What's worth outsourcing when building an app?
Even for highly experienced development teams, the’re a persistent "build vs. buy" conundrum - or more accurately, "build in-house vs. outsource". Outsourcing shouldn’t be viewed as solely seeking cost arbitrage, because when done correctly, it can open the door to specialized expertise and a more efficient use of resources.
Strategic outsourcing that goes beyond cost-cutting
For experienced engineering teams, the urge to outsource is rarely driven by simply cutting labour costs. After all, going cheap could lead to technical debt or poor code - a mess that ends up costing more to undo. Instead, the focus is on accessing difficult-to-hire skills on demand that scale up and down easily with the project. This can accelerate time-to-market for certain features, and allow the in-house team to focus on broader development processes.
For a solo entrepreneur with no coding expertise, however, outsourcing may look very different. Rather than paying a high cost for a bespoke site (that they won’t be capable of maintaining), outsourcing might simply be using a proficient and accessible website builder, as this will be more manageable to maintain.
Areas ripe for outsourcing in app development
An internal team might define core user flows and backend architecture, but outsourcing specialized UI/UX design and marketing efforts can really elevate an application from functional to exceptional. No matter how well developed, the goal is usually adoption and engagement, and internal engineers aren't particularly known for their aptitude at human psychology, persuasion and visual design.
Expert design agencies are particularly useful here to bring a refined understanding of platform-specific human interface guidelines. Micro-interaction subtleties matter, and accessibility standards aren’t only important for adoption, but compliance, particularly within financial promotions and disclaimers. A fintech application, for example, might outsource its interface design to a firm that specializes in secure financial UX. In fact, this is even more true for outsourcing the financial copywriting, which must be both technical and aware of the constantly changing compliance rules.
Making outsourcing work
Effective outsourcing is all about laying out the scope and technical requirements very clearly - and this is why outsourcing is easier (and therefore can make more sense) from experienced in-house teams who are adept at this communication and understanding. It might mean providing exhaustive specifications and well-defined API contracts, along with unambiguous deliverable criteria to prevent integration friction.
The selection of the right outsourcing partner is, of course, not about just cost comparison, but value once a minimum standard of quality is expected. Vendors should be chosen based on their experience in the specific technology or sector that is being outsourced, meaning one agency shouldn’t be relied upon for all outsourcing tasks, else you may as well hire internally.
Getting the balance right
For competent software development teams, outsourcing can be used as a remedial measure, but also as a way to accelerate a project without the hassle and costs of internal hires. That way, development cycles are faster, and the team remains more agile to adapt to project demands. Outsourcing, then, is about accessing niche expertise or simply speeding up resource-intensive tasks.