Choosing a Software Development Partner in 2025

Is your in-house team operating at full capacity, you're grappling with unfamiliar tech, or a previous outsourcing attempt fell short of expectations? Then, the right development partner can add extra hands to the mix. It's about achieving faster results, minimizing risk, and driving your business toward its key objectives.

IT outsourcing has become a pivotal component in the global IT services market, accounting for 37% of worldwide revenue. Valued at $412 billion in 2022, it is projected to grow substantially, reaching an estimated $812.70 billion by 2029. This rapid expansion highlights an increasing reliance on outsourcing AI development vs. in-house team hiring. Remarkably, 76% of businesses already depend on external service providers to fulfill their software development needs.

This blog will help you identify the ideal development partner by aligning their expertise with your strategic goals, budget, and timelines. It's time to explore how you can avoid common pitfalls and make a choice that truly drives growth.

Who May Look for a Software Development Partner and Why?

Smart companies understand that waiting for a crisis to seek external support is a risky move. Instead, they bring in expert assistance when they aim to accelerate progress, manage risks, or tackle complex, large-scale challenges. The focus isn't just on filling roles but on ensuring that their technical strategies remain on track during critical business moments.

Selecting the right software development partner is fundamental to the success of any project. A poor choice can result in 

• higher costs
• missed deadlines
• subpar outcomes

On the other hand, a strong partnership

• provides access to niche expertise
• lowers costs
• accelerates time-to-market
• ensures high-quality results

Here’s an exploration of the key scenarios where engaging a software development company can make all the difference.

Your Team is Stretched Thin or Lacks Specialized Skills

Even the most talented in-house teams can reach a breaking point, especially when venturing into unfamiliar areas like AI, blockchain, or high-compliance projects. Don't wait until workloads become unmanageable. For instance, attempting to master advanced machine learning mid-project can lead to wasted months and missed deadlines. A skilled development partner can step in to keep essential projects on track without overburdening your staff or pressing you to hire hastily. Think of them as an extension of your core team, available to support you when demand spikes and willing to step back when things normalize.

You Need to Scale Quickly

Your in-house team should focus on core tasks like product roadmaps, user research, and building strategic partnerships, not getting bogged down by routine coding or infrastructure management. Outsourcing tedious tasks like bug fixes or configuration troubleshooting also ensures your top talent is reserved for high-impact work that drives revenue and strengthens your competitive edge.

You’re Tackling a Large or Complex Project

Enterprises often underestimate the scope of legacy upgrades or large-scale implementations, only to encounter hidden challenges such as outdated dependencies, incomplete documentation, or workflow mismatches. Imagine discovering too late that your infrastructure can’t support real-time data pipelines after sinking months into development. By engaging an experienced development company, you benefit from their expertise in managing similar challenges, avoiding pitfalls, and keeping your project aligned with your roadmap.

You Operate in a Regulated or Specialized Industry

Compliance-heavy industries like healthcare, fintech, and e-commerce leave little room for error. Overlooking regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, or PSD2 can lead to fines, delays, or significant reputational damage. Working with a development partner who is well-versed in regulatory frameworks ensures your product is built to comply with industry standards right from the start. This minimizes risks and lets you move quickly without worrying about foundational missteps.

You’re Building an MVP or Testing a New Market

When it comes to validating a business idea, speed is everything. You need to get your minimum viable product (MVP) to users quickly to gather feedback and iterate. Partnering with a software development team that has proven workflows and tools helps you move fast without compromising quality. This isn’t just about creating a disposable prototype. It’s about building something lean yet functional, providing real value to users while giving you the flexibility to adapt or pivot based on feedback.

Services that Software Development Partners Can Offer

The rising extent of available technologies makes the creation of unique solutions much easier.

There are some foundational services that any decent outsourcing software development company can offer.

Digital Product Solution Design

If your company already has an existing project that needs updating, a skilled outsourced team can help. Many companies on the market offer comprehensive design plans with clear stages of making your product better and more appealing. As a result, your company receives a great chance to achieve business objectives and deliver results to consumers.

Digital Product Solution Strategy

Every promising business relies on some crucial information. It includes having clear business objectives, understanding challenges, and having different perspectives on scaling the business. A good partnership leads to the fact that you receive unbiased angles on your business path. Look for experienced counsel concerning various digital product strategies that directly support your business objectives.

Software Product Delivery

A good software development partner is capable of bringing together a comprehensive team. Leveraging diverse groups, they often include UX experts, project managers, technical leaders, QA specialists, and software engineers. Offering such a service in the right manner often delivers world-class technologies as part of solutions to your business. 

Software Product Development

Naturally, it will be the most time-consuming part of the partnership. Outsourcing companies often operate with priorities and strict deadlines when providing software product development services. Such an approach ensures iterations on the project are delivered regularly. 

Check out our Jobs.vet case study that proves how finding the right software development partner changes the business for the better.

Increasing Startup's Efficiency and Expertise

If your startup has an in-house development team without proper experience and expertise, it seems incorrect to use them for projects that have significant value for your company. In turn, you ensure your in-house teams are engaged in other tasks, perhaps the ones they are more proficient at handling. 

In terms of tangible solutions for startups, they mostly resort to outsourcing to increase operational efficiency. Check out our case study about the development of Jota app from scratch as a great example of how a good software development partner might bring great value to the startup. 

Offering Affordable Solutions

On average, hiring a software developer costs about $100,000 annually. While it may sound like a hefty price, the action brings much more in the long term. At this point, outsourcing results in affordable solutions for startups and small businesses. As an outcome, it helps such companies grow and scale fast.

Check out our Lulu Light case study that proves one does not need a big budget to validate the idea for a startup.

A Chance to Follow Strict Timelines

Following the timelines means your project will be completed on time, and your clients will receive the product they waited for. When postponing the entire process, your customers may consider switching to your competitors. 

With the range of services mentioned above, the right software development partner can ensure your business survives the turbulent times and even grows into something you envisioned. 

Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing the Right Software Development Partner

Choosing the right partner is a hard science. It means that you cannot afford to shoot into the sky. Instead, you need to follow particular rules that raise the chances of the outcome you expect. Here, we would like to offer a step-by-step guide for selecting the software development partner. 

Without further ado, the following are ten steps for choosing the right partner to develop your project. 

Step 1: Project Assessment

It is crucial to apply a critical eye to the project you intend to outsource. Just take a step back and objectively evaluate what is most important in the process. During this phase, one of the key aspects is to consider how outsourcing will affect your initial vision of the project. 

Speaking more specifically, break down a global project objective into smaller goals. Next, try to quantify particular benchmarks you want the project to meet. Another important sub-step is to explore the reasons for outsourcing the project or its parts to a software development partner. When engaging in project assessment, emphasize costs, budget, staff skills, and management capabilities.

Step 2: Defining the Scope

Almost every project's success depends on the ability to set clear objectives and realistic expectations. Essentially, it means anticipating what your project will look like. However, it is crucial not to set unrealistic expectations and understand that the project might not be as effective as you envisioned it to be.  

To be as objective as possible, start by setting the precise requirements that show the project meets the initial expectations. When developing the estimation, consider the resources you plan to employ along the way. Having sufficient resources at all stages of the project competition is paramount. Experts suggest envisioning the scope of the project through a visual outlook. For instance, you can use mock-ups and graphical layouts of the software during this planning stage. Having visual rhetoric might greatly benefit how your software development partner delivers the project. 

Step 3: Setting the Time-Frame

Every stage of the project must have its own time frame for completion. It grants you a more achievable perspective on the project itself. Having a global deadline helps understand when the software needs to be developed and delivered to the client. In turn, having deadlines and timelines for every project gives you an insight into whether the global competition goes according to plan.

Notably, if your team or yourself does not have much experience, it might be challenging to set timelines and estimates. A business software development company can help you with the task. Don't be afraid to rely on a more experienced partner. Once you have information concerning the time frames and deadlines, you can break the project into parts. Project managers can also deliver outlines for the completion of each piece to make the process as smooth as possible. 

Step 4: Defining the Budget

When having clear objectives, scope, and timelines, it is time to think about the budget. Usually, you need to lay out the budget for the entire year to understand how the outsourcing fits into the broader financial statements. While it may sound obvious, you need to determine the annual budget. At this point, to understand the value of the project, which is crucial for budget estimation, you might consider developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or engaging in some in-depth analysis of all the factors impacting the budget. 

Step 5: Planning Staff Resources

Planning for the project should factor in the impact that outsourcing has on your internal staff. At this step, consider how people working in your company will be affected by the outsourcing elements of the operation. Think about managers and internal developers. When working with a software development partner, you might need to allocate your managers to cooperate with the project completion. Besides, if you do not have a full in-house team of developers but have several software developers who might help an outsourcing team, you need to factor in that. 

The key objective of the stage is to plan out how outsourcing affects broader company operations. Consider the number of hours the project might take out of your staff. 

Step 6: Evaluating the Technical Stack

After key aspects of the planning stage, it is crucial to emphasize the technical elements of the project. First and foremost, identify factors like programming languages and comprehensive technologies required for project completion. Experts suggest listing these elements and briefly describing how each technical aspect will be used. 

Such an approach ensures that the best developers proficient in the programming languages and technologies you need will be working on the project.

Step 7: Considering Outsourcing Options

The next step is to consider various types of outsourcing options. It is the moment when you plan on how you will use the developers, both in-house and outsourced ones. There are two key options to consider:

• Staff augmentation model. It is the option of hiring external developers for a particular contracted period. In such a case, your internal management will oversee the developers and ensure they coordinate all the processes with your internal staff. Such an option allows for expanding the talent pool and grants more control over the project.
• Project-based outsourcing model. All the control is handed to a development partner in such a case. When thinking about the model, there are several things to consider. From one perspective, reduced control puts less stress on people. From another perspective, when giving all control to someone else, you need to be sure that your software development partner can deliver. Naturally, the option needs more scrutiny in choosing a company to cooperate with. 

Each model has its pros and cons. It is up to you to determine which case the pros outweigh the cons. 

Step 8: Setting the Location of Outsourced Professionals

Geographical and cultural factors might have a major impact on how remote and in-house teams work. Consider the following types of location outsourcing:

• Onshoring. The type of outsourcing is based on getting remote talent from within the country where your company operates. While the approach can be more expensive than the other, it grants fewer language and cultural barriers.
• Nearshoring. This is the type of outsourcing from nearby nations. Often, such an approach grants lower development costs. In turn, some time zones are retained. With nearshoring, there are more challenges associated with language and cultural barriers. For the United States, nearshoring is often directed at countries in South America. 
• Offshoring. The type of outsourcing includes looking for software development partners in distant nations. Nations like India and China are obvious choices for offshoring. It is the least expensive option. Yet, it often grants the biggest language and cultural challenges. 

Keeping all the outsourcing location options, it is crucial to consider whether you can handle language and cultural barriers while reaping the most benefit from paying the least. Remember that your company needs to be prepared internally to deal with any obstacles. 

Step 9: Comparing Prospective Software Development Partners

The next step is about comparison. You need to have a robust understanding of how the outsourced project will be integrated into the company’s overall structure. Once you develop a clear picture of how the process will be handled, it makes sense to search for a partner officially. Considering two key factors in searching, namely reliability and price, there are a number of places to search for partners.

For instance, you can visit freelance marketplaces. Places like Fiverr and Upwork give you the IT world at your fingertips. Keep in mind that online marketplaces have developers for hire who vary in quality and flexibility. 

There are businesses that offer more flexibility, yet cost more than online marketplaces. Yet, for the price, you get high-quality talent, professionals who will deliver the project without you needing to have control over every inch of the process.

Within the step, you need to consider your budget and whether you can afford gambling with online marketplaces, and potentially suffer from the lack of quality and flexibility. 

Step 10: Contacts and Evaluations

When you have a clear vision, it is time to make the first contact. You need to focus on how a prospective partner communicates and engages in decision-making during this step. Interview several potential partners to narrow down the pool of candidates. You can also factor in small test projects if you cannot recognize the talent from the get-go. Also, remember to set a trial period. It is time you made a final decision on whether you made the right choice. 

Questions to Ask Your Potential Software Development Partner

Here is the list of potential questions to ask your candidates:

• Do you have software development experience in a particular area?
• Do you offer back-office functions?
• What is the degree of project control required on our site?
• Does your team have sufficient IT skills to meet the criteria of this project?
• How scalable is your team? 
• Is it possible to quickly expand your team if necessary?
• Do you provide a compliant cooperation model?
• Who will own the source code?
• How will the cash flow be controlled?

These are foundational questions granting you a clear perspective on the qualifications of potential partners. A trustworthy software development partner will be capable of offering both professional software development and accounting services. Besides, you need to consider intellectual property and ensure that you sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). 

The next part is to consider development methodology and technology. Ask your candidates about their development process. There is a massive chance they will mention Agile or Kanban. While anticipating such an answer, you might also ask whether they have a unique approach to Agile software development. Maybe they have some "special sauce" when working with the methodology.

Finally, ask your potential partner about the technology stack and technical skills. Look for candidates who have experience working with cutting-edge technology like AI and blockchain. If they do have the necessary background, ensure they are ready for long-term partnerships.  

Possible Challenges in Selecting a Software Development Outsourcing Partner

There are several possible challenges you may encounter when selecting a company to cooperate with. 

• Lack of development experience in your project's field. Every company wants to illustrate its professionals as experts. Yet, often, the reality is a bit different. To avoid disappointments and ensure a successful partnership, look through their customer reviews. Investigate the prospective partner's background to ensure their technical skills meet the real output. 
• Unclear pricing. Trustworthy companies always speak openly about each developer's hourly rate. The best software development partner will also offer some anticipations concerning the potential hidden costs, such as employee buy-out fees. Focus on how a partner speaks about pricing and how apparent is the pricing model. 
• A lack of loyalty. You need to understand that a software development partner will consider you a temporary client without any long-lasting commitment. For some companies, such a vision might result in a lack of loyalty and an inability to offer the output you look for. During the partnering process, keep the focus on how loyalty changes. 
• Cloudy intellectual property rights owner. Consider the scenario when your partner owns the source code. It can keep it after the project is completed or transfer the ownership to you. Naturally, these moments need to be discussed and outlined in the software development partnership agreement and other legal documents. 
• Communication through a third party. In the case of onshoring and nearshoring partnerships, it is always best to speak directly with a partner. Be cautious when they communicate with clients through a third party. There can be massive misunderstandings on the way because of that. 

In the tables below, you can see the pros and cons of both in-house and outsourced partners. This way, you can make more informed decisions suitable for your specific situation.

Wrapping Up

We hope this article will be helpful on your way to finding and building a long-term, successful partnership. As you might have noticed, the biggest task is to understand your objectives and how much time and effort you can invest in the planning process.

Impressit guarantees that partnering with us will be the best experience and will bring the best results!