cycle, and the numbers speak for themselves.
Beyond the metrics, it’s the team’s dynamic that has changed. The development team has gone from one or two user stories per session to eight—a clear sign that the team has become more fluid and self-sufficient.
“Working in co-development with Nexapp allowed us to accelerate the delivery of a key feature, while also having a rapid and lasting impact on our delivery processes. Their expertise in software engineering, their collaborative, results-oriented approach, and their ability to understand both our technological and business challenges position them as a trusted strategic partner.”
Carl Veillette, Product Director, Newforma
At EXFO, the world leader in optical testing solutions, we carried out an 18-month co-development project with a development team. The result: a 23% increase in deployment frequency starting in the first month, and a 40% reduction in delivery time within six months. A different project, a different context, but the same logic at work: accelerating delivery while making the team stronger.
There’s a paradox at the heart of co-development: our greatest success is becoming unnecessary.
When we leave a team, it’s no longer the same team we joined. Our clients tell us that the project has stabilized, that the work culture has evolved, and above all, that the practices we shared are now fully integrated.
That’s the key difference from a model where the service provider’s departure leaves a void. Here, what we leave behind is a team capable of moving forward on its own—and often welcome new permanent members to take over. Our value isn’t measured solely by what we delivered during the engagement, but by what your team has become capable of doing without us.
That is what it means to successfully complete a co-development assignment.