The choice of the contractor is influenced by the size of your business, financial capabilities and time.
Freelancers.
These are non-staff workers that you hire for a limited time to work on the entire project or just specific tasks. A freelancer can work with several clients at the same time or combine his main job with freelance work.
Plus:
- The cost of working with freelancers is the lowest compared to other options. However, it is worth planning some expenses in case the freelancer incorrectly estimated the project or, for example, if you have to urgently look for a replacement for him.
Minuses:
- Breaking deadlines and stretching tasks is a common situation in working with freelancers. If he is working on several projects, he will primarily solve the tasks of more hot projects. A freelancer can completely stop communicating and disappear. However, a lot depends on how you organize your work with a specialist.
- Relations with a freelancer are based on mutual trust, but there is always a risk of stumbling upon an unscrupulous contractor. In addition, without testing and code review by professionals, it is not a fact that the project will be implemented without bugs and other specialists will be able to support it if you decide to change the contractor;
- A freelancer has no interest in working on your project, except for material. But inclusion to the project is important, and the success of the project will depend on which specialists you select and how you build interaction.
Working with freelancers is suitable when the budget is limited and you have a wealth of experience in project management and willingness to spend a lot of time communicating with contractors. The most important thing is to calculate the risks and always have a plan B at hand.
Development studio.
This is a team of professionals with well-established production processes, to which the client entrusts the work on the project. The studio is responsible for the correct assessment of the stages of work on the project, the implementation of these stages, the documentation and the release of a workable application that corresponds to what is written in the documentation. The client is responsible for achieving business goals and the correctness of the chosen monetization model.
Also, the client is included in the project as its full participant and is responsible for maintaining communication with the studio, providing its employees with access to everything necessary and for promoting the product.
Pros:
- An experienced studio will most likely have experience with projects similar to yours and will be able to warn you against common mistakes;
- The studio is responsible for the quality of the project implementation.
- Code review, testing, management and additional processes organized by the contractor help to make the project of the expected quality within a fixed time frame and budget;
- The client communicates primarily with the project manager. The manager regularly reports to the client about how the work on the project is going, discusses what difficulties arise and how they can be resolved, whether there are risks of not meeting the deadline and what to do to prevent this.
Minus and plus:
- The cost of outsourcing company services is higher than that of freelancers, but lower than the maintenance of an in-house team. On the one hand, the client actually pays the contractor extra for eliminating risks, on the other hand, it reduces fixed costs that are inevitable when working with full-time specialists.
- This is not the most budget option, but it is yours if you want to get a ready-made high-quality project of the required functionality in a limited time frame. Studio will save your time and prevent numerous risks from being realized.
In house team.
This is an internal development team that works on a regular basis in the client’s staff.
Pros:
- High speed of response;
- Involvement of specialists;
- Following the quality standards set by the department;
- High motivation to complete the project with high quality and on time.
Since you yourself select people, it also depends on you what values \u200b\u200bwill underlie the work of the team.
Minus:
This is the most expensive interaction option. It is necessary to find qualified specialists, to interest
them with your project, provide the team with permanent and long-term employment, look for replacements for those who have decided to quit.
Also, the employer must pay wages with taxes, regardless of downtime in production, vacation pay, as well as renting an office, equipping workplaces, etc.
Creating your own development team is worth it if you have a product that requires constant development and inclusion, and you are sure that you can provide a team with a constant load and know how to manage such a team.
A common practice is to order the first version of the application in the development studio, and if the project is successful, to assemble your own team to support and develop it. In this case, you need to make sure that the project is easily transferable from one developer to another: it has a set of documentation, understandable readable code with comments, and is written using well-known technologies.
How to find a studio contractor
The outcome of the project depends on the right choice of studio. It should be as responsible as choosing an apartment or a car: at best, you will be the happy owner of a practical property,
at worst, you will get a burden and a feeling of regret for many years.
Start with ratings. Studying them will give you an idea of the number of studios, the cost of their services and their position in the industry. It is worth focusing on four ratings:
- “Tagline”. The most authoritative ranking of mobile app developers on the market. It takes into account the annual revenue of the studio, the number of employees, the quality of the studio’s website and its recognition among colleagues in the shop;
- Ruward. Aggregator of other ratings. Takes into account the positions of studios in Tagline and a number of secondary ratings.
- Clutch. Ranking with editorial in the USA. The positions of the studios depend on real reviews and ratings from clients who have already worked with them;