Article | May 10, 2018

Why Outsource Development: How It Benefits Startups And Why It Works

By Ray Parker, IQVIS

Making The Move To Agile Software Development

Startups are driven by unique ideas after years of research and brainstorming. You might come up with a unique idea on developing a social media platform like Facebook, an app like WhatsApp or cloud storage like Dropbox.

No matter what type of idea you have come up with, one thing is for sure that you need to hire a software development company. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t because the reason is that these companies are equipped with latest technologies, programming languages and most importantly a team of skilled and highly experienced programmers, engineers and CTOs.

Let’s have a look at some of the statistics revealing the software development landscape at startup companies.

  • 25% of tech people were of the view that prioritization is the biggest software development challenge at startup
  • 56% of startups have already outsourced software development to an external partner
  • 60% of startups consider cultural fit as one of the most important hiring criteria

It is recommended to hire a dependable software agency for an effective startup that is well equipped with software development tools, follow updated methodologies, JavaScript development capabilities, and latest web applications.

Outsourcing your development for your startup project can help you cut through the competition. On the contrary, there are possibilities of your IT startup failing due to poor code, the inadequacy of latest technologies and ignoring the latest development practices.

How outsourcing your software development can help you in instigating the startup idea, let’s have a look at it.

Make Your Products Reach Quickly in the Market

The overall business scenario has changed over the past few years. Startups or businesses hired Software Development Company for the sake of just overhauling of their website. Now, these agencies are hired for several purposes. These agencies can help in delivering the final product from scratch until launch with the help of latest IT infrastructure, agile methodologies, and best development practices. The combination of all of these things can help you get your product reach to market and to the end user.

Startups who are looking for not only developing a well-researched and well-developed product but also looking for care and maintenance afterward must think of outsourcing. In 2018 and beyond, competition will get tougher and to stay ahead and on the top demands a high-quality product that addresses the pain point of the end user, without any discrepancies.

Process Management is Agile, Progressive and Adaptable

Firstly, it is important to define what process management is because most of the startups might not be tech savvy. Process management signifies the engineering related activities used to manage product development in startups. When it comes to startup product development, there are many phases where you have to be flexible in approving the changes. For this reason, adopting agile development methodology is ideal, as they adapt to business strategy, have better control over the project, provide accuracy of estimates, handle frequent changes optimally and spend less time in developing.

Lean methodology is another variant of agile, which supports assessing the perilous parts of the software business and offers a Minimum Viable Product to analytically test and plan modification for the next phase.

Prototyping is necessary to lessen the time to market the product. For better prototyping, workflows are needed to deploy soft coded solutions on the first hand, until ideal solution is discovered. With so many methodologies to adopt, startups don’t embrace any of the processes strictly. However, the ever-changing needs of startups allow them speculatively customize minimal process management to achieve short-term goals and embrace fast-paced learning process of their customers to address market vagueness.

Prioritizing Customers Need and Participation

Customers are the driving force behind every startup, as they have to keep their problems in mind and adapt to their requirements. As a startup, you are under constant pressure to adhere to the customers need.

For this reason, software development agencies can hold your hand in optimizing various aspects of the business by utilizing their technologies and tools in the best manner and offer a solution that adheres to customers’ problem. Moreover, the practices and frameworks adopted by Software Development Company will remove any discrepancies regarding the product and market uncertainty. 

Benefit from Experienced and Skilled Resources

The competition is getting tougher and hiring an in-house development team might not suit your budget. As discussed above, you can hire software Development Company to get your product introduced in the market quickly. However, one benefit of outsourcing is to get the most out of their experience and skills while also taking advantage of their IT infrastructure.

Apart from development, the software agency will also take care of UI and UX designs. Consider if you have hired an in-house developer, who is skilled in PHP and JavaScript, but don’t know anything about UI/UX, what you would do. Would you hire another resource – can you afford it. As a startup, your answer would likely be No. However, you don’t have to bear the additional cost of hiring those resources if you outsource your development.

Scaling up Your Business becomes Easier

When you develop a product, it might be addressing the particular pain points of customers. However, after few months or years, things might need to be revamped. For instance, customers are demanding features that are essential for their business needs. What would you do? Moreover, if you are scaling up your business, your product might need some extra features that no one is offering. On the contrary, your competitor introduces another product that is highly

The software development company can prove to be resourceful in this regard, as they will help you add more features. The reason is that they know everything about your product, its coding, its design and UI/UX, technologies - so scaling up is not a big deal for them.

Final Verdict

A number of uncertainties including the success or failure of product surround startups. However, considering the above scenarios, a software development company can help you to fight the challenges and produce a result driven product that addresses the problems of customers.

Author Bio:

Ray Parker is an entrepreneur and internet marketer with over 15 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization, Creative Writing and Digital Marketing with IQVIS.