In-house Software Development vs. Outsourced Software Development

by Administrator 7. April 2010 09:09

When it comes to having their software development needs met, many companies consider in-house software development as one of their options. A number of companies even opt to hire in-house software application development experts, windows mobile applications developers and other software development professionals. One of the reasons why companies opt to hire their own in-house team for software development rather than using a software development company is to reduce costs. However, the question is whether such an approach really helps the company in effective cost cutting and whether it is a viable option.

On the outset, it might seem to be one of the best ways of cutting costs, but in the long run many companies switch to outsourced software development. There are many hassles involved in going for in-house software development.

First of all, you need to have the right team in place. You will be spending a lot of time, money and energy in the recruitment drive. Not many people take into consideration the costs involved in running a recruitment drive for finding the right software development team. Secondly, you should have a person monitor and assess the quality of the work, the output given and the productivity of the team hired. You will have to either do it yourself or make use of a team manager. This is going to cost you more money either in terms of your time or in terms of the salary paid to the team manager.

Furthermore, the attrition rate in the software industry is very high so you will be forced to look for frequent replacements to ensure that your project is completed in a timely fashion. This again will increase your overall expenses. That is not all, the final solution that is offered by your software team should be a stable and usable solution. You will end up micro-managing the entire process besides handling the hassles of providing the required infrastructure for your software team, getting required software licenses, etc.

You can completely avoid all this pain and even save a considerable amount of money by outsourcing software development needs. You will just need to make sure that you hire the right company to work as your software development partner. They will deal with all the other hassles including finding the right resources for handling your project, finding replacements if the assigned resource should quit, ensuring stable and usable solution etc. This will certainly leave you with more time that you can use to focus on the core functionalities of your business. These are some of the main reasons why a outsourced software development model saves money.