What Is Good for an Irish App Project: Hiring an in-House Team or Outsourcing Development?

When you need to develop an app for your business, you can either choose to hire a development team for the project or you can just hire an expert development company or freelance developers with experience and expertise in similar projects. While the first is called in-house development, the second we call outsourcing. Question is, what is suitable for app projects, in-house development, or outsourcing app projects? Well, there are pros and cons on both sides and that is precise because we are digging into this comparison.

In countries like Ireland, for some years, there has been an increasing demand for small business apps. Most of the Irish businesses that are now building their own branded apps lack the infrastructure and expertise required for mobile app projects. For small enterprises in Limerick or Cork, it is really difficult to make hefty investments just to shape their mobile presence. This is where outsourcing comes to their rescue. Businesses in remote parts can hire Irish app developers from KleverApps an app development firm in Ireland and get the job done very much within their budget.

Here, throughout this blog post, we are going to explain different types of outsourcing and the pros and cons of both outsourcing and in-house development. Read on.

4 Different Types of Outsourcing

Now you know the basic value proposition of outsourcing. This is time to explain various types of outsourcing. Here we explain them briefly.

• Onshoring: This is basically delegating development tasks to a company or developer team from the same country as yours.
• Offshoring: This is all about delegating development jobs to a company in a different country.
• Nearshoring: Nearshoring is a type of offshoring, and it is about delegating development tasks to a company very near to the country of the client company.
• Homeshoring: When you assign a development task to a team of freelance developers who will get the job done using their home-based infrastructure, it is called homeshoring.

Key-Value Propositions of Outsourcing

Outsourcing apart from the competitive cost advantage offers a wide range of value propositions. In the context of app development in Dublin, both offshoring and onshoring app projects became popular because businesses want to stay ahead through a state-of-the-art technologies, expertise, and experience that leading development companies offer.

Some of the key value propositions of outsourcing app projects include the following.

• Domain Expertise: Expertise in the particular domain takes months to establish and hence startups can quickly get access to the domain expertise by expert outsourcing development companies.
• Experience in Similar Projects: An outsourcing company having experience with several different clients of your niche can easily give the best output for an app project.
• Best Practices: Having dealt with multiple development projects an outsourcing company can always adhere to the best development practices and ensure the best output.
• Robust Technology Stack: Often a Software as a Service (SaaS) product requires expertise in multiple technologies including frontend, backend, and database technologies. This is where a reputed development company excels with robust development teams having expertise across several technologies.
• DevOps & Agile development expertise: Outsourcing companies generally are versed with the latest development methodologies such as DevOps and agile that ensure faster and quality output.
• Cost Competitive: Outsourcing app projects ensures saving considerable cost on IT infrastructure and developer resources and saves the entire trouble of hiring resources and setting up a development facility.
• Reduce chances of failure: With proven expertise, knowledge, skills, and resources an outsourcing company reduces the risk and chances of failure for the app project to a great extent.
• Ensuring scalability: The SaaS products that need continuous support for evolving needs are best handled by well-established IT outsourcing companies. Cloud-based support further ensures this scalability.

Shortcomings of Outsourcing

Not all attributes are positive about outsourcing. There are several shortcomings and challenges with outsourcing app projects as well.

• Lack of communication: The communication gap perpetrated by geographical distance and different time zones is often a big stumbling block for outsourcing app projects.
• Lack of control: Outsourcing projects requires a certain amount of “let-go” attitude and doesn’t offer full control on the app project from start to finish.
• Challenge to sync expectations: Outsourcing companies often disposed to their own domain expertise and established practices can concentrate less on new and unique approaches and can actually churn out a model product rather than the unique app client expected.
• Security of code and Intellectual Property: In spite of taking all precautionary measures including setting up several VPNs, you are always exposed to unknown risks for your intellectual property that can be reused or cloned by the outsourcing company by using stealthy tools. The exposure to hackers and several ransomware threats pose equal threats.

Key-Value Propositions of in-House Development

When there is too much praise ushered on outsourcing app development projects, we should not forget that many leading apps have been built in-house simply because there couldn’t be a better approach than this. In-house development has its own share of pros and cons. Let’s start.

• Proprietary Technology: A startup launching a completely innovative gadget powered by an equally unique app, is likely to prefer in-house development just to keep all its mission-critical tech innovations secret from competitors.
• Complete Control: Getting total control over each and every aspect of the app project right from the start to the finishing line, is a key impetus for startups and many companies to opt for in-house development.
• Frequent iterations: An app built in-house allows unlimited scope of iterations throughout the project and opens up scopes to enhance the app product on a continuous basis. In-house development allows incorporating quick changes every now and then.

Shortcomings of in-House Development

• Cost intensive: From establishing the IT infrastructure to taking onboard expert developers, in-house projects involve rigorous costs compared to outsourcing app projects.
• Lack of expertise and experience: Finding the right developer resources with domain expertise and experience can be very challenging and time-consuming. This can often result in a lack of expertise and development experience for the said app projects. 
  
• Distractions from business objectives: For a business dealing with in-house IT projects can be tremendously distracting resulting in a slow pace of business growth.
• Time-consuming: Managing development projects in-house can be time-consuming and can take a considerable portion of time from the app developers.

In Way of Conclusion: Should You Opt For Outsourcing or in-House Development?

Finally, let’s face the question and the dilemma that every startup faces. Should a business opt for outsourcing or should it hire in-house developers for their app projects? Well, since there are pros and cons on both sides, there are app projects that will be benefited by embracing both of these approaches.

In case of a very ambitious, highly complicated and multilayered app project involving rigorous development efforts for more than a year, it is always advisable to opt for in-house development. But remember, such app projects should not have constraints related to costing and budget.

On the other hand, all startup and small budget app projects needing quick rollout time will find outsourcing as a better option for their app projects. The businesses that lack domain expertise, development experience and exposure to similar app projects also find outsourcing more helpful.

Making a decisive choice between in-house and outsourcing software development should always depend upon multiple business factors that come into play. Starting from Ireland based mobile app development cost to project requirements to required expertise, technology stacks to scalability needs, all factors play a role here. Last but not the least, you also need to consider finding the best development company for your app project.