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Managed Delivery is an engagement model in which Lemon.io takes responsibility for building and delivering a defined piece of software, rather than providing engineers for you to manage yourself. You define the goal and the scope. Lemon.io assembles a team, manages the work, and delivers the completed software for an agreed scope, timeline, and price.

Both are ways to work with Lemon.io. They differ in who manages the work.

With On-Demand Talent, Lemon.io sources and vets engineers who join your team and work under your direction. You set priorities, manage the project, and are responsible for delivery. It is a way to extend your own team.

With Managed Delivery, Lemon.io takes on the whole project: scoping it, assembling and managing the team, and delivering the finished software for an agreed price. You do not manage the engineers day-to-day.

Companies generally choose On-Demand Talent when they already have the roadmap and engineering leadership and need additional capacity, and Managed Delivery when they want a defined result delivered without running the build themselves.

There are four stages:

1. Scoping. Lemon.io works with you to define requirements, scope, milestones, timeline, and price.
2. Team assembly. A team of engineers, and designers or product managers where needed, is selected to match the project.
3. Development. The team builds the software in iterations, with regular demos, milestone reviews, and status updates.
4. Delivery and handoff. The completed software is delivered, along with the code and documentation. Ongoing support is available if you want it.

You begin by booking a call to describe the problem and your requirements. Lemon.io then proposes a scope, team, timeline, and price. Once you approve it, the team is assembled and work begins, typically within 7 days.

All engineers pass Lemon.io's vetting process, which is completed by just over 1% of applicants and includes both technical and soft skills assessments. Teams are staffed with senior engineers. Under Managed Delivery, Lemon.io is responsible for the quality of the delivered work, so if problems arise, they are addressed as part of the engagement rather than billed separately.

Common reasons include speed, since outsourcing avoids a multi-month hiring process; access to senior or specialized skills that are difficult to hire directly; added capacity when the roadmap is larger than the current team can handle; and keeping internal teams focused on core priorities. It also avoids the fixed cost of permanent headcount for work that is temporary or project-based.

Lemon.io has over 11 years of experience and more than 2,000 completed projects. It staffs senior engineers from LatAm, Europe, and North America, which gives working-hours overlap with US teams, all selected through the same vetting used across Lemon.io.

Under Managed Delivery, Lemon.io takes responsibility for scope, budget, and delivery rather than billing by the hour.

Compared with lower-cost offshore providers, the model prioritizes senior staffing and delivery ownership over the lowest hourly rate. Compared with onshore agencies, it uses distributed talent to keep costs lower while maintaining time-zone overlap.

Pricing is based on a defined scope, so it is set after a scoping stage rather than before. During scoping, Lemon.io works with you to turn the goal into specific requirements, milestones, and deliverables, and then provides an agreed price for that scope. If the project is not yet well-defined, it can begin with a short discovery stage to establish the scope before setting a build price.

If requirements change during the project, the change is documented and assessed for its effect on timeline and cost. Lemon.io provides an updated estimate, and the change proceeds once you approve it. The agreed price does not change unless a change is approved. This keeps the budget predictable while allowing the project to adapt as it progresses.