Many companies need development assistance for certain projects. What’s their core problem? In the majority of cases, the relevant businesses don’t have full-scale development teams within them. For example, retail companies don’t require software by default: they can easily work without it. However, the need to boost efficiency at some point leads them to a situation in which a transition to software-centric solutions becomes essential. When this need manifests, one has to create a full-scale team to develop a custom app aimed at the specific needs of a certain business. The core goal of this article is to outline the benefits and downsides of different team compositions in the modern IT sector.
The first approach is to invest in an in-house team. It has both significant positives and negatives. On the one hand, an in-house team is fully under your control. In this scenario, you get to hire numerous individuals yourself, having an opportunity to select them for certain skills. You can arrange and rearrange various aspects of their work as you see fit. More importantly, such an approach to development ensures better information integrity. An in-house team is usually a perfect way to keep certain projects secret.
On the other hand, such a dedicated development team has a rather significant set of problems. In what way do those problems appear? Above all, they manifest in the form of large costs. When you hire an in-house team, you have to cover every aspect of its functioning. For example, an investment in hardware becomes essential. Thus, this option is typically acceptable only for businesses that can bear the presented costs. In-house teams are a great option for large firms. More importantly, they’re also much more difficult to optimize. Software development requires you to have skills in the sphere of IT management, which aren’t always present in non-programming companies. Consequently, there’s also a major risk of an erroneous approach to project control.
Considering all those problems, we see in-house solutions as more or less acceptable only for the largest corporations on the market. Unless your business is software-oriented from the start, an in-house team is usually an irrational investment.
So, what are the other options in the presented case? The key option to consider is an investment in remote development. Here, you have two suboptions for your development needs. Firstly, it’s possible to invest in individual developers via freelance platforms. You can hire some individuals to create code for you. They usually have all the necessary equipment to deliver your project at minimum cost. The option is great in a situation when you don’t need a complex app. Thus, even if you hire several freelance developers, there’s no risk of communication problems disrupting the whole development process.
Secondly, there’s also an option of investing in a dedicated development team. How does this approach work? Dedicated development teams are usually parts of certain companies that focus on software creation. Typically, these are businesses that offer outsourcing or, for example, outstaffing services. The presented options give you different approaches to developing your app via a remote service.
Outsourcing involves the process of transferring your tasks to another company. Let’s imagine that you have a logistics business that wants to create a solution for tracking its inventory. Since you’re unlikely to have a large team of developers on your side, you can describe the nature of your solution to a certain company and then ask it to create an app according to your needs. With various frameworks such as Agile, it’s very easy to control the process and correct any deviations from your vision.
This option is highly useful because it allows you to delegate the majority of the development tasks that are highly costly if you try to organize them yourself. Development companies typically enjoy economies of scale and, thus, can minimize expenditures on organizational issues. In this case, every aspect of development will be taken care of by the development team on the other side. You won’t have to assemble a team or buy equipment for it.
Another potent option is the focus on the so-called oustaffing. In this case, you can hire a developer or a set of developers from a certain company to then work under your control. If you have IT managers who are confident about their management skills, this is a perfect way to assemble a team. For example, you may have a manager with major IT expertise: outstaffing will help find that manager a full-scale team without expending money on the relevant infrastructure. Outstaffing is also a great way to enhance your in-house team if you have one. This method is typically a great way to strike a balance between in-house and remote development. You can both control your developers and, simultaneously, save time and resources on equipment for them.
So, what approach do we recommend? In our opinion, there’s no straightforward answer to this question. Every company has its own unique needs that must be taken into consideration during the development process. Therefore, you should primarily consider your resources and development requirements while selecting one of the approaches. An in-house framework typically works when you amass a lot of resources and require maximal control over development. The remote approach is perfect for situations when you have smaller resource pools and smaller apps in mind. In short, dedicated remote teams are usually a perfect framework for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) since they’re less costly than creating a dedicated team.
In the end, what recommendations can we give regarding the selection of an in-house team? You should, above all, focus on finding companies with significant experience in your field and overall expertise in the sphere of programming. Existing portfolios, the number of years in the IT sector, and the existing reviews on the relevant companies represent core factors to consider while selecting a business partner. Companies like Keenethics fit the requirements.