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The Pitfalls of In-House Software Development

July 22, 2019 / Bryan Reynolds
Reading Time: 3 minutes

If you need to develop custom software or upgrade your existing enterprise software, you have options. You can opt for in-house development or you can outsource it to a well-reputed software house.

What is In-House Development?

In-house development refers to building a software within your own company, utilizing your own resources and workforce. This may require you to hire an in-house developer to undertake your software project.

In-house software development has its perks. Your in-house developers have a profound understanding of your requirements, your organizational culture, and your overall business. Furthermore, it gives you more authority over the software development team, allowing you to monitor every step and do immediate changes where necessary.

The Pitfalls of Developing In-House

However, there are many drawbacks to going the in-house route that you may not be aware of. If you choose to rely on preexisting in-house resources, you will face some challenges.

These established employees are most likely already busy with their current responsibilities. They may also lack the required skills to create something new. They typically have not advanced their skill sets beyond the legacy software they have been working on for years.

An in house developer may also be too involved in the problem being solved to see things from a fresh approach. A new set of eyes is often times what’s required for the right innovation.

When hiring a new developer for a project, you face another set of issues. Hiring, screening, and onboarding are costly and time consuming. Some developers can interview well, but won’t actually perform.

It takes a long time to find out that a developer was a bad hire. At best, it is just a loss of time and money. At worst, the whole project can get delayed, waiting on code that either wasn’t produced or needs to be rewritten.

Opting for an outsourcing partner for your software projects could prevent the following pitfalls of in-house development:

1. Lack of Broad Expertise

You might hire skilled developers for the development of your enterprise software, but that alone is not enough to ensure the success of your development team.

Unless you have a dedicated IT department responsible for the development of your business software, you might run short of domain experts needed for every stage of software development.

An app development expert won’t necessarily have the skills for quality assurance or bug testing. Similarly, a project manager won’t necessarily have the skills of software requirement gathering, and this can put your development process on hold, requiring you to obtain outside help.

In turn, the overall procedure of managing the development of your software might become even more difficult and time-consuming.

2. Hiring Overhead

Hiring the right software development team is not as easy as it seems. The recruitment of skilled developers, along with software project managers, is a long process comprising of HR interviews, technical interviews, and coding tests.

The screening process of the best IT experts can take up a lot of time and resources, especially if you lack expertise too. Moreover, finding the perfect individuals with the right skills and experience won’t be an easy task as each company out there is looking for the best software engineers. You would also have to offer them a competitive market salary.

3. Climbing Costs

In-house development costs can easily exceed your budget. The enterprise software development tools, along with services like cloud and web-services, can add up. Plus, don’t forget the salary expense for each developer.

Moreover, if your software doesn’t undergo proper quality assurance and testing, the bugs and errors in your system can cause your business to lose money instead, and the additional cost of removing those bugs could create an exceptional overhead for you. Even a minor anomaly in the code syntax can prove to be deadly, destructive, and expensive for your business!

4. Compromised Quality

In-house development won’t necessarily produce the best quality software for your organizational needs. A good quality software product has a totality of its features and functionalities and has undergone significant quality assurance testing under a plethora of test-cases.

Producing professional quality software is a challenge which you need to consider along with the significant costs of designing, testing, and quality checking. Unless you have a separate IT department with an unlimited budget, you won’t necessarily be able to pull it off without significant issues.

By Outsourcing, You Can Avoid These Issues

The easiest way to have high-quality software developed for your business is to outsource the project to a successful, results-driven software firm. By outsourcing, you not only avoid the risk of losing money that comes with in-house development, but you also ensure a proper solution to meet all your IT needs.

Although in-house development may seem like the right approach for your business at the start, once you adopt it, there are many obstacles which may cost you time and money.

Get a high quality software by outsourcing to a company like Baytech Consulting. Not only does outsourcing remove all your additional overhead, but you will also enjoy excellent customer service to help, guide and update you at every stage of the development of your business software.

Baytech Consulting aims to provide your thriving, visionary business with the ideal software it requires to function at its best! Baytech delivers exceptional quality software engineered with the latest and up-to-date software engineering methodologies, tools, and techniques which are guaranteed to prove lucrative and highly useful for your business.