Hi, I’m Christina, a sales manager at Purrweb, an MVP design and development company. I understand how difficult it is to choose between in-house and outsourcing. In the first case, you know all the strengths and weaknesses inside out, but you can’t share the responsibility with anyone. In the second case, there is a wide range of specialists with any expertise you need but you have to immerse the contractor in the product from scratch and spend more money.
In this article, I’ll talk about four main situations when outsourcing is more favorable than developing an MVP in-house. Especially, if you are not ready to sacrifice your sleep and health.
If you don’t have time to build a team
To launch an MVP, you need a team: a couple of skilled developers, a designer, an analyst, and a QA tester. If this is your first startup, you’ll most likely need to build a team from scratch. And you will have to spend not only time but also money. According to Resources Workable, it typically takes an average of 30 days to hire employees in the IT industry. However, the search may take significantly longer for middle-level or senior-level professionals.
If you outsource your MVP development, you save time on hiring employees. The contractor already has a team, and they’ll quickly involve it in your project. You can launch a project on the spot, not in 3 to 6 months. Moreover, you don’t need to think about what to do with new workers after the release if the product won’t take off and you won’t develop it further.
At Purrweb, the team consists of 5 to 7 people: an analyst, developers, a UI/UX designer, QA testers, and a project manager. If we work with a startup’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), we suggest talking to our CTO during the introduction phase. It is necessary to discuss the project’s business goals and hire a team with the most appropriate technical skills.
Purrweb case study
We created a foodtech application called Talentum. The idea of this service is that users choose a chef who cooks food in the kitchen, and then delivers it to their home. At first, the client planned to develop an MVP with their own resources and ordered only a design from us. However, the client had time commitments to investors. That’s why they finally asked us to take on the technical stage as well.
What we achieved:
-
- In one week, we created prototypes of the client and chef profiles to test the hypothesis.
- Within a couple of weeks, we created a project roadmap with design and development stages.
- Prioritized all stages of work to meet the client’s budget of $24,000.
- Released the MVP in 5 months.
The client asked us to focus not on the food but on the real people. To do so, we added a chatbot that identifies the client’s taste preferences and created a UI design that emphasizes the chef’s personality.
If you want to minimize the number of curveballs
When you create an MVP in-house, you have to deal with unforeseen situations on your own. When someone gets sick, quits, or just makes a big mistake and rides off into the sunset, you will have to deal with all of this: redistribute work, calm down the team, find new solutions, and hire new employees.
A true tragicomedy
An outsourced contractor will take care of the problems. Here are some real cases where they can help you out:
-
- You can’t integrate an external service into the app. The contractors will clarify all the reasons with tech support and set everything up.
- The app didn’t pass the verification in the stores. Our outsourcing team will promptly check the requirements and eliminate all errors.
- You need to strengthen your in-house team to launch the product quickly. The contractor will select new team members. You will only need to evaluate their skills and, if desired, agree on their CVs.
In an experienced outsourcing company, managers deal with unexpected situations every day on dozens of projects, so for most problems, there are well-established solutions. For example, additional developers with the same expertise may be needed in case someone in the team gets sick for two weeks. In-house development can rarely afford such a luxury.
If you are sick of business calls and the need to manage everything
Even if you’re an extreme introvert, you still need to communicate with your in-house MVP development team all the time. You should run the meetings every day, think over the checkpoints, and make sure that your plans and facts won’t be like the “before-after” memes. It’s easy to get burned out when you’re not used to it.
This is how a CTO might feel when immersed in the operational processes of an MVP.
An outsourced contractor will delegate some of your management tasks. For example, we at Purrweb use familiar principles from Scrum for flexible development. Here’s how we build processes to stay within budget and time:
-
- Plan sprints — divide the project into two-week phases, during which we complete a part of the MVP.
- Hold daily meetings — we call our team every day to determine the goals for today.
- Arrange demos — show the sprint results to the client.
- Reflect on retrospective meetings — discuss with the team what problems were encountered and how they can be solved at the next sprint.
A project manager takes responsibility for the project checkpoints. At the design stage, the client can attend online meetings twice a week to discuss the MVP concept and synchronize the details with us. During the development period, just twice a month is enough. Throughout the project duration, the manager sends daily reports to inform the client of what was done yesterday and what is planned for today.
Here, you can read more detailed information about management in our studio.
If you realize you lack the expertise for the project
It is difficult to create niche MVPs even if you’ve been working on IT products for many years. For example, you can’t create an app for Buddhists if you have never worked with this target audience. An outsourced team can bring useful expertise to the project because a large contractor usually has in its portfolio more than one hundred projects for different niches and countries. Here are two key situations when the expertise of an outsourcing team is useful 👇🏻
✔️ Project preparation. An experienced outsourcing team will advise on how to approach a complex project. For example, if there is a request for something like Tinder for the Arab marketplace, the analyst will do some research on the target audience from the Middle East and check the demand. If there’s none, the contractor will suggest how to pivot the project.
Moreover, the contractor will help prepare for the project if there’s insufficient time. An MVP is compared to a bicycle — you first need a handlebar, wheels, and pedals. The rest can be added later. An outsourced team will take an experienced look at the scope of work, without which the application will not move forward and cut off the less important things.
Purrweb сase study
We developed a mobile version of the CRM system for a manufacturer of agricultural machinery. The client had a custom CRM system, but it worked only on a PC based on 1C. The problem is that sales managers in the agricultural sector often work in fields where the Internet doesn’t work properly. That’s why we suggested the client develop an offline product with access to the database and the option to synchronize notes.
At the development stage, we came across a complicated task — we had to work with the client’s backend, make a UX familiar to managers, and synchronize the desktop with the mobile version. Our system analyst talked to the client and identified the main sections needed for managers’ daily tasks: Calendar, Interests, and Partners. These three pillars became the basis of the project.
To make the application work without the Internet, we set up an offline database. It stores all the manager’s activities and system events. When the connection to the Internet is restored, the database is synchronized with the server. We managed to finish the product in about 4.5 months.
You can see how we adapted the client’s CRM system for the mobile version 👇🏻
Here is what the “Interests” section in the desktop CRM of our client looked like.
The process of creating an “Interest” in the mobile version. For each step, we created a separate screen. Users can check the deal’s overall progress with a progress bar.
We added colorful blocks to the sales process screens to simplify navigation.
Added a calendar with daily, weekly, and monthly events.
And thought over the offline mode.
✔️ Design. For a complex product, the audience may have specific UI/UX requirements. For example, in the app designed for visually impaired people, you should keep in mind that it would be hard for users to tap on multiple buttons or rate photos. An outsourcing company can study a customer database with a similar target audience to define the requirements more precisely. Or it can engage an analyst who knows how to conduct research for non-standard projects.
Purrweb case study
Spanish filmmaker Daniel came to us to create a design for Dosis, a streaming platform. The portfolios of local companies didn’t fully match his vision and that’s why he decided to look for a contractor on the international market. Daniel appreciated our approach to design, noting our deep focus on the user experience.
We showed our client the references: Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney+. Then, we approved a concept with Daniel and moved on to visuals. We chose a dark theme with a soft gradient and one accent color — orange — so as not to distract users from the content.
All the stars aligned for this project because, in our portfolio, we already had more than 300 MVP cases with similar business goals.
Therefore, the development of the Dosis app followed a proven plan.
Check out the UX and UI design for the donation system on the Dosis app 👇🏻
The app color scheme: a brown gradient and orange accent details.
The user experience design: recommendations on the start page and a catalog with content search.
The content author’s page with a bright donation button.
The cryptocurrency wallet — a regular UX feature for the bank app.
Conclusion
Let’s recap once more when you should consider hiring a contractor for the MVP development 👇🏻
- You don’t have time to build an in-house team.
- You don’t have enough resources to solve unexpected problems like employee resignations or challenges with launching.
- You don’t want to take part in meetings every morning and control your team’s work 24/7.
- You work on a non-standard product and feel you lack relevant expertise.
I wish every CTO could one day try off a Michael Scott role and live blissfully unaware for at least a couple of weeks. Read more cases about development and app design outsourcing on our blog.
