Resourcing and Coordination Basics: A CEO’s Guide to Onboarding a Development Agency

Bringing in a development agency can be a turning point for your product, unlocking momentum, accelerating delivery, and adding new perspectives. But onboarding that agency correctly is critical, especially when your business depends on a long-term partnership.

At Planet Argon, we specialize in ongoing relationships through monthly retainers. That means we’re not just here to check off tickets—we aim to become a consistent, embedded part of your team. To get the most from a partnership like this, CEOs and product leaders need to align early on the basics of resourcing and coordination.

Here are four key areas to get right from day one.

1. Set a Communication Schedule with the New Agency

One of the first decisions you’ll make with your new development agency is how often—and how intentionally—you’ll communicate. In long-term retainers, communication is key to how your company and the new agency keep momentum up for the team.

• Start with a structured cadence: We recommend setting up weekly calls between your internal point of contact and our Project Manager. These are for reviewing progress, prioritizing tasks, and surfacing any blockers.
• Use async updates for daily visibility: Whether it’s Slack or Jira, create space for quick, daily updates. This helps avoid bottlenecks and keeps progress visible.
• Clarify tool usage: Ensure everyone knows where to find tickets (e.g., Jira, Trello), documentation (Confluence, Github Wiki), and communication threads.
• Maintain transparency: If goals shift or scope expands, surfacing that in a regular forum helps us recalibrate the plan early, not scramble later.

Communication is the one “non-technical” lever that most strongly impacts velocity in the first 60 days of a project.

2. Assign a Key Contact to Maximize Your Relationship

Even with strong communication channels, there’s no substitute for a single, empowered point of contact on your side. This person becomes the translator of priorities, the keeper of the roadmap, and the unblocker-in-chief.

In our model, you’ll typically be in regular contact with a dedicated Project Manager and a Lead Engineer, so having someone on your side who mirrors that level of involvement is crucial.

• Choose someone with context and decision power: Ideally, they understand the product vision and technical constraints, and have the authority to approve scope or budget shifts.
• Avoid fragmented ownership: When multiple voices direct the agency, priorities get muddied and timelines drift. Agencies thrive when we know who to go to and what success looks like.
• Ensure responsiveness: Agencies like ours operate on agile principles. Questions and clarifications come up mid-sprint, and delays in response can stall momentum.
• Champion the relationship: The more your internal point of contact treats us as partners rather than vendors, the more strategic value we can return.

3. Developer Resourcing: Understand It in Days, Not Just Headcount

It’s tempting to ask, “How many developers do I get?” But headcount alone doesn’t tell the whole story. At Planet Argon, we prefer to talk in developer days per week—a clearer way to manage effort and expectations.

A typical team on your account may include:

• A Lead Engineer—often a senior Ruby on Rails dev with deep product experience.
• One or more support engineers based on complexity and velocity needs.
• An Engineering Manager who steps in as needed to resolve complex or architectural issues.
• A Project Manager who meets with you regularly, ensuring the team stays on track.

Why developer days matter:

• They create clarity: Knowing you have 3 or 5 dev-days/week allows for better sprint planning and budget tracking.
• They help you scale up/down: Need to accelerate a launch or reduce budget in Q4? You’re planning in measurable units.

• They show progress early: Once we track how much is completed per dev-day, we can estimate delivery timelines more reliably.

  Tip: Don’t hesitate to ask how the team is resourced. Transparency breeds trust, and it allows you to plan ahead.

4. Planning “The Big Push” for a New Feature

Every application has its “launch moments”—a major feature release, an important demo, or a marketing campaign tied to the product roadmap. When working with an external development team, planning these pushes is about coordination, not just coding.

Because Planet Argon builds long-term relationships, we often help clients pace and plan these launches, not just execute them.

Here’s how to get it right:

• Lock the scope early: As early as possible before the release, define what “must be done” versus “nice to have.” We’ll help pressure-test the plan.
• Use a sprint buffer: Always build in 1–2 extra weeks for QA, polish, or last-minute changes. Big launches rarely go 100% to plan.
• Loop in non-development teams early: If this feature ties to a campaign, customer training, or stakeholder review, brief them upfront.
• Set clear definitions of done: Beyond functionality, this includes test coverage, documentation, and possibly staging or analytics setup.

Big launches aren’t just about speed—they’re about precision. With shared planning, we reduce the chaos and maximize impact.

Final Thoughts: Great Relationships Start with Great Coordination

When you hire a development agency like Planet Argon, you’re not just hiring engineers—you’re entering a partnership. Our retainer-based model is built for long-term collaboration, but its success depends on the fundamentals: clear communication, empowered points of contact, thoughtful resourcing, and collaborative planning.

By aligning on these basics early, you don’t just accelerate delivery—you unlock the full value of an embedded dev team that grows with your business.

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We Think You’ll Also Enjoy Reading…

• How to Demo Your Application to a New Development Team: A Helpful Guide
• Streamlining a Complex Project with Phased Planning
• Client Onboarding: What to Expect in Your First Month with Planet Argon

FAQ’s

Q. How do I know if a retainer-based model is right for my company?

A. If you’re looking for ongoing improvements, regular feature releases, and long-term technical strategy, a retainer model provides consistent collaboration and resourcing. It’s ideal for product teams who need reliable velocity and evolving support—not just short-term fixes.

Q. Who should be the internal point of contact for our agency?

A. Your ideal point of contact is someone who understands your product vision, can make decisions (or escalate them quickly), and is available for regular check-ins. This might be a product manager, CTO, or operations lead—what matters most is context and authority.

Q. What’s the difference between “developer days” and hiring a full-time developer?

A. Developer days are a flexible way to get expert support without committing to full-time headcount. For example, instead of one full-time junior dev, you might get 3–5 days per week from a senior team with experience across multiple areas—architecture, testing, DevOps, etc.

Q. How soon can we expect to see progress after onboarding a development agency?

A. With strong communication and clear goals, most clients begin seeing progress within the first couple of sprints (2–4 weeks). The onboarding phase includes getting context, aligning tools, and syncing expectations so delivery can ramp up efficiently.

Q. Can we scale the team up or down later?

A. Yes! One of the benefits of a retainer is that it can scale with your needs. Whether you’re preparing for a major launch or need to reduce spend temporarily, developer days can be adjusted with advance planning.