Enterprise software sits at the heart of many businesses’ operations. It is the catalyst that brings the disparate functions of sales, finance, human resources, production and logistics together. However, it is rare for an organisation to implement a solution “out of the box”, with no requirements for customisation. As a result, businesses need to employ some form of development resource to tailor the solution to fit their specific user requirements.
In other instances, an organisation may find nothing in the market suits their needs, so they need to develop something from the ground up. In this scenario, the demand for development resource is even greater. However, experienced development, testing and deployment resources are often hard to come by, and expensive to retain. This is why more and more businesses are turning to specialist service providers to access the resources they need, when they need them.
What does a full-stack developer bring to the organisation?
Development services can broadly be categorised as either back-end (how it works) or front-end (how it looks). There will always be a place for specialist back-end or front-end developers within major projects. However, a full-stack developer, someone with experience in both primary disciplines, can often add greater value throughout a project.
An understanding and appreciation of such diverse subjects as database administration, frameworks and APIs, combined with a broad knowledge of coding languages, responsive design and testing/debugging makes a full-stack developer a powerful addition to your project team. Full-stack developers can take an overarching view of the project and are usually able to deal with issues that arise throughout the development cycle.
Benefits of outsourcing your dev work/full-stack development
The advantages of outsourcing are well established. The same core benefits are in evidence when hiring full-stack developers from a software development outsourcing company:
Scalability
Companies can take on external developers as and when they need them. As they are not permanent employees there is no need to agree to any long-term contracts. Instead, businesses have the flexibility only to pay for outsourcing during the project span when they need them. They also can engage and pay for the developers only at the seniority levels that they need at that time. Furthermore, with advances in offshore remote working, businesses can access a large pool of developers that are based anywhere in the word.
Expertise
A professional software company that offers full-stack development can have a team of technology experts readily available to work on a range of complex development projects in their entirety. External full-stack developers can provide expertise and knowledge in both front-end and back-end coding, together with the ability to assist or even take ownership of the project.
They offer the flexibility to work across multiple programming languages and frameworks such as Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, etc. which can cover a range of complex app development requirements. A full-stack developer also has database administration skills and the capability to handle several popular databases such as MongoDB, MySQL, MS-SQL, etc.
Affordability
All this means that there is no need to retain a large and well-trained contingent of in-house developers. The recruitment, training, motivation and retention of a dedicated development resource can have a significant financial impact on any organisation. If development work is not a sustained, ongoing requirement for the business, this resource will often find itself under-utilised. For many businesses, retaining inhouse development skills is a luxury they cannot afford.
Agility
With access to an external pool of resources, businesses can rapidly provision expertise when and where needed, accelerating development timelines and allowing projects to be brought to market faster. Where new opportunities exist, outsourcing your development projects means you don’t need to delay the start by recruiting or training resources on the skills required.
Software testing and deployment
Of course, when it comes to introducing new enterprise applications or functionality, development is only part of the story. Testing can often account for the majority of the project timeline, with bug fixing and subsequent iterations become time and resource intensive. Simplifying and automating the functional testing of software can help dramatically reduce project costs and timelines.
If you can eliminate the need for specialist coding skills to carry out testing you can leverage business analysts and super users to build and execute test scripts. Automating the execution and repetition of tests will reduce the time spent on testing and eliminate the risk of human error.
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