In-House Web Dev Teams vs Outsourced
Many businesses today that require quality websites, applications, or software need to make a choice: can their project can be executed by an in-house dev team? Or should it be outsourced to an external web dev company?
In-house web development assumes internally full management of the project, required team members and skills, and certain other budgetary and regulatory concerns.
Outsourcing requires delegation of all tasks and management of the project with the exception of decision making and approvals, possibly some project management, and potentially some idea generation — most of this only by choice and not required on the business’ side.
As expected, each scenario has its pros and cons.
In-house development
In-house development is a great option for companies in need of maximum control over all aspects of the project. A company can use or hire its own developers and can look forward to their full attention and loyalty towards the product. All are working toward the same goal of benefiting the same company, which can also have a positive effect on motivation.
The problem for many, though, is finding and corralling professionals with the right skills internally or externally to bring in as an employee. The biggest costs here are time, effort and of course — money. These include but are not limited to: placing and advertising vacancies, interviews, HR department expenses, salaries, taxes, and staff training — and this can all be required for some projects before they even get started!
And — though it’s not 100% necessary to employ each member of staff full time, it is important that team members can work together comfortably to work together and not only individually. This allows the project to achieve greater results through the true collaborative endeavor.
In-house recruitment pros and cons
Pros:
• Project control, fast team coordination and supervision
• The ability for quick changes in the project scope/timeline/budget if needed
• Highly engaged staff working on one project with a vested interest in the success
• Higher response rate and speed due to project and company loyalty (and personal interest of their perception internally as a full-time employee)
Cons:
• Finding a team with the correct high skills
• Cost of competitive salaries for a full-time employee vs. their outsourced counterpart
• Potential for high recruitment and training costs
• Taxes, insurance, workplace organization and equipment provisions
• Consideration necessary for employing new members of staff when the business starts growing
IT outsourcing
A company can choose to outsource the development and receive a fully-ready and fully-staffed team right away. Outsourcing — which tends to be a very popular option at the moment — helps to reduce the many costs and can fill gaps that the in-house team may have.
The outsourced development team would consist of people already with a clear understanding of the development process and its pitfalls for failure or potential for success. Outsourced IT companies have great technology and can easily connect new developers to the project — saving time and money.
IT outsourcing pros and cons
Pros:
• Experienced team
• Highly skilled staff
• All-inclusive service (no need to scale up or down for skills or resources)
• Easy to connect additional team members if needed
• Savings associated with recruitment
Cons
• No company can compare with a full-time team in terms of control and responsiveness
• Separate corporate culture
• Specialists can be involved in other projects
• Risk of not getting on well with an outsourcing company
• Cheaper support but with a slightly lower response rate and speed
• Lack of full vested interest in the success of the product
Which scenario to choose from in-house or outsourced?
The deciding factors usually come down to the best value possible when considering internal vs. outsourced skill sets, costs, and staff resources.
Can you afford — financially or otherwise — to take 5–10 or more core members of engineering, design, PM, and QA off their day-to-day work for at least a few months or more? If not, can you at least afford to hire new employees to fill these roles? If you can’t do either, then you should probably be doing some vendor research.
That being said, even if you can afford to do either of these, it still may make financial or strategic sense to contract out — or it even may cause a financial risk to keep the project in-house — depending on your company’s priorities and true capabilities for staying internal.
Unsure as to Where You Fit In?
Reach out to me at alexey@darwinapps.com and I’d be happy to speak to you on a fact-finding call to best determine your path forward here — no strings attached. It always helps to get a second, unbiased opinion from outside the organization, whether from DarwinApps or elsewhere.
