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Margo Kosnik
2019-08-30

What are the differences between a software house and an IT staffing agency?

Companies seeking programmer support often face the dilemma of what kind of collaboration to develop with an external partner. Sometimes, the services provided by software houses are mistakenly confused with those of IT staffing agencies, which are - literally speaking - recruitment agencies. What is the difference between both types of cooperation and which can be more effective for your project?

What is a software house?

Software house is a professional software development company that develops and implements custom projects for its clients. Software house provides comprehensive services in the field of product and software construction. You will find there experienced developers, product designers and project managers who care about implemented products.

Undoubtedly, the advantage of software houses is the importance they place on analyzing the client's business needs. If you want to build a product from scratch, then a software development company will help you not only to create the highest-quality software, but also provide you with consulting and advice on the proposed solutions. Such a partnership offers not only professional technical support from experts, but also suggested solutions that will meet your business needs.

what is a Software House

Another benefit of working with software houses is high-quality services. Their employees are experts in various fields, which ensures comprehensive services and exchange of knowledge. I will give you an example. If you want to build software for your product, the software development company will not only help you create it, but also suggest you the best solutions and share with you the best solutions. You can also work with UX/UI designers who will tailor the product in line with current market trends and preferences of your clients.

To sum up, cooperation with a software house is based on the development of projects in which complex teams are most often involved (depending on your needs). It ensures high stability and quality of work. This can be the perfect solution for you, especially if you plan to create a product or functionality from scratch. As a rule, this can also be a very cost-effective solution, because employing and maintaining your own in-house team is usually much more expensive and requires greater involvement of internal employees.

What is an IT staffing agency?

An IT staffing agency is a recruitment company that specializes in recruiting developers for the agreed needs of a client. This solution is most often used by companies that already have their own in-house team and are looking for more employees.

A company that needs to expand its team usually approaches an agency with the person specification of their ideal candidate and job description. The recruitment agency looks for the right people and then passes the CVs to the client, who conducts the recruitment interview and appoints the right developer.

Recruitment agencies often provide a workspace for developers in their own office. This looks like cooperation - remotely - between employee and developer. I think that this solution also has its advantages, but it all depends on the company's profile and, above all, having its own established team of developers, which is a prerequisite for this form of cooperation to make sense.

what is a staffing agency

Software house or IT staffing agency?

Based on my own experience and knowledge of the IT industry, I believe that cooperation with software houses is a more effective solution for software development. Here are the most important factors to support this:

  1. Cooperation with software houses is a guarantee of quality. The teams are complete in terms of knowledge, which positively affects the level of implemented projects.
  2. When choosing a software house, it's very easy to verify its effectiveness based on recommendations. If you are looking for a partner who will build a web application for you in Ruby on Rails, you can easily check which software house has a similar successful project in its portfolio.
  3. Cooperation with software houses is a convenient solution: they are responsible for the entire scope of your product development. This will save you time and in many cases also save on the budget!
  4. Communication. It is simpler to properly manage the entire communication process with the development team than to try to adapt a new developer who works elsewhere to your in-house team. In the case of software houses, communication and general project development is effective thanks to an effective method of managing IT projects - above all, Scrum.

I hope that with this article I have explained the difference between working with software houses and IT staffing companies. I believe that in a similar dilemma you will make the right decision.

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