Millions of businesses are looking forward to growing their operations to the next level. Are you planning the same? During the business growth phase, every business owner faces the question of how to scale up their software development efficiently. What to choose — In house Vs offshore software development team?
Over the years, it has been a matter of debate whether to go for your software development. Choose Outsourcing or choose an In-house custom for your mobile app development. However, in many cases, the In-house team is suitable only for certain projects. On the other hand, outsourcing software development is an evergreen option to explore with the onset of technologies.
Today, Offshore development has become a tried-and-tested model today. Thousands of companies, whether big or small, are turning to outsourcing models for their software development. The market size for global outsourcing reached $92.5 billion over the last year.
Especially for startups and mid-sized enterprises, it is great to go with offshore development to build up robust mobile applications and scale up their business. Huge enterprises can afford to hire an in-house development team. They put resources to manage it but may have its own set of advantages and disadvantages. And thus, Let us evaluate the pros and cons of these two development models mentioned above. This will help you make the correct choice for your next app idea.
Working with your In-house software development team
If you already have an IT software development team, you have a chance to scale up your in-house team. As you grow your IT team, you will be able to tackle the larger products without the need of outside developers. Having an in house team of developers works well if you want to have full control over the processes. However, when you hire developers from scratch, you will have to pay them full salaries which might become very expensive.
Here are just a few of the Pros and Cons of expanding your In-house team
1- Pros
1.1- Accessibility
The best part of working with an in-house team is that they are working in the same timezone. As you, work in the same office, speak the same language, and you can always see the real development happening in front of you. This is beneficial in many ways. It makes planning your project, implementing changes, and makes the overall development process relatively simple and quick.
1.2- Quality control
While working closely with your in-house software development team, you have the entire control over the project. As you see the development process closely, you can be assured to get the final product. Just you have expected that meets your standards.
1.3- Transparency
With In-house development, you can always monitor work and maintain transparency at the highest degree. Your team will be working in front of you. You can evaluate your work progress. Also you can keep track of all the development stages involved in your project.
1.4- Deep understanding
As you have your in-house team working on your project, the developers will know your project from its start till completion. This provides them an edge over the outsourcing model as they know each and every feature of your project development whereas the outsourcing team needs time to grasp the project details.
2- Cons
2.1- Highly expensive
When hiring an in-house team, you will need to invest a huge amount in the recruitment process. You would also need a dedicated space or even rent/buy a new office because of team extension. They would need to equip them with systems and software. You will have to pay high salaries as much as $80,342 per year to your developers even when your project will end. Other than that you will have to bear additional expenses including sick pay, vacation, company perks, etc.
If you are unwilling to pay salaries, you will have to fire the employees. You would have again hire employees when you have new requirements. You may also have to bear additional costs if you want to get all essential certificates and licenses for tools, code, and software.
2.2- Difficult to scale
With the salary of an additional IT employee costing around $80,000 per year. Sometimes, even more, growing your IT team quickly to meet your software needs can be a big challenge. Outsourcing, on the other hand, can be an easy way to meet the growing demand of your company. Outsourcing scale up your operations whenever necessary.
2.3- Limited expertise
Having an in-house team will give you limited expertise. Among so many developers out there in the market, it is hard to find the best ones. Whereas the outsourcing companies give you a chance to choose from a wide pool of talents. You may hire the best fit developers for your project.
2.4- Takes more hiring time
Highly-qualified professionals are hard to find in the job market. Most of the talented IT specialists are employed and are unwilling to change. To get them on your side, you’ll need to offer them something better than they already have. This could be a handsome salary or an interesting project. While you look for the talents, contact them, and create a cohesive team, your project gets delayed. Nowadays businesses are always looking for fast implementation. Thus, going with an in-house team may not be a feasible option. On the other hand, outsourcing allows the company to stay competitive in the market.
2.5- Absence issues
By any chance, if some of the team members become sick or leave, you will have to spend time and money on new hiring or endure project pauses. This is certainly not the case when you choose to go with the outsourcing model.
Outsourcing your software development
Outsourcing is a much obvious choice when you need to build a software project. But do not have a hefty budget to spend and grow on your own team. The online collaboration platforms and widespread internet access has poised outsourcing as a better and affordable alternative to hiring in-house talent. Outsourcing development work offshore can considerably cut down your expenses. It enable you to find talented developers in other countries that charge much less than the price of local developers.
1- Pros
1.1 Cost-effective solution
Unlike the in-sourcing team, the dedicated outsourcing team will save you a lot of money. Most offshore teams charge a mere 25% that of onshore developers. When outsourcing, you don’t have to hire developers and pay them a heavy salary. When you hire offshore developers from countries like India it may only cost you $18-$20 per hour. You will also not have to spend money on hiring. Do not require to spend on on-boarding, infrastructure and equip your workplace. Pay salaries after your project is completed. Outsourcing is substantially cheaper than adding another member to your IT team.
1.2- Fixed costs
As you look for an outsourcing company. Discuss your project requirements, the company gives you an exact figure or fixed developer cost that you would need to spend. As a result, you will have a tentative budget in your mind before commencing your project. This, however, is not the case with in-house development teams, as many unexpected expenses may arise while working on a project.
1.3- Access to the larger talent pool
As you hire talent for your in-house team, you are limited to the skills that your team possesses, which is not the case with outsourcing. When you decide to work with an offshore software development company, the agency often has a pool of highly qualified Experts. It is including back-end developers & front-end developers, and UI/UX designers that work on different technology stacks.
1.4- Instant start of the development process
As you approach the offshore development company and discuss your requirements. The development team will start with the development process with no delay. This way you can make sure to have fast development and get your project running smoothly. Whereas if you hire developers for your in-house time, it may take a lot more to hire, evaluate, and finalize the team members and get them started on the project.
1.5- Superior services
As you have the best mobile app developers on your side, you can be assured to get the job done faster with their superior resources and vast working experience. As the offshore companies have expert developers working with them who hold plenty of experience in working on similar projects, you can be assured to get superior services that exceed your expectations.
1.6- Focus on core business functions
As you delegate a part of your work to the outsourcing company, you get a chance to focus more on some important business needs and allocate resources for it. This will also imply that your current team can focus on other activities of your business while you get your product developed by an outsourcing company that will entirely look after your project.
1.7- Quick implementation of changes
If you don’t like the quality of work given by the outsourcing team, you can always ask the company to make changes quickly. At times you can also replace the developers working on the project and change the team. On Contrary, this is not possible with in-house specialists, as you cannot change the developer every now and then. If you have an in-house, you will have to ask the same developer to keep making changes as per your requirement.
1.8 Pull the best talent from all around
The outsourcing model helps you to pull talent from overseas in a cost-effective way. Rather than being limited to your local prospects, available in your country, you can pull from talent virtually anywhere in the world and get the best developers for your project.
1.9- Ease in scalability
Scaling up your business is best possible with an outsourcing model. Whenever you are looking forward to scaling your business, you can simply outsource a development team and get the work done in a cost-effective manner.
2- Cons
2.1- Less control over the development process
One of the drawbacks of the outsourcing model is that you can be involved in the project but cannot control or monitor all the things. However, with a reliable service provider, you don’t need to worry about the development process and control everything but there are still a lot of business owners who don’t like to delegate important management tasks. In this case, you can hire a project manager to coordinate, keep track & look after the development process closely.
2.2- Difficulty in collaborating in different time zones
When you decide to outsource, your software developers won’t be accessible to you all the time and can be thousands of miles away. This also implies that they would be working in a different time zone. This can make communicating requested changes, or thoughts on your project’s progress, a bit more challenging as compared to hiring an in-house team.
2.3- Communication Gap
As the team is located far from your location and everything works remotely, there can be a communication gap. However, with great collaboration and communication tools for businesses available in the market, this is not a big problem in the 21st century. but still, If you pay attention to the time zones and choose an appropriate service provider, you can easily manage your project.
Which solution is best for you?
Comparing both the models for software development, outsourcing has definitely saved tons for businesses and given the significant cost and competitive advantages. For most of the start and mid-sized businesses, Offshore Development is the best option for app development or any other software development project. The modern collaborative & communication technologies have made it possible to connect you seamlessly with your offshore development team whenever you want to get project details.
The outsourcing model also fulfills the main objective to get the desired service at a reasonable rate where you can make more profits without cutting down the quality! All you need to do is find a reliable IT outsourcing partner, discuss your project requirements, and get started with your next big project.
Discuss your project now!
