Hiring a Development Team vs. Freelancers

Having a Hard Time Choosing in Between?



We stumbled across a very interesting question asked on Clarity.fm and thought it was a very important topic to address. The user was wondering whether they should hire a development team or freelancers to build their Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Let’s explain the difference and make the choice easier for you.

• A development team: With a development team, the work process is definitely going to be much faster, because the team members have already worked together before, they know each other, and have established their work system. This facilitates work and gets it accomplished faster, but what you should keep in mind is that this doesn’t ensure you a permanent long-term team. If they get a bigger project, they can easily let go of yours.

Also, if you’re not sure of the market’s need or whether the market is going to accept your MVP, and you’re not familiar with the industry nor have you done a good amount of research, then it is better to hire a development team.

• Freelancers: If you decide to hire freelancers, development will be slower, but it will be more reliable. If you have five freelancers working on your project and one of them quits, you can simply replace them without halting the project by losing the whole team. Choose freelancers if you want a long-term commitment, want to build a strong team, and are confident to make it work.

Two Different Hiring Processes

• Hiring a development team is very tricky. Make sure to find thorough reviews about the company and check their previous clients. We personally suggest not giving big projects to an offshore development team and believe it’s better to hire someone to do the work in-house. If you are spending a lot of money, it’s a very big risk to hire a development team. If you decide to do so, simply choose the most reputable company but know it can be very expensive. A project you can develop for 20k with freelancers can easily go up to 50k with a development team.
• Hiring Freelancers: If you choose to hire freelancers, we suggest the following hiring process:

1. Find the right mindset. To do so, prepare a proper job description that speaks to your ideal candidate. Enthusiasm attracts enthusiasm. So, reflect the energy you are looking for in your job description and through your interview process. That’s the first fundamental thing to do. We personally prefer developers who don’t need any handholding, who don’t play by the rules, and simply get stuff done. We have spent so much time screening applications, doing interviews, and finding the right people that we know the best strategy to find them.

2. Thorough interviews. Hire on platforms like Upwork where you can check the candidates’ previous projects, past reviews, past clients, how they communicate, and how they send their messages. Also check how they communicate through a video call interview because this method is more credible. it’s important you don’t always assume integrity. During the interviews, check whether they communicate well. Having good English proficiency is important, but you also want someone who is able to understand your perspective and know exactly what you need from them. Communication is key.


3. Check their technical skills. If you’re not a technical person, you can do so by hiring a coder to check your candidates’ previous work.


4. A remarkable profile doesn’t mean a good candidate. Don’t get impressed by the experience and skills candidates mention in their profiles. Some people know how to sell their services in an influential way, but actually do not match the kind of work you need them to fulfill. So, make sure to really listen to what they say, and write down everything you learn about this person before hiring them.

This hiring process is the same for any type of software development project. The development process might be different depending on each project requirements as there might be different programming languages and different tools, but the foundation and the hiring process remain the same.

Will You Need a Development Team on Permanent Payroll for Support and Maintenance?



It all depends on your objective and the reason behind building your MVP. Here are two different approaches:

• If you develop an MVP and launch it successfully but still seek to continue developing, adding new features, and adopt an aggressive ambitious strategy to take market shares, then it’s preferable to work with a development team whether it’s a company or freelancers.

Especially if you’re gaining market shares and making profits, you wouldn’t want to stop and pause. You will want someone to be available for continuous coding and developing of new features. If that’s the case, the smart thing to do is to invest part of your profits into development, into market domination, and into taking your business to the next level.

• However, if you’re building an MVP simply to do some market research, validate your idea, and check whether there’s an interest from potential clients, then you will just need someone to dedicate a few hours/week to maintain the software and do regular upgrades. You might not need a developer at all for mobile applications, but if you have a website on WordPress for instance, you definitely need someone to keep updating the plugins and make sure your code is compatible with the latest versions. If you don’t do that, you will be facing security vulnerabilities and your website might get hacked. So save yourself the trouble and hire someone for a few hours/week to do that.

If you need further clarifications and are already using Clarity.fm, then book our own Samer Bechara on the platform, or contact us through www.staggeringroi.com, submit the contact form and book a call! We’ll be ready to help!