Outsourcing vs. Insourcing: Which is better?

Overview

You want to work with the top professionals, but how can you decide between outsourcing and hiring your own developers? The final decision is usually made based on project objectives, scope, and the tech expertise available within your organization. 

Let’s find out if outsourcing is exactly what you need.

Pros of in-house staffing

• Each new project is an opportunity to improve the skills of your team.
• A full-time employee is already immersed in the atmosphere of the organization and understands the goals of the company.
• You can set the work schedule: everyone will be available and ready to collaborate at the same time.
• Having an in-house team reduces the risk of privacy breaches.

Cons of in-house staffing

• Recruitment of in-house developers is a time-consuming process, which includes a lot of steps. You need to find potential candidates fully on your own, conduct interviews, make job offers, deal with a lot of paperwork, onboard, and train new employees. 
• Today it is quite difficult to find Delphi developers with the required skills. 
• A lack of necessary expertise can become a barrier to project realization.
• Your lead developer may decide to change a job at a crucial phase of the project.
• In-house staffing requires ongoing involvement and has fixed costs for labor and benefits. 

Pros of outsourcing

• You can save time by getting access to a rich talent pool.
• You can work with people worldwide and find specialists even with the rarest skills and a deep understanding of the most complex tools and technologies.
• An outsourcing team is very flexible. Changes in its composition will require significantly less time and effort from your side.
• When you delegate an entire project to a vendor, you can focus on other business tasks.
• You get a third-party opinion of your software. This allows you to make better decisions for your core business initiatives.
• Work on a turnkey basis, over the implementation of your project will work not only developers, but also PM, BA QA, DevOps experts and other professionals.

Cons of outsourcing

• Contractors and freelancers do not have a set work schedule. If you want them to work in close cooperation with your team, it can be asynchronous collaboration, especially in those cases when you hire someone from a different time zone.
• If a vendor doesn’t adhere to the same strict rules as you do, you can end up with a substandard service or a non-viable product.
• You will depend on the vendor for maintenance services. It is important to find not just a service provider, but a reliable partner who will arrange the transfer of knowledge and share insights with your team after the project is over.
• You can face the difficulty of finding the right outsourcing company, which will offer the best solutions, not just fulfill the TOR.

When does it make sense to hire in-house developers?

• Your company specializes exclusively in IT products and needs resources for long-term work.
• You have a big budget set aside to offer attractive packages to hire top talents.
• You want to have full control over the process of project realization.
• When your company has an acute privacy issue (e.g., you are a state-owned enterprise or a large company).

When does it make sense to hire outsourced developers?

• There is a necessity to reduce your workload at all project stages from planning to execution in order to focus your efforts on tasks that require your attention.
• You want to hire a pre-assembled development team for your project.
• You need a team with previous experience in migration, modernization, integration, and software development, as well as industry expertise.
• You don’t want to waste your time on looking for developers with the tech stack that is required for your project.
• You don’t have the possibility to monitor the entire development process yourself.

Conclusion

In-house hiring is a sensible approach for those companies that have a stable workload for developers and can allocate big budgets for software projects. When businesses strive for the optimization of their resources and an increase in their performance, outsourcing becomes the best solution. According to Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing Survey, 65% of respondents said that outsourcing helps them focus on core functions.