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

Have you ever wondered what’s more profitable: an outsourced development team or an in-house development team?

You may already have some opinion on that, but do you know how to create a software development team?

Most importantly, are you aware of the advantages and disadvantages of hiring an in-house vs an outsourced development team? 

Learning the key differences between outsourcing a team of developers with IT outstaffing services and hiring a team of developers locally is what can help you decide which option would be best for you and your business. 

Some of the responsibilities that you may have to fulfill if you hire an internal software development team are: 

• Managing software developers,
• Managing the office,
• Hiring additional employees such as Scrum Masters, an Office Manager, a CFO, an accountant, and an HR team.
• Recruiting new software developers

Conducting a recruitment process 

If you don’t have too much experience in conducting recruitment processes, hiring an internal software development team can prove to be challenging.

There are a few aspects that you’ll have to consider if you don’t want to lose your time and money on a poorly conducted recruitment process.

Firstly, you’ll have to prepare a job offer.

To do that you’ll have to answer some questions about your needs, expectations and possibilities, such as what kind of experience would be valuable for your organization?

What technologies are a “must-have” and what would be “nice to have”? 

Do your research and don’t forget that this is just the beginning.

You’ll need to think about technologies, salary, benefits, workplace conditions, and then you’ll have to plan your budget since most job portals are required payment. 

However, posting job offers might not be enough.

It is more than likely that to find a perfect candidate you’ll have to invest your time in a direct search as well.

Most of the candidates are passive candidates, which means that they are not actively looking for a new job.

You’ll have to learn to use tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, Facebook, Internet forums and more. 

As you can already see, recruiting is a lot of work.

You’ll invest your time and money in the process, and even then you may end up not hiring anyone.

This is why hiring an outsourced development team might prove more beneficial for you. If you outsource, you won’t have to worry about researching and screening candidates.

Here you can learn more about how to hire software developers. 

At a lesser cost

Thanks to outsourcing you can hire software developers without worrying about modern office management, keeping people motivated, trust-building, effective performance measurement or providing necessary tools for IT Project Management, such as Jira or Trello. If you take into account the cost of all this, you’ll realize that with an in-house team you will be exposed to many additional costs. 

With an in-house team of developers, you have to take care of equipment, the necessary tools,  or the mass of other circumstances that accompany the maintenance of employees. 

More free time

As a CEO you won’t be able to simultaneously fulfill your role, maintain the product, supervise the developers, talk to clients, and at the same time take care of the office.

There are not enough hours in a day for you to be able to manage it all.

Not to mention that there are other aspects of developing your products that you should find the time for as well, such as the marketing strategy, target group, competition, branding etc.

It is hard to handle all of that, not impossible, but it requires a lot of hard work.

With the outsourced team of developers, you won’t have to juggle all of these responsibilities at once – you’ll be able to focus on what’s truly important for the success of your product. 

The fact that software development management is so time-consuming is a clear disadvantage of in-house software development.

Have that in mind while making the choice of hiring either an internal or outsourced software development team. 

Easy scaling

Scaling your team up and down immediately each time you need to won’t be easy with an in-house development team.

Imagine that you’re waiting for another round of funding and need to make quick adjustments to your team or that deadlines are approaching and you won’t be able to meet them if you don’t scale your team up. 

When you are outsourcing software development teams and you need to extend or reduce your team, you can do it at any given time.

It won’t cost you money and it’s not an issue for you. 

It’s always good to have in mind that a need for scaling your team up or down might arise when you expect it the least.

Having an in-house development team can be problematic in such an event. 

Choose the right tools

You’ll have to take into account that not each tool available on the Internet, even though it may be a good tool, will be fitting for your type of business, your startup, or for each department in your company. 

You need to match each tool with the processes that exist in your company and you also need to have someone who can not only use this tool but also teach others how to use it.

You, or someone you hire, have to know what distinguishes certain tools from each other.

For instance, similar functionalities exist in project management platforms such as Trello, Asana, and Monday.

What distinguishes them is their approach and the way they solve a given problem.

Operating and configuring a tool like, for example, JIRA requires an employee who is well trained in using this tool.

Workflow configuration should not be handled by a person without knowledge of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban). 

The experience and level of knowledge about the tools that can speed up your processes and that are necessary for your company to function are crucial if you want to achieve results. 

Organizing systematic, valuable workshops and training about the usage of the tools used at the company and having specialists in your team that will be able to train others is a necessity. 

Why outsource to Poland? 

You know now that on many levels hiring an outsourced development team is more profitable to you than hiring an internal one.

If you make a decision to outsource, however, you’ll have to make some other decisions: which company to hire? From where? 

Poland is known as one of the leading 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, at Profil Software, have experience in developing software for many industries, including Real Estate Software, Enterprise Software, Healthcare Software, Speech Recognition Software, and many more.

We recognize the specific needs of each and every industry we’re developing software for and we’re ready to share our knowledge and expertise with you. 

Hopefully, this paper aided you in making a decision on whether to outsource or hire an in-house development team.

Do you know of any other differences between the two? What other advantages and disadvantages do you see in regards to those two options?