Golang, also known as Go, is a modern open source programming language developed by Google that has gained immense popularity in recent years. It is a statically-typed, compiled language that offers simplicity, modern features, great performance and scalability. Many tech giants like Google, Uber, Dropbox, Twitch and Medium use Golang for their backend API and microservices development.
Outsourcing Golang development to an experienced development partner can provide numerous benefits for startups and enterprises looking to build robust and scalable applications. In this article, we will explore the key advantages of outsourcing Golang development.
Faster Time-to-Market
The ability to get your product to market faster than competitors can be invaluable. Outsourced projects can hit the market twice as fast compared to in-house development.
Outsourcing partners have the flexibility to scale teams up and down based on your project needs. This allows parallel development on multiple product modules, accelerating timelines significantly.
The separation of design and development activities also enables faster turnaround. While the Golang outsourcing development services implement the specs, your in-house team can focus exclusively on defining priorities, product strategy and upcoming features.
Cost Savings
One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing development work is significant cost reduction. When you outsource Golang development, you avoid expenses like setting up infrastructure, hiring and training in-house developers, providing employee benefits etc.
Experienced outsourcing partners already have proficient Golang developers on board along with the necessary infrastructure and tools ready. This allows you to get your project started quickly in a cost-effective manner, without expensive long-term commitments.
Outsourcing rates are often 40-50% cheaper compared to the US and Europe. So you can build your product faster without putting excessive strain on your initial budget.
Access to Expertise
Golang has a relatively small talent pool around the world. Hiring expert Golang developers can be challenging, time-consuming and expensive. Many companies struggle to find Golang experts domestically.
By collaborating with an established outsourcing partner, you can easily leverage some of the top Golang talent out there. This gives you access to a team of highly skilled and experienced Golang developers who can add tremendous value to your project.
Most outsourcing companies conduct rigorous screening and tests before hiring developers. This ensures you get a team of elite developers with proven expertise in Golang and modern technologies.
Round-the-Clock Development
Outsourced projects facilitate 24/7 development by utilizing geographic advantages. When you collaborate with a global outsourcing partner, you can take advantage of time-zone differences.
While your in-house team sleeps, your outsourced team can work on development. They can hand over work at the end of their day, allowing your local developers to continue seamlessly. This enables round-the-clock progress, accelerating project velocity significantly.
What’s more, urgent critical issues can be addressed in real-time, irrespective of local working hours. This gives better responsiveness and risk mitigation.
Best Practices and Methodologies
Established outsourcing vendors bring sophisticated processes, quality best practices and project management methodologies stemming from years of experience.
Additionally, outsourcing vendors follow well-defined communication protocols and project governance mechanisms. This enables transparency, timely feedback and streamlined collaboration despite geographic distance.
Flexibility and Scalability
Software projects often require sudden changes in timeline, resources or technology based on evolving priorities. Building an in-house team makes it difficult and expensive to adapt swiftly to such changes.
Experienced outsourcing partners have several Golang developers with diverse skill sets on hand. This talent pool allows seamless expansion or downsizing of teams according to your dynamic needs, giving your project great agility.
In case of tight deadlines or release pressure, additional Golang resources can be deployed from the bench. Once priorities change post-release, capacity can be scaled down just as easily.
Risk Mitigation
When outsourcing development, you transfer a lot of project risk and overhead to your partner. Challenges like technical debt, hidden costs, resource attrition etc. pose substantial threats for in-house initiatives.
With outsourcing, your partner assumes responsibility for risks related to staffing, infrastructure and methodologies. Vendors with fixed-price models offer greater protection by capping your expenses.
Additionally, outsourcing gives access to an expansive knowledge pool that can anticipate pitfalls early. The vendor’s technical capabilities and manpower bandwidth help deal with any unforeseen issues down the road.
Improved Quality
Outsourcing partners have extensive experience building complex enterprise-grade solutions across domains. Rigorous QA processes and test automation allow them to deliver projects with stellar quality and reliability.
Dedicated QA teams perform exhaustive functional testing, security audits, performance benchmarking etc. allowing identification of flaws and optimizations. Predictive maintenance capabilities also enable identification and prevention of potential failure points.
Stringent ISO-certified processes around security, data protection and confidentiality provide additional assurance.
Enhanced Innovation Capacity
A perennial challenge for in-house teams of established organizations is resisting legacy mindsets and old ways of doing things. Over time, internal teams can adopt rigid thought patterns that stifle innovation.
An outsourcing partner with experience across myriad domains and emerging technologies brings an external perspective. Fresh thinking and knowledge of the latest tools, architectures and methodologies leads to technology innovations.
Outsourcing vendors also invest substantially in R&D, building proprietary solutions and IP – capabilities that clients can leverage. Their solution architects can collaborate with product managers to brainstorm groundbreaking ideas.
Improved Time and Cost Predictability
Software projects often struggle with effort and timeline underestimation leading to missed deadlines, cost overruns and substandard quality due to excessive pressure.
Experienced outsourcing partners mitigate such issues by providing predictable and transparent pricing models. Methodologies like fixed-price help establish clear timelines and costs at the start through elaborate scoping.
Strict delivery processes also ensure that the final product meets all the agreed specifications within the defined budget and timeline. The built-in buffers and risk-mitigation strategies improve predictability further.
Key Factors to Consider When Outsourcing Golang Development
Outsourcing your Golang project successfully requires partnering with the right vendor. But the multitude of providers out there with varying capabilities makes evaluation difficult. Here are some key aspects to analyze when selecting an outsourcing partner for your Golang development:
Proven Golang Expertise
The outsourcing vendor must demonstrate sound Golang capabilities, with experience building projects comparable to your needs. Evaluate their Golang proficiency across elements like:
- Team Skills: The vendor should have Golang experts with 5+ years of hands-on experience, having worked on complex projects. Assess their expertise across Golang syntax, idioms, frameworks and tooling.
- Code Quality: Review code samples from previous Golang projects the vendor has delivered to gauge aspects like readability, structure, documentation and adherence to best practices.
- Technical Knowledge: Have technical discussions to evaluate the vendor’s understanding of elements like concurrency mechanisms, generics, error handling, modules, testing and deployment architectures in Golang.
- Project Methodologies: Examine the software development and project management processes the vendor implements for Golang initiatives – see if they align with your environment and needs.
Industry Experience
Ideally the outsourcing partner should have prior experience building Golang solutions in your specific industry vertical. This minimizes technology risk and the learning curve.
For instance, fintech solutions have unique security, compliance and performance needs compared to ecommerce apps. Expertise across domains allows more appropriate platform and toolchain recommendations.
Evaluate case studies, and client references the vendor provides from your industry to ascertain their contextual knowledge and suitability for your Golang project.
Cultural Compatibility
Cultural alignment and effective collaboration are crucial for offshore projects to succeed. Examine your working styles and priorities against the vendor’s culture and communication practices.
Optimal collaboration stems from aspects like overlapping working hours, compatible management styles, contextual fluency, infrastructure for real-time collaboration etc. Without cultural compatibility, communication gaps can severely undermine project execution.
Process Maturity
Sophisticated software development, quality and data security processes are pivotal for predictable and reliable delivery. Analyze aspects like the vendor’s process frameworks, automation tools, compliance metrics and auditing practices.
Higher process maturity demonstrated through certifications like ISO 27001 and CMMI Level 3 ensures integrity of code quality, security and data privacy – reducing downstream headaches.
Key Steps for Effective Golang Project Outsourcing
Once you have zeroed in on a suitable outsourcing partner, follow these vital steps for seamless engagement:
Set Realistic Expectations
Upfront it is important for both parties to align on realistic objectives, responsibilities and timelines. Clarify what aspects will be handled by your team vs the vendor.
Define detailed requirements but keep reasonable buffer for uncertainties. Having unrealistic expectations is a common pitfall that hurts offshore collaborations.
Invest in Relationship Building
Make sure your team spends substantial time interacting with the vendor’s team early on. Onsite visits or team outings allowing informal conversations builds rapport and trust that eases remote coordination later.
Alignment on terminology, product vision and workflows early on improves subsequent communication and decision making. This upfront relationship building pays rich dividends subsequently.
Have a Clear Governance Structure
Define escalation processes and frequency of status updates early through project charters and communication plans. Implement issue tracking and project management systems that provide transparency on work allocation and status.
Periodic calls and frequent informal chat conversations are vital for real-time resolution of impediments. Such governance mechanisms minimize misalignment.
Automate and Modularize
Leverage automation in testing, infrastructure provisioning and deployment through CI/CD pipelines for accelerated release cycles. Architect solutions with reusability and loose coupling in mind.
Automation reduces regression risks during ongoing development while modularization eases distributed teamwork by minimizing touchpoints.
Focus on Knowledge Transfer
Treat your outsourced team as an extension of your own staff. Invest time for knowledge sharing through design walkthroughs, code reviews, tech spike collaborations etc.
Set up centralized documentation and wikis for disseminating context and guidelines. Healthy knowledge osmosis empowers the vendor’s team and reduces reliance.
Conclusion
Golang is gaining adoption across the industry, but in-house recruiting and training can be challenging. Outsourced Golang development provides a multitude of benefits.
However, realizing these benefits requires partnering with the right outsourcing vendor having proven Golang capabilities, cultural alignment, process maturity and experience in your domain.
