Outsourcing and teams

This topic is for the business owner or director who needs software built or looked after and has to decide who does it: employ developers, hire a freelancer or engage a software company, and if a company, one in the UK or one abroad. Every one of those models works for someone. The articles here are about telling which one fits the work you have and the way you want to manage it.

Where to start

• Why do companies outsource software development? separates the reasons that hold up from the ones that deserve a second look, and says when employing developers is the better answer.
• Outsourcing vs outstaffing explains the difference between buying a result from a supplier and adding a supplier’s people to your own team, and who answers for the work under each.
• Offshore, nearshore and onshore development sets out what a supplier’s location changes for a UK business and what it does not.
• How to build a strong product development team from new hires covers the in-house route: who to hire first and which working rules to settle before the team grows.

What people get wrong

The first mistake is choosing on the hourly rate. The rate is the one number every option shows you, so it is the one that gets compared. The costs that decide the outcome sit elsewhere: the time your own staff spend explaining the business, the handover when the arrangement ends, who owns the source code and the accounts, and what happens when the one developer who knows the system is unavailable. A low rate with a heavy management load can cost more than a higher rate with none, and the reverse is also true.

The second is confusing where a supplier is with how it works. A UK company can be as opaque about its code and its progress as any team abroad, and an offshore team can be excellent. Location changes the working hours you overlap and the law the contract sits under, which is something to take advice on. It does not change the questions you should ask, which are the same for every model: who do I talk to, who owns what we pay for, how do I see progress, and what happens at the end.

The third is treating the choice as permanent. Many businesses start with a freelancer, move to a company when the system matters more than one person can carry, and bring the work in house once there is enough of it to keep a developer busy. Each step is easier if the previous supplier left the code, the documentation and the accounts in a state someone else could pick up. That is the test to apply to any supplier, including us.

How this connects to our work

CodeFirst is one of the options described here, a UK software company, and it takes over systems when the previous developer or supplier has moved on, whichever model they worked under. The comparison pages set out the trade-offs plainly, and each one says where the other option is the better choice: software company or in-house developer and UK software company or offshore team.