In an effort to reduce internal staffing costs, businesses around the country have tried and failed to successfully outsource development efforts. While contracting development might initially seem like a great solution to tighten technical budgets, cost savings are rarely realized due to communication issues and poor quality.
In this post, we’ll explore 3 Ways to Successfully Outsource Development:
1. Immediate savings can cost you terribly down the road
One of the primary drivers of contract development is the need to decrease development costs and innovate quickly. Building and maintaining a highly skilled team in-house is not only expensive, it is time consuming and requires experienced recruitment and management. In an effort to move quickly and reduce costs, IT managers opt for outsourced development, often without fully understanding the implications and risks associated with this approach.
The true cost of this development strategy quickly becomes a heavy burden to the organization.
Communication issues coupled with poor code quality, lack of “ownership”, attention to detail, and poor architecture decisions plague code bases for the life of a product. Eventually, the true cost of outsourced development can be multiplied exponentially in the form of long term quality issues and repeated need for component “rewrite”. The result, reduced product quality and increased time to market.
2. Hire a Partner, not a vendor
Given the cost and quality pitfalls of contract development, how does a business stakeholder successfully reduce costs and employ a software development strategy that produces results?The key is to look for a strategic development partner, not a vendor-for-hire. The difference is subtle, but makes all the difference at crunch time when quality and speed are most critical.
Vendors do work for clients according to very carefully defined statements of work and timelines to reduce their risk. Partners immerse themselves in your business, as if their very livelihood depends upon your success. A vendor will talk contract.
A partner will act like an owner and embrace change if it is good for the business. Partners are willing to speak up and challenge you and always look for better ways of doing things.
A Partner will work with you. A vendor will work for you. The difference pays dividends in software.
3. Contract for specialized expertise
Outsourcing development resources is a perfect opportunity to hire for expertise that would be too costly to train or obtain internally. Contract development teams work with many different clients and keep their skills sharp. Look for outsourced talent to bring expertise that not only supports your existing team, but brings you a competitive advantage in the form of hard-to-obtain technical training.
One of the top advantages of a successful outsourcing strategy is the ability to have a fully diverse team that brings skills to the table that would otherwise take months, if not years, for your internal team to acquire.
Despite the challenges and pitfalls of outsourcing, partnering with a development team is not only a viable alternative to internal employees, but if done right it will provide a real competitive advantage for your business.
Ritka Puri from Startups.co highlights the advantages realized with outsourcing:
Even with a CTO and co-founder on board, I’m going to look outside before developing anything internally. The reason why is simple. Technology-based vendors see the same challenges and pain points, over and over. They see trends across companies that we, as founders, simply can’t. When it comes to choosing infrastructure that protects and empowers our customers, I’m not willing to take any chances.
Are you looking for a strategic development partner? Contact us today.