Frequently asked questions

Like almost anything else, software development outsourcing has two sides. Let us first look at the advantages:

Cost efficiency

The main advantage of outsourcing is its affordability. In-house software development involves expenses for maintaining employment, social security contributions, hiring, training, allowances, etc. In contrast, by outsourcing software development, companies only pay for the services rendered. Collaborating with offshore outsourcing software development companies in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, etc. can further reduce software development costs while improving turnaround.

Scalability

Through outsourcing, you can quickly boost your programming team with additional members and instantly downsize when a fire has been extinguished or a major checkpoint has been reached.

Short time-to-market

Outsourcing companies can quickly rally a full team of programmers. With preconfigured and optimized workflows, you can get started right away. Additionally, as mentioned above, you can always quickly scale your team to speed up development. All this facilitates the fastest possible introduction of the software.

Access to the virtually endless talent pool

Let's face it: missions do creep. It's perfectly normal to have an urgent need to bring in new teammates who will either have extra hands or the knowledge of totally new technologies. Software development outsourcing companies employ IT professionals with a variety of specializations and talents, which allows them to quickly deploy and shuffle the workforce they need. With in-house software development, the recruitment process or training can take months.

Now let's move on to the main disadvantages of software development outsourcing:

Security risks

Software development outsourcing involves disclosure of confidential projects and private data to specialists whom you never met. To avoid data breaches and other incidents, we strongly suggest that you only choose a reputable outsourcing partner whose business depends on the word of mouth, and always insist on signing a non-disclosure agreement to protect your intellectual property.

Lack of control

When software development is outsourced, it may seem like you are removed from the process, taken out of the loop, and literally have no idea what's going on. However, in the post-COVID world, most digital business manage swimmingly, and many others have been successfully working across multiple timezones for years and years before the lockdowns. Teams, Slack, Zoom and so on let you be as involved as you feel necessary. Any project manager worth their salt (the kind we exclusively hire) will keep you briefed weekly, daily, or at any cadence of your choosing.

Ineffective communication

With a remote development team, you may think that more effort and headache will go into communication. Language and cultural barrier may seem like an issue. These are valid concerns, but again, experience gained globally in 2020-2022 shows that these obstacles can be successfully overcome. As for the language, we make a point to hire people whose talents include fluency in English.

Unsupported Code / Developer Lock-In

If you're outsourcing the development of a strategically important solution to a low-quality provider, there is a real risk of ending up not only with the low-quality code, but also with the exorbitant fees and/or unrealistic timelines for critical updates. In contrast, with a reliable outsourcing business your back is covered on multiple levels: the code is efficient, clean, well-documented, and commented; your freedom to take your solutions to other specialists is never impeded; and critical updates are applied because it's the right thing to do.

The proof is in the pudding. If your customers keep pouring or trickling in and staying at the same rate as before or better; if they complain less and engage more; but at the same time the costs have been reduced, then you know that your development outsourcing endeavour has worked out well. If you want to move into the micromanagement domain, then we can offer multiple popular metrics that have nothing to do with the bottom line: billed hours, lines of code, number of incidents per release, support cases opened, cycle time, and so on.

Communication is the only thing that may be as important as or more important than the quality of our code itself.

• Guided by Extreme Ownership principles, we make sure that everyone on every level understands what and why they are doing and how it contributes to the big picture. We answer questions as many times as necessary to drive the message home, so there is no one-way "communication" at Stoutworks.
• One of the key criteria that we choose people by is fluency in English. Even if you call an individual developer, you are guaranteed to be understood and to clearly understand them.
• One of the first things decided on every project is the check-in cadence. This is based on your preference.
• To save your time and energy, every project has a single point of contact on our side. If you insist on having more people involved, we will certainly look into accommodating this request.
• Every client is offered all the access they may need to their project's resources and workspaces. You can keep an eye on the progress even between check-ins.

All software projects are the same in the sense that they are made out of the code and the environment where this code runs. As long as developers can access or replicate your environment, you can outsource any project: data work, mobile apps, desktop apps, games, QA, SaaS, etc. The only insurmountable obstacle is legal: for example, if you are a defence contractor, then you may not be allowed to outsource some of your work to certain countries.