Internal vs Outsourced Software Development Team – what’s more affordable?

Introduction

You’re thinking about developing your own product, but don’t know whether you should hire an outsourced development team or an in-house development team? Let us help you make that decision! In order to do that we will go through the advantages and disadvantages of hiring in-house vs. an outsourced development team. It will give you an idea of what you can expect from both of these options. 

Know the difference

Your duties will vary depending on whether you’re working with an outsourced team of developers from a software company or hiring a team of developers locally. If you decide that you want to work with an in-house development team, you’ll have to be ready to:  

• manage software developers,
• manage the office,
• hire additional employees. Scrum masters, an Office Manager, a CFO, an accountant and an HR team.
• Recruit software developers that are skilled, talented, and won’t resign after a short period of time. Here you can find out how to hire software developers for a startup? 
• spend more time managing your team than actually developing your product.  
• scale your team up and down – hiring the developers at the beginning of your project may not be enough. Due to the challenges, ever-changing needs of clients, and many other variables, you’ll probably find yourself in need of scaling your team up or down at various stages of your project.

 

What can you expect if you hire an outsourced team of developers? 

Spend less, gain more

Modern office management, keeping people motivated, trust-building, effective performance measurement or providing necessary tools for IT Project Management, such as Jira, etc, are some of the things that you won’t have to worry about if you hire an outsourced development team. This is one of the key reasons why many companies choose this over internal development teams. 

If you decide to hire an in-house development company, you’ll have to be ready for some additional expenses.  

You’ll have to find the time to research the market and prepare job offers as well as find the right tools for your requirement process, choose job portals, and finally, select the right people for your team, and make sure that they’ll stay with you. 

Ask yourself: what can you offer to the developers? You’ll have to make sure that you have an office and tools tailored to the needs of your future employees, you’ll have to come up with benefits and opportunities that you can offer to them, such as medical care, knowledge base, participation in the conferences, and more. 

If you hire the outsourced team of developers, the equipment, the necessary tools, or the whole variety of other conditions that are necessary for the maintenance of employees are no longer your problem. The only thing you need to focus on is your product, so not only will you spend less money but you’ll also gain more time. 

Time is money

Fulfilling your role as a CEO, maintaining the product, supervising the developers, talking to clients, and at the same time taking care of the office, as was noted above, takes a lot of your time. 

It might not seem like a lot right now but managing every single above-mentioned task and keeping your employees satisfied and motivated at the same time might not only take all of your time but also take your mind off what’s important: your product. This is a clear disadvantage of hiring an in-house software development team. 

With an outsourcing development team, administrative tasks, the workplace, coordinating office supplies, managing your team and your office, and all of the other tasks mentioned above, are not your responsibility. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about them. You can focus on other aspects of developing a product that might need your attention, such as the marketing strategy, target group, competition, branding, etc. 

A happy employee is a productive employee

One may wonder, why is it so important to keep your employees motivated and satisfied? Do I really need to concern myself with all of this? The answer is yes, you really do. 

If you go through the recruitment process without putting much thought into it, it can result in hiring random people that won’t fit in with your organization and won’t stay with you for long. To ensure that you don’t waste money on going through countless recruitment processes and onboarding new employees,  you should do your research on how to hire software developers for a startup. 

You’ll need to learn about job offer preparation, the choice of the right technologies, assessing salary, job portals, direct search and selection of candidates, and many more, in order to conduct a well-prepared recruitment process. Only that way you can ensure high-quality work and satisfying results. 

However, hiring a talented staff with the right skillset is only the beginning. Now you’ll have to make sure that they stay with you. The fact that your idea for a SaaS startup is innovative won’t be enough to achieve that. It takes a lot of time and dedication to create a suitable environment that keeps people inspired and motivated.

Firstly, it requires regular talks with employees. Listening to them and their needs may help you keep them happy and a happy employee is a productive employee. For example, it is not so uncommon for people to get bored of performing the same tasks over and over. Changing the tasks, the area they’re working on, their projects or even their role may increase their performance at work, but if you don’t devote your time to employees you’ll never realize that it is something that’s needed. 

It is also more and more common to use mindfulness and meditation to improve creativity and productivity at work, manage stress and anxiety levels, and keep the employees relaxed. Introducing meditation and mindfulness to your workplace may start with urging your employees to take short breaks, giving them access to an application that will help them start their journey with meditation and mindfulness, or investing in meditation booths or zenbooths at the office. For example, we, at Profil Software, funded a room designed for meditation and mindfulness at our office and we have regular talks with our employees to ensure that they have everything they need. 

Covid-19 pandemic and long weeks and months of isolation that followed made many people realize how important mental health is. According to the studies conducted during that time, many people felt discouraged and fatigued when they were forced to stay at home, many lost their motivation to work, and just as many realized that working from home is not only a possibility but also something that can make their lives easier on many levels. It was proven, however, that it was when employees had no say in whether they were going to work from home or from the office, that their motivation dropped the most. 

As you can see those who were able to choose were more motivated than those forced to work either from home or from the office. This shows how important it is to give your employees a choice and that it is even more important to listen to their needs. If you choose to look into the subject of workplace wellness, you’ll quickly find many ways in which you as an employer can uplift your employees. 

f you don’t know where to start you could always turn to apps designed to guide you through meditation and mindfulness programs, such as Take3Breaths App – guided meditation app. 

Of course, instead of managing all of that, you could trust an experienced outsourced development team such as ours. 

Scale your team whenever you need 

Outsourcing enables you to expand or reduce your team at any given time without the fear of losing money. The process of scaling with an outsourced team is quick and simple – a well-trained staff can meet your every expectation. The company you’re working with can adapt to your needs and provide temporary support whenever it’s needed. Why it is so crucial to be able to scale your team up and down easily? For instance, you may want to scale your team up in order to meet deadlines or scale it down when you’re waiting for another round of funding. 

If you have an in-house team of developers, however, it won’t be easy to scale your team up and down immediately each time you need to. 

What about tools? 

Every type of business, every startup and every department of a large company is unique, in the sense that not every tool that one can find on the Intern will be suitable for each and every business, startup, etc. 

The possibilities of numerous specific tools used for IT Project Management are well known to us. Similar functionalities exist in software such as Trello, Asana, Monday, and Microsoft Teams to name a few. The manner in which these tools work on solving a given problem is what distinguishes them from one another. 

Each tool should correspond with processes that occur in your company. Operating and configuring a tool like, for example, JIRA requires an employee who is well trained in using this tool. Similarly, workflow configuration should be handled by someone who has an understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban). There are many tools that may help speed up the software development process and you don’t necessarily only need advanced software like JIRA to improve the workflow. Even using such a simple tool as Trello can help you manage your employees’ work. 

What is crucial is to not dismiss the importance of writing down tasks and communicating with your team. If you want to be successful in managing it, though, you need someone experienced in using them; someone skilled and good command of these tools. 

This is why it is so essential to have regular training on how to use various platforms, as well as to have someone on the team who will be specialized in this and therefore will be able to train others. 

Outsource to Poland

Poland is known as one of the most advanced countries when it comes to the development of technology. Many of our developers have already worked on projects of various sizes for multinational companies. We have an easy point of reference in their approach to development, thanks to a large number of meetings, conferences, and activities within the local technology communities that help them develop better products. 

We are experienced in developing software for many industries, starting with Enterprise Software and Shareholder Management Software, through Speech Recognition Software, Route Planning and Optimization Software, Crowdfunding Software, up to Real Estate Software and Healthcare Software. We worked on many different applications, always taking into account very specific requirements and needs of each and every Industry. 

For instance, as a healthcare software development company, Profil Software developed an application with real-time telehealth video calls, an electronic health record (EHR) and electronic medical record (EMR), safe data sharing, online doctor appointment booking, and so on. We’ve also worked on managing and integrating payments for this and other Industries, knowing how important it is in this day and age to have safe payment systems that can adjust to the client’s needs. 

Conclusion

Hiring an outsourced development team instead of the in-house one is more profitable, because, among other things, it reduces costs, lets you shift your attention to the development of your product, makes scaling easier, and provides you with the help of a professional. Still, we can lay out all of the benefits of hiring an outsourced team of developers in front of you, but the final decision belongs to you. 

Dedicating your time, money and resources to hiring in-house developers can work in your favor – you just have to be prepared for all of the hard work that comes with it and all of the issues that can arise during the development process. It can easily lead to you getting stuck with your project somewhere in the middle, which is not something anyone would want.  So, before you make any irreversible decision ask yourself: Which option is better for me? Do I want to do it all by myself or outsource and focus on the tasks that are more crucial in the grand scheme of things?