Rob Dempsey posted an interesting article a little while back on the future of software development firms in the new economy. It discusses offshoring, the recession, and a shift towards the employment of permanent staff within companies for Ruby on Rails work.
This is the sort of thing I muse about all the time: I keep a close eye on the web development market to ensure Eden is still in a position to add real value to potential customers. The results are important for deciding what we want Eden to look like in the future.
Ultimately, I want any decision to use Eden to be the best decision for a customer’s business. If it’s not, I prefer to point people elsewhere. So how do some of the indicators Rob mentions stack up against our business model? Are we still the best decision a customer can make?
Offshoring still a way off
The rise in offshoring development doesn’t particularly worry me. I’ve worked with offshore agencies before and there are some excellent companies out there, but the distance and the communication issues do present barriers to the addition of value. The price is lower, but the value added is commensurate.
If the spec is very (very) clear then I think that an offshoring project could work: but the risks are high and difficult to mitigate. I would hate to tie down any of our customers to a particular spec, which is why we always work in an agile a fashion as possible. It’s easier to manage risk with an agile process and to do agile well you need very clear communication pathways.
Bringing it in-house
I have also noticed a move to using permanent staff and in-house contractors to get websites built. The pool of people with Ruby on Rails skills is growing and there’s often no need to hire a contractor at a distance.
However, hiring a big experienced team takes time and the best people are difficult to find. My experience leads me to believe companies will always look to specialist development agencies to get larger jobs started quickly, and to ensure they’re done to a certain standard. We have a number of customers to whom we’ve provided development services in this fashion, often as a kick-start to an in-house team in the process of being hired.
Shifting our focus
We have had to make changes recently: I realised a few months ago we needed to shift our focus away from smaller projects, where the scope was tighter and contractors or offshore teams could price us out of the market. We grew the team to the point where we’re no longer a small group of coders with our own small independent projects. We’re now a well functioning cohesive development agency, taking on larger projects in bigger teams.
We’re looking to diversify too: we’re full of ideas for new web applications we’d just love to build, and we’ll be making some time over the summer to kickstart some prototypes. Watch this space.
Web developers: we always have to be thinking about the market we’re in, especially one as fast moving as ours, where things seem to change by the week. What are your thoughts on the ever-moving web development market?
