What is the Difference, Pros & Cons of Outsourcing and Outstaffing Models

Outsourcing and outstaffing are models created to provide development services for businesses around the world. Although these hiring models look the same, they still have specific features that differ them from each other. This article may be interesting for CTOs, tech PMs who are looking for software developers and interested in hiring outsourced engineers. Here we will talk about how they contrast and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each model.

Outsourcing vs Outstaffing IT Models: What’s the Difference?

Although each of these two models has some stable similarities (a third party is attracted to develop the project, both provide developers from other countries, and they all work remotely), they are still different in their purpose.

With outsourcing, you hire a whole development team to work on the task with PMs who manage the development process. The customer only provides their expectations, goals, and documentation of the required project.

On the other hand, outstaffing is a good option for scaling your development team with one or several developers with the same level of experience and skills as your in-house engineers.

Outsourcing: Advantages and Disadvantages

The main advantages of outsourcing are the following:

• Fewer responsibilities. With outsourcing, you can hire a PM for the development team, which means you won’t need to manage the project and developers by yourself.
• No need for manual hiring. Outsourcing agencies are able to provide you with developers very quickly as they often have a big recruitment department to work on searching for engineers.
• Rapid start. By having a wide talent pool of developers that can easily switch between the projects, outsourcing allows you to begin developing the product very soon.

Some of the disadvantages of the outsourcing hiring model:

• Cost. Although it is a cost-effective solution, there are still possible hidden costs.
• No full control. It may be a problem for those companies that prefer full control over the development process, as in outsourcing PMs, and vendors are those who primarily run the development process.
• Communication issues. Not having full control over the development team, working remotely also can cause communication issues and misunderstandings.

Outstaffing: Advantages and Disadvantages

The Outstaffing model has the next advantages:

• Cost. It is a cost-effective solution as you only pay for developers working hours and decide how many engineers you need for your team.
• Speed of hiring. The Outstaffing model allows you to hire one or several developers quickly as outstaffing agencies find the best candidates very fast.
• Full control. As you hire with an outstaffing model, which means you scale your team with engineers, you have full control over their work, and they are managed by your PMs.

When talking about disadvantages, there are the following:

• More responsibilities. As soon as you have more control over the developers, you also acquire more responsibility for developers’ actions and how they perform during the workflow.
• Communication issues. As outstaffed developers work in different time zones, there may be some misunderstandings about the work.

How to Find and Hire Outstaff or Outsource Developers?

You can find many ways of hiring remote developers as this field is well-developed. You only need to do research abou the existing development agencies that can provide you with high-quality services.

With YouTeam, a marketplace for scaling your development team, you can find engineers with all the required skills and experience. It is because each development agency we work with is carefully handpicked, which means they are trustworthy and reliable to hire programmers from.

If you want to read more about our advantages and how the hiring process is held, visit our blog.