The availability and convenience of the internet and smartphones have opened up the floodgates of brilliant business opportunities for organizations as well as startups. It’s becoming progressively common for local and global companies to develop an app to build brand awareness, broaden their reach, and increase online visibility. While most of the market-oriented and sales-driven organizations are unambiguous about their goals, but one question that baffles them is whether they should build and manage everything in-house or outsource the development of their app projects to another agency. Here’s the answer.
More and more businesses are increasingly outsourcing their app development projects that would require otherwise more internal resources, capital investment, and multi-tiered infrastructure. There’s a misconception that leveraging the expertise of an outsourced partner costs you a lot higher than if you decide to do it all in-house. But cost-effectiveness, among the other greatest benefits, is one of the biggest reasons that companies choose to outsource. According to recent research, the outsourcing in-app market is growing rapidly at CAGR of over 26 percent and is soon expected to reach $25 billion by the end of 2023.
If you are looking to outsource your next app development, here we have listed the top four commandments and tips that will ensure a smooth development process and provide exceptional end results.
#1: Freelancer Vs. App Development Agency: Choose Wisely
When you decide to outsource your app development, the first challenge is to reach and choose the right partner who can manage and carry out the specialized tasks with minimal input on your part while delivering the productive results. In such case, you can either hire a freelancer who can create the product as per your requirements or employ expert services of a professional IT agency that can be your one-stop solution for all of your app development needs.
Hiring a Freelancer:
Pros:
- A lot of businesses follow the path that leads to the hiring of an experienced freelancer developer since they are likely to have a low hourly rate as opposed to a full-fledged mobile app development firm.
- In majority cases, the app developer will be a specialist who can better understand your app’s code and design, add new features and functionalities, and complete the process efficiently based on your project characteristics.
- Hiring a specialist recommends new constructive directions that you might not have anticipated before and also enhances the quality of your project.
- You can also designate a freelancer to work with your in-house team to provide consultancy on various development subjects and build an app in accordance with your specific requirements.
Hiring an App Development Company:
- Working with a professional IT agency is much more organized, effective, and process-oriented.
- It functions as a one-stop shop which offers you all the technical resources, more strategic initiatives, and a team of experienced developers and designers who work together to reach the desired results.
- An agency walks you through all the technical aspects of the development process and offers a UI layout to visualize how the end product will shape up.
- Another greatest advantage of employing expert app development services is that they will handle all the tasks, from creating a backend and APIs to designing the front-end layout, thereby providing you with innovative and adequate finished products.
#2: Define and Outline your App Idea
Before initiating the interview process to hire someone, you need to understand and plan your business requirements and set clear goals. Identify what exactly you expect from your app and also specify what is needed to be done. Doing so helps you figure out what you want the developer to do, and also what the developer can anticipate from you. If you don’t, you won’t be able to communicate your ideas and specifics of your app to the developer. That’s why you need to develop a detailed project brief and ask yourself some questions such as:
Who is your target customer?
What’s the scope of your app?
Do you want an MVP or a full-fledged app?
What platforms your app will be based on (Android or iOS)?
What technical specifications do you want to integrate into your app?
Do you require a hybrid app, native app, or progressive web app?
#3: Choose the Right Technology Stack
Many startups start with an advanced scaling technology in order to manage larger operational demands and improve efficiency without considering the underlying technical requirements, only to discover later that there’s no market for their app. With the gradually changing frameworks and technologies these days and your potential users searching for your business through different devices, it’s important to choose the right technology stack and development tools for the success of your app project. A typical web or mobile app can be boiled down into two main parts:
- Front-end or client-side
- Back-end or server-side
Before commencing on the project, choose a web server, database, and programming language and its associated framework for the back-end tech stack. Python and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) are two of the most popular stacks used by developers.
The same way, you need to select a user-facing language, like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, for the front-end development.
#4: Clarify and State your Project Budget and Timings
The next thing you need to do is to be specific about your project’s budget and deadlines of delivery. Make sure that the budget you are allocating should be balanced appropriately against the set of technologies being used, experience, and the scope of the product, quality, delivery time, and other significant aspects.
Hiring an outsource agency or freelancer might initiate the subsequent irruption of smoldering issues of availability and response time. Since lack of communication is one of the major hurdles that businesses encounter during the outsourcing development, it’s important to establish an appropriate and reliable communication channel, so that you can keep an eye on the project and maintain a smooth process.
Takeaway:
An outsourced mobile app development company is a knowledge bank for businesses. The implementation of a great app development strategy can be devised by your organization, without a doubt. But, at some point, you might need to hire them in order to plan and execute your entire app development project. Perhaps, you lack experienced developers or resources or technologies or money to build your app in-house. A professional IT agency or freelancer leverages all kinds of right tools and their skills to pull-off your million dollar app idea into a successful, functional product and address various loopholes and issues. They intensify the speed of your app development as well as deployment process while reducing your operational costs significantly.