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The rise of offshore development has given companies in the U.S. and Canada the ability to scale faster, cut costs, and access global tech talent. But while businesses are quick to hire engineers overseas, one role is often underestimated or, worse, overlooked entirely: the project manager.
In the world of distributed teams, an experienced project manager (PM) is not a nice-to-have; it’s mission-critical. Whether you're scaling a dev team in India or building an MVP with a partner in Colombia, strong software development leadership is what ensures delivery, agility, and alignment across time zones.
According to a 2023 report by the Project Management Institute (PMI), poor project performance leads to an average waste of 11.4% of investment, and the number 1 cause? Lack of proper project leadership.
Let’s dive into why project manager resource augmentation is essential to offshore success and how it helps companies deliver software faster, smarter, and with significantly less risk.
North American companies increasingly adopt agile offshore models to meet growing digital demands. From fintech startups in Toronto to SaaS providers in San Francisco, the trend is clear: augment internal capabilities by building lean, distributed engineering teams abroad. New York startups are hiring nearshore development teams as part of this broader shift, leveraging proximity and cultural alignment to reduce friction and accelerate delivery.
According to McKinsey, nearly 75% of software projects fail to meet deadlines or budgets, often due to miscommunication or scope creep. That’s where project manager resource augmentation proves invaluable.
PM resource augmentation involves embedding experienced project managers, often from the same partner supplying your offshore engineers, into your team. These PMs take full ownership of delivery oversight, stakeholder communication, sprint planning, and risk mitigation.
Unlike hiring a full-time in-house PM (which can cost upwards of $130,000/year in the U.S.), augmented PMs offer a flexible, scalable way to get senior-level leadership without the overhead.
Offshore developers are great at execution. But they need direction. A PM who understands your roadmap, KPIs, and stakeholder priorities bridges the gap between strategy and execution.
According to the Harvard Business Review, organizations with strong project leadership are 20% more likely to deliver successful digital transformation outcomes than those without.
Agile PMs work in sprint cycles, track burndown rates, and manage backlog priorities. They keep your roadmap moving forward, even across continents.
With augmented PMs managing workflows, businesses see:
Language barriers, mismatched tools, or unclear scope can lead to costly mistakes. A seasoned PM ensures:
The Standish Group’s 2023 Chaos Report found that projects with a dedicated PM were 2.5x more likely to succeed than those without.
A New York-based fintech client of ours needed to build a payment reconciliation engine within 6 months. They hired an offshore team of 7 engineers, but things quickly slowed due to unclear sprint goals and a lack of product direction.
We introduced a senior agile PM who:
Within 90 days, the team hit velocity targets and released a working beta. Overall delivery time was reduced by 28%, and offshore team satisfaction rose significantly due to better structure and support.
Not all PMs are created equal. Here’s what U.S. and Canadian enterprises should look for:
Ensure your PM has experience leading multicultural, multi-time-zone teams. They should know how to create overlap hours and build trust remotely.
Scrum Masters or PMI-ACP certified PMs bring rigor to sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog grooming. This is critical for fast-moving tech teams.
The right PM should be fluent in your stack (e.g., Atlassian suite, Notion, Git workflows) and your domain (e.g., fintech, logistics, SaaS).
Your PM should be a great communicator, managing not just devs, but also product managers, execs, and third-party vendors. They are the glue holding everything together.
Instead of hiring full-time PMs, more North American companies are turning to project manager resource augmentation through trusted software partners. It allows them to:
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 60% of enterprise software projects will rely on some form of external leadership support, including augmented PMs.
At Type B Digital, we don’t just supply developers, we provide the agile software development leadership that makes offshore teams thrive.
With vetted PMs in North America, Latin America, and South Asia, we deliver:
Whether you're running multiple squads or just launching your first product, our PMs ensure your offshore team doesn’t just deliver but excels.
Offshore development gives U.S. and Canadian companies the ability to build faster and cheaper, but without the right leadership, that power often goes untapped.
By investing in project manager resource augmentation, you not only gain delivery oversight but you also unlock the full potential of your distributed team.
You bring the vision. We’ll bring the expert team. Let’s collaborate.
Type B Digital - The go-to partner for forward-thinking teams ready to turn ideas into impact.
