To Outsource or Keep It In‑House? How to Make the Right Decision

If you read this article, then you’re thinking about your own product development. Final cost is important, and quality shouldn’t suffer. And the question arises where to find developers. Of course, you may think that it's better and more secure if a product is developed by an in-house company or a company that is located a couple of blocks from your office. But, after calculating hourly rates of specialists, you get an impressive amount. There are cool teams worldwide that can help you, and the cost of their work will be cheaper. This is called outsourcing.

Such corporations as Apple, Ford, Ikea, IBM Global Services, General Motors, Samsung, Sony, and many others prefer outsourcing.

But don’t think that outsourcing is available to large brands only. In this article, we’ll give you proofs of it, as well as tell you what to do to make product development successful.

Choose the Most Skillful Developers

If you want to develop the best product, then you need the most qualified and expert team of professionals. With the help of outsourcing your possibilities will be unlimited.

Do you need, for instance, an expert JS full stack developer? Looking through special platforms you can find the best ones for your future app from any country with required skills, technologies they are confident in, and working progress. Feedbacks from previous clients are also available there.

By the way, we have an article on how to find cool blockchain developers. There are great chances to find the best minds not only via freelance platforms, but also with the help of Facebook targeting, coding platforms, or conferences. We’ve described these ways in details. But don’t worry—these tips are suitable for developers from all areas. Follow this link and see for yourself.

With an in-house product company your possibilities, on the contrary, will be limited. As a rule, a certain amount of developers are good in a certain product line with one technology stack in a separate area.

As technological partners, outsourcing teams are engaged in various projects with hype technologies, the latest languages, and frameworks. They accumulate experience and improve skills simultaneously in different areas. If a developer is engaged in one specific project with a particular technology stack he or she always gains new knowledge due to constant access to other technologies and experts from other areas.

Save Time and Money with Outsourcing

Just count how many tens of thousands of dollars and man-hours you spend on equipping an in-house product company with required developing, programming, and designing tools.

Outsourcing, in its turn, is the best way to save time and money. Due to it, entrepreneurs improve their business efficiency using outsourced organizational, financial, and human resources to create new directions, approaches and concentrate efforts which don’t require extra attention. As a result, the future product will be released faster.

Hiring an outsourcing team you pay such costs as salaries, different taxes, paid vacations and sick days, trainings, courses and other items of expenditure—all these don’t depend on the fact whether you need a team in one concrete moment or not. But the key point is that there is no need to buy all the required equipment because all devices are already in guys’ property and use.

Staff Flexibility According to Product Requirements

A technical team is one of the key components of a future project's success. Usually, it consists of project manager, backend and frontend developers, or full stack developer, mobile developer, designers, QA engineers, and DevOps engineers.

In an in-house product development company, you pay for full-time work and maintenance of entire staff, regardless of a project stage.

Due to outsourcing, you can scale a team depending on the project’s volume and complexity, growth, and development. The standard quantity of technical team members can be increased or reduced.

Outsourcing guarantees full and constant access to the whole staff and control of its involvement in the process. For example, designers, DevOps engineers, and testers can only be involved at certain times instead of working full-time.

Knowing the rates of other team members, a business owner can engage them in a project or exclude someone from it according to current requirements. With correct team scaling an entrepreneur can save his or her budget as much as possible and spend money, e.g., on a new feature.

It goes without saying that working with an outsourcing team, you can be sure of the round-the-clock communication.

If you want to develop a competitive product for both domestic and foreign markets, it would be difficult with an in-house company to implement all necessary solutions. Moreover, it may take months to find, interview and hire those who are needed for a project.

Highly qualified outsourcing teams are on the crest of the technological wave. They constantly improve their services, learn the latest trends, master languages, frameworks, and technologies. They make decisions faster and offer the most unique one.

No Location Limits

If you hire a company with good communication, you don’t feel the distance. Such companies are in touch with clients in all time zones.

It’s important to remember the "price-time-quality" ratio. Most likely, it will be easier to find a company for your needs in Ukraine.

Usually, Ukrainian outsourcing companies stand out from the rest for their knowledge, technological expertise, flexibility, a full cycle of work, and development speed.

Weigh up All the Pros and Cons

You should understand that problems can always arise no matter what type of development you choose—in-house or outsourcing, or local company. Before the development starts, you need to weigh up all the pros and cons.

Let’s look through the table which shows what you’ll get by hiring good local, outsourcing, or in-house team.

Ways to Profitable Outsourcing

To make the best choice for a future product you need to hire a respected outsourcing team with an excellent reputation and professional staff. Reasonable rates, transparent development process, and accurate project estimation are worth paying attention to! Let's go step by step.

Reasonable rates are of great importance because they guarantee high development quality, responsible attitude to work and client, and, as a result, a fast project release. They help to ignore newbies which are just learning to write code.

The transparent development process, in turn, allows monitoring the whole development process. Such tools as Trello, Jira, Tracker, Freedcamp, and others will be of great help to receive daily reports, time and features estimation, etc. Best outsourcing companies really care about trusting relationships with their clients and are always open to them.

Excellent reputation isn’t an empty sound for masters of their craft. To understand what outsourcing team to hire, find out when a company was founded, look through case studies to see its experience, read previous clients’ reviews, etc. All needed information should be in open access.

Accurate project estimation will protect your budget and allow to release a project on time. You’ll see the whole costs picture and won’t lose large sums of money because of unaccounted development steps.

Conclusion

If you’re thinking to outsource your product development, but have some doubts, you'll lose nothing if you contact several companies. Make a list of teams you can trust and contact their managers in any convenient way. Give the project for estimation. And choose those who you prefer and can afford. Good luck!