Many of the smaller companies we deal with are anxious to be as economical as possible, and some of them are tempted to develop software for themselves.

For example, one client thought that for £20,000 per year he could hire a software developer who would deliver 5 days of programming per week, which is much less than the £300+VAT per day (October 2000) than he would need to pay us for plain programming services.

We thought otherwise!

The reasons for using us break down into 2 distinct areas: Cost and Output.

Let's begin with cost:
When you recruit your own programmer, you must:
a. Recruit them. Let's assume you use an agency because it's easier to do this than to calculate the value of the recruitment time. This is perhaps £3,000+VAT.
b. Poor recruitment. Let's assume that the person you hire is okay and not just good at the talk.
c. Holidays. They will need at least 20 days holidays per year, plus bank holidays, plus sick, and maybe maternity leave. The standard measure is that you will get 220 working days per year per employee.
d. Employers National Insurance Contributions (also know as the employment tax!) at 12.5% per year.
e. Supply a decent PC and Monitor, around £1000+VAT
f. Supply the programming tools (e.g. Delphi or Visual C++, with additional toolkits and other bits)
g. Provide office space
h. Provide the staff and technical management required.

You must also watch output:
a. Ensure your programmer has the right skills to design your program successfully. To use construction as an example, even the best bricklayer in the world might not be a good architect.
b. Does he have other people to whom he can refer problems? A classic problem with programmers is that they will spend a week on a trivial problem because they have no-one they can refer to.
c. Does he feel lonely in your office? Many programmers might be nerds, but software development is usually a very social activity in that all the different elements need to fit together to give a coherent whole.
d. Is your programmer able to check his own programs for bugs? Most cannot do so to any appreciable degree- they are too close to the problem. You will need to spend time providing this support.
e. Can you perform "code reviews" to make sure that the program structure is simple and maintainable? Do you know what commenting should be in the program to ensure that the next person to work on the program stands any chance of progress?
f. Can you vary the rate of spend when you have your own programmer? If for example, you need to rush through a new development can your lone programmer manage? If you run out of budget too early, will your programmer leave?

Update We have revisited the same client in September 2004 because the developer he recruited was leaving and were able to compare output- our programmers produced 4 times (yes four times!) as much code in the same time and to a much higher standard. If you are serious about development then you should come and talk to us.

If you are still determined to go ahead, then we can support you by providing technical leadership to your development effort, but take care to note the above items.