Even though ASP.NET has itself been around since 2002, ASP.NET - and the technology stack that supports productive development behind it - is growing more and more popular all the time. Businesses are adopting it in record numbers and, as this trend only gets more intense as time goes on, the demand for developers has increased exponentially. These days, it's quickly becoming the de facto development environment for web-based IT systems.
...which can be problematic if you suddenly lose one of your own internal ASP.NET developers.
Invariably, people will always come and go within your organization - but that doesn't make losing someone in such a key position hurt any less. When that day comes, you have a question on your hands: is it better to partner with an experienced software consulting firm for your ASP.NET development needs, or simply replace that employee and maintain their in-house position?
Thankfully, the answer to that question is a fairly straightforward one: it's almost always better to hire an outside company to perform dedicated ASP.NET development services. This is true for a wide range of different reasons, all of which are more than worth a closer look.
The Benefits of Hiring an ASP.NET Development Company: Breaking Things Down
One of the major reasons why it's almost always better to partner with a company (rather than to simply fill an in-house position) for your ASP.NET development needs is because the role of the programmer is constantly changing.
Even today, programmers are considered to be those people who sit behind a desk all day long and do little more than the "nuts and bolts" of programming and development. However, savvy business leaders are now beginning to realize that programmers demonstrate far more skills than just what their job title implies.
Modern day businesses need the flexibility, the experience and the scalability of resources that only a dedicated ASP.NET development company provides. A single programmer alone wouldn't be enough to get to this point, unless you wanted to hire in an entire team of people at an exponential overhead cost. By partnering with the right ASP.NET development services company, however, this enables organizational leaders to plan their IT projects strategically - all by applying the varied resources and skills that simply cannot be obtained by hiring one or more people.
Simply put, they need a team that they can readily draw on as their needs continue to change and evolve - and they're only going to get that with an ASP.NET development services partner.
Likewise, as opposed to an individual programmer, an ASP.NET development team will often have people in critical positions like business analysts and technical team leads. These individuals will have a far higher level of communication skills - one needed to extract the requirements of the client and document them moving forward. This will also bring with it the added benefit of even more technical experience to draw from, which makes it easier to weave those requirements into programmatic implementations that a business can derive the maximum amount of value from.
Another one of the major benefits that comes with hiring a dedicated ASP.NET development services provider has to do with the fact that a single programmer by their nature can only handle one task at a time. When you have a team of people to rely on, however, a project manager can manage your priorities better and distribute work to different team members who can all work in parallel with one another. Not only does this significantly improve productivity, but it also goes a long way towards shortening project timelines as much as possible.
That's not to say that the work of a single programmer will be inherently bad, as it very likely won't be. It's just that multiple people are capable of doing better work far faster than any one person could ever accomplish on his or her own.
Having said that, there is a very real possibility that when you're working with an individual programmer, the implementation of quality assurance will be lacking if you don't find someone with the right skill set to begin with. It's always a best practice to NOT have the developer do the quality check of the software because they're simply too close to the work they've already done. They test it like they developed it, because they did. They're thinking like a developer, not a user. A quality assurance person, however, will test it like the end users who will be spending so much time with it after deployment. This is simply a far more holistic way to make sure that your applications work and function in all the ways that you need them to.
Finding the Right Partner at the Right Time
But even going beyond all of that, one of the major advantages of hiring a dedicated ASP.NET development services partner is that you get precisely that - a partner in every sense of the term. One who takes the time to learn the ins and outs of your business so that they can hit the ground running without delay. One that provides continuity of experience and service so that you always know what to expect and who will make sure you stay in-the-loop all throughout the process.
As your ASP.NET development application is in service, for example, businesses naturally have evolving requirements that will necessitate additional development and support. By partnering with a .NET development company that is focused on this part of the experience, you eliminate the risk of losing key development employees along the way.
To put it another way, if you have a single programmer handling all of your ASP.NET development needs, you're talking about more than just a delay in work should that person leave your organization. You're talking about a massive disruption in terms of the overall experience you're able to provide to your end users. A new developer will naturally have an entirely new way of working, and they may lack certain skills that the other possessed.
By partnering with an ASP.NET development company, this is simply something you do not have to worry about any longer. That continuity of experience is always there because that's a big part of what you're paying for to begin with - which for many organizations is one of the biggest benefits of all.
In the end, there are a wide range of different benefits that you can only get by hiring an ASP.NET development company to be your partner in creating, managing and supporting your web applications. Not only do they bring with them a diversity of skill sets that you might not be able to get on your own (one developer may be great at writing code but be terrible at creating user interfaces or graphic design, for example), but a company can also provide far better coverage when developers are sick, when they go on vacation or when they leave altogether.
All of this matters because your ASP.NET applications are more than just "software." They're the web applications that support your organization as you work to operate as efficiently as possible. When leveraged properly they can also become a significant contributing factor to your competitive advantage in your industry, which is why this is one area of your operations that you do not want to take for granted.
To find out more information about our ASP.NET software development outsourcing capabilities, or if you’d like to discuss your ASP.NET needs with Keene Systems CEO, Lance Keene click here to book a call with him. You can also download our great new eBook - Why ASP.NET Development Services Fuels Business Growth - to learn more about this essential topic.
