For various reasons entrepreneurs need to use outsourcing in software development: limited budget, the lack of internal expertise, save time and strengthen the team, rapid new technology implementation, experience in similar projects, renewed core-business focus, reduction of risks, and so on indefinitely. The truth is outsourcing might be used by everyone. However, each of the businesses has particular situations, needs, and requirements. Seems clear that there isn't a universal model that you are allowed to pattern by. It would make sense to get into the three pillars of outsourcing and figure out which types of service models you can be provided with.
Project-Based Model
The project-based model is commonly used in outsourcing. This method includes the hiring of the team to develop and launch a fully-realized product for you whether it is an app or website. The point is simple: the company, which you take into service, deals with the scope of work itself. Therefore, you don’t need to bother about working hours, each employee's job assignment, and employment size. You describe your idea - a software company brings your dream to realization within the scheduled time and appropriate budget.
Pros
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Management from vendors. In case the field of your business is far from IT, you should reach out to engineers aided by project managers. The purpose is that such an approach saves your time. Instead of staff control, you will focus on the job you’re good at. Let the PM know about the fundamental purpose of your business once, and they will come up with an end-to-end solution, which is suitable for you.
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Well-defined requirements. It’s particularly relevant whether you’re a small or medium business owner. Being clear about the idea, your strategy, and the area of your business, the vendor has to assess the workload, number of the team members who are involved in the project to estimate a rough timeline of the project.
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Time-frames. As soon as you describe your goals and suggest the additional preferences, the outsourcing company will be able to establish the time when developers might wrap up the project. Consequently, you’ll be aware of the approximate time when the employees will have met the deadlines you appoint and put a project across.
Cons
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Low control. Although you describe the vision precisely, it doesn’t mean the contractor will provide you with the exact product you've dreamt about. Providing your project’s requirements are stiffly accurate, no one would promise you will obtain what you want. Since you have to be up on workflow to modify technical demands which are unlikely to come useful in prospect.
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Deadlines. Even if you estimate the accurate time and set a deadline for realization, there’s no guarantee the team will meet this target date. There is little likelihood that development flow takes place smoothly. Given this, you should be aware of a fact that delays are inevitable, and calculate the time taking tests, bug fixing, and refactoring into account.
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Further support. The project-based model implies that you work on a fixed-price model and will pay for complete projects only. Such a method guarantees you will get the desired result. Yet here, each product needs to be supported and maintained to remain competitive. If you want to stay on top steadily, you should consider an option to cooperate with your software vendor permanently through another model.
Is it for you?
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to define your goals before the development process starts since your project’s requirements won’t be changed. This model suits you in case the duration will take the development company nearly several months and you care little about tools, absence of long term-commitment, and employees who’ll be involved. Hence, the main goal for you in the project-based model is to find a reliable outsourcing team that brings the ideas to realization.
Dedicated Team* Model
This model applies to long-term projects which have a huge scope of work and unpredictable timescale. Contrary to the previous model, this one provides means for hiring at a rate of one developer or the whole team alike. Essentially a dedicated team is used by companies who want to cut back on employees and retain the quality of product simultaneously. Accomplish this, you pick out a software company that provides you with the available engineers to select the certain ones who will engage in your project only.
[*You could find the term “outstaffing” which is the other name of the dedicated team model. Such definition is widely used in the Eastern European countries]
Pros
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Specialists. Working with a dedicated team model you will extend the staff by middle and senior developers only since this model implies that each of the developers has to work as an individual participant. There is a low probability of hiring a low-skilled junior instead of a more experienced middle in case you interview every one of the candidates yourself.
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Direct management. As it is obvious, your remote developers should work under a project manager or team lead who checks workflow. manage the team. More often than not dedicated staff is managed either by team-lead or by the project manager from the client’s side. As a result, you reduce the risks arising from misinterpretation or misunderstanding of tasks.
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No need to predict the whole scope of the project. The pleasure thing about a dedicated model is that there’s no need to predict the approximate time of the project close-out. This flexibility is derived from a particular price model. As against a project-based model where you pay for the whole project, you will pay for the total hours worked monthly. Hourly rate thereby is a cost-effective solution in the long run project, which duration is over 6 months.
Cons
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Low efficiency for short-term projects. Employing engineers by this model for the projects which aren’t going to be prolonged, you'll be bound to overpay. Only if you need one developer for debugging and refactoring rather than the development of a full-fledged application, this model might be appropriate for you.
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Hiring the right team might take time. Despite high-quality programmers who are willing to work as a part of an extended team, searching for the required employee always takes a while. Until and unless you find a certain person who matches your requirements by skills, by culture, by personality, you will be looking for them.
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Increased workload. The more people you employ, the more management duties you have. As a technical leader, you should be assured all team members have enough tasks according to their office hours. Notwithstanding modern project management software, you’ll still need to be aware of the generic state of the project and have the capacity to manage remote staff.
Is that going to suit you?
The dedicated team model idea is that you’re short of several people rather than have the scope of work that might be acquired by developers according to the schedule. That kind of model provides for contract duration from half of the year onward. In this manner, the remote team takes part in general performance and becomes full-fledged engineers of in-house staff. It’s the most appropriate for your project if you have had strong technical skills and establish the approximate number of employees you need to meet your deadlines accurately.
Staff Augmentation Model
Many of the businesses are adopting staff augmentation to manage both planned and unpredictable changes. Key factors of this outsourcing staff model are the next: cost-reducing, efficient, and flexible employment model which helps to remain competitive in the market. Despite the similarity to the dedicated team model, such extension of your in-house team provides for situations in which you feel the lack of knowledge or technologies inside of the internal team, rather than scarcity of workmen. Then and there you’re able to keep your project on track regardless of changes toward your industry in the common market.
Pros
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Spare the time. Since augmented developers have a strong technical professionality in their field, the whole run-time process will be flown by the due date. What is more that you won’t waste the time for a period of probation? As soon as you make up your mind to hire augmented engineers, they will be prepared for dealing with the tasks starting on day one.
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Make better use of existing resources. Following the idea you’re taking into the professionals' service, your in-house team might focus on responsibilities they are skillful at. While critical tasks are maintained and remained on track by in-house coders, your outsourcing partner will help to manage the risks of business process stability which is related to the improvement of the current product.
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Developers engage in your project only. The price model of hiring staff augmented team is similar to dedicated team one. You pay for working hours instead of paying for the completely delivered project. Thus, each developer keeps working on your product throughout the hours paid for work by you.
Cons
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Training and integration of new team members. No matter how much experience the programmer has, it takes a particular time to be accepted as one of the team and feels comfortable with the new working schedule. Unless you find training time for external employees, their productivity will be down further.
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The progress depends on you. The success and the failure of the project entirely up to you. Even if you’re provided by crack specialists, it won’t guarantee progress since this one depends on your planning and implementation only. To ensure the top-level headway you have to recognize the purpose and set goals for the team extension, estimate the scope of work, and quantify the right number of engineers.
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Knowledge leaves with the person. There are two reasons to augment the existing team: to teach your in-house staff or to meet target tasks by applying technologies your team hasn’t used. In the second case, you become dependent on the person who uses technologies that are new and unknown to the staff.
Is there any good using an augmentation model?
Who doesn't want to scale up the current team of professionals? Well, probably someone hasn’t this desire in case of satisfaction for small favors. Otherwise, the entrepreneurs want to extend the staff to make a profit the sooner the better. The augmentation model suits more for solving the headaches which are regarded as a lack of technical expertise. From henceforth outside experts help to either provide training to inner staff for new technologies or carry out the tasks so as they have the rare tech-stack.
Final thoughts
Eventually, the business processes which are established with the aid of offshore outsourcing are more profitable than recruitment to the in-house office. Despite your needs, you’ll reduce costs due to low labor costs and the absence of payments for taxes' settlement, office rental, and state duties. From here, outsourcing is a simplified means for development acceleration. As a customer, you can reduce or move up the number of engineers with all that mentioned above. All in all, talent acquisition is a tricky challenge that requires a clear view of the objectives. The right purpose and evaluation of workload and number of precise employees will lead every project to success whatever complex it is. At Naprok, we witness that each business has its approach. In doing so such project estimation is obligatory to reach your goal. Even though you hesitate whether a certain model helps you to make a profit, contact us and we’ll consult you.
