Development

The Advantages of App Development Outsourcing for Businesses

December 18, 2023

David Zadražil

CTO

Imagine you have a groundbreaking app idea, and you're at a crossroads: Should you build an in-house team or tap into the expertise of external app developers? In this article, we're about to uncover the appeal of outsourcing and how it can truly transform your business.

Whether you're a developing startup or a well-established company, outsourcing has a lot more to offer than just cost savings. It's all about gaining the flexibility to scale, reclaiming valuable time, and keeping up with the latest in tech. So, when's the right moment to take the plunge into outsourcing? We'll explore that question as well.

What Is Outsourcing?

App development outsourcing is like smart delegation. You hand over specific tasks to an external team. In simple terms, outsourcing is a business deal with an external party for a specific job. If your in-house team isn't cut out for the task, or it doesn't make sense to invest in their training for a one-time project, then outsourcing is the practical choice.

This applies well to mobile app development. If your company isn't primarily into app development, why set up a whole team just for a short project? Outsourcing to experts for the job on a contract basis often proves to be a wise move.

The Benefits of Outsourcing

Staying Ahead in the Tech Game

Outsourcing mobile app development offers ready access to the latest tools and technology without the need for significant in-house investments. These outsourcing firms are already equipped with advanced software and expert teams, ensuring timely project completion, top-quality work, and the most effective solutions for your needs.

Accessing Global Talent Pool

Today, your business can truly access a global marketplace. While your own country may be home to skilled app developers, the global talent pool offers an extensive and diverse array of highly capable professionals. They're all prepared to provide their services without the administrative burdens of employee benefits, pensions, or healthcare management.

Focusing on Your Strengths

Outsourcing lets your internal and project teams concentrate on their strengths, like strategy, product management, and business growth, while your outsourced team specializes in efficient app development. App development can be distracting for your in-house team, so delegating the technical work to experts optimizes your internal resources and enhances productivity. A software project needs proper documentation, UX/UI design, translating business requirements into development tasks, and expert app developers.

Paying for What Matters

Choosing to outsource mobile app development is a cost-effective alternative to in-house teams. It saves you on recruitment, onboarding, training, infrastructure, and ongoing overhead costs. Software development outsourcing accelerates development timelines and ensures a quicker time-to-market for your app projects. After deploying the mobile app, your company is free from additional expenses.

Simplifying Scalability and Adaptability

When you outsource app development, you gain the ability to easily adjust to changing business needs. You can scale your resources up or down as your project requires, keeping things efficient and cost-effective. This approach also provides access to a wide range of skills, so you can bring in specialized expertise when needed. Experienced development teams understand how to work in an agile way, focusing on what's most important to your business.

When to Opt for Outsourcing

Deciding when to opt for outsourcing is an essential choice influenced by various factors. First, assess your current development capabilities and determine if external expertise is needed to achieve your goals. Consider project complexity, time constraints, budget limits, and talent availability.

Outsourcing is a smart choice when your in-house team lacks the necessary skills or you face tight schedules and fluctuating workloads. Additionally, if the cost of maintaining an in-house team exceeds the benefits, outsourcing provides a cost-effective solution. In essence, choose outsourcing when it aligns with your goals, boosts efficiency, and supports your growth strategy, ensuring your company's success.

Taking the First Step

Wondering about app development costs? It varies based on factors like app type, complexity, features, and the outsourcing location. Outsourcing is a popular choice for app development, offering many benefits.

Now that you have an understanding of how to begin outsourcing mobile app development, let's help you get started! At Cleevio, we bring extensive expertise to the entire process, from discovery and design to development. Explore our work in our case studies to learn more.

What’s next?

Let’s continue the conversation.

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Project

1 min read

Pivot Like a Pro: Startup Strategies for Success

Cleevio

Company News

Discover the highlights from our recent exclusive panel discussion featuring Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData, alongside industry leader Milo Poplar and our Head of North America, Filip Orth.

The event provided valuable insights into global-scale product building and entrepreneurial success. Dive into the key takeaways and memorable moments from this engaging discussion, where experienced pioneers shared their wisdom and expertise on the AI landscape.

We were thrilled to have Roman Stanek and his impressive track record in building successful startups. His journey began with the acquisition of NetBeans by Sun Microsystems in 1999, followed by the acquisition of Systinet by Hewlett Packard in 2006. Along the way, his ventures received support from renowned VC funds like a16z, Intel Capital, and General Catalyst.

Outsourcing

During the event, our discussions delved deeply into the strategies startups can employ to enhance efficiency through outsourcing across various operational domains. We explored how outsourcing can serve as a vital tool in mitigating the challenges inherent in the dynamic startup landscape. Among others, these challenges encompass navigating a tough fundraising environment and contending with fierce competition in virtually every industry.

Agility and adaptability

Central to our discussions was the imperative for startup founders to remain agile and adaptable in the face of evolving circumstances. We underscored the critical importance of being responsive to market shifts and customer demands, emphasizing the need for continual adjustment to ensure the longevity and success of their ventures.

Operational effectively

The ability to pivot effectively is essential, particularly when considering the quest for operational efficiency. In this context, leveraging outsourcing capabilities becomes paramount, whether it is in technological development, sales, marketing, or legal compliance. This strategic approach is especially pertinent in the current landscape, where fundraising endeavors are meeting with increased difficulty, and access to capital is more constrained than it was just two years ago.

Milo Poplar, Co-founder of Eldison during presentation

We intend to make this event a regular occurrence. We aim to host Founders’ Lounge regularly, each time focusing on a different theme and bringing in a special guest who will share insights from their entrepreneurial journey.

Are you a founder, investor, CTO or decision-maker in the technological startup environment seeking to accelerate your growth and gain a competitive edge in the market? Watch our LinkedIn for future invites!

Development

1 min read

Crash-Proofing Your Code: Setting Up Sentry on Android

Tomáš Dvořáček

Senior Android Developer

Welcome back! As promised, we are here with the second part of the Crash-proofing series. This time, we will show you how to set up Sentry for the Android platform and some nice-to-have stuff as a bonus.

Let's begin!

Create sentry.properties file inside your Android project’s root folder

Initial setup in Sentry Admin

These are a few things you need to do before implementing Sentry Android SDK.

Create a new project in Sentry. Give this project some appropriate name like your-project-android
Then go to Settings → Projects → Your new Project → General Settings

You should see the name of your project. This is your project_id. In sentry.properties, replace <project_id> with it
Then go to Organization settings → General Settings, copy your organisation_slug and replace <organisation_slug> inside sentry.properties

Then go to User and tokens and create new Token. You can add every permission to it for a start but its better to check every permission and decide for yourself what is needed.

Then copy your new auth token and replace <auth_token> with it inside sentry.properties.Sentry can upload ProGuard mapping files for you and needs this auth token. Ignore this if you don’t care about ProGuard
Your sentry.properties should be filled now.
Then go to Settings → Projects → Your new Project → Client Key (DSN)
Get your DSN link and save it somewhere for now.

Now you can return to your Android Project

Adding sentry to project

A full tutorial is on this page. Sentry can set itself with a command, but if you prefer a manual approach or have problems, follow the instructions below or this page. Sentry will also give you a direct link for setup in Android Studio (https://sentry.io/organizations/XXX/projects/YYY/getting-started/)

Add this to your main module build.gradle

Open your application class and initiate Sentry

Let’s explore what each line does:

This line applies the environment to the issue. If you use several build flavors like development and production, you can then easily filter specific flavors.

These lines set the percentage value of how many traces to log. 100% means everything is logged. It’s not recommended to collect everything in a production environment; however, e.g., on development, it’s a good thing since testers could find bugs. In our example, we set the percentage on the release version to 10%.

Open your AndroidManifest.xml file inside your main module and insert this

If you don’t want to use CI/CD and just hardcode your DSN, replace ${sentryDsnUrl} with your collected DSN link.

Open app’s build.gradle and setup DSN there as well

Add Sentry gradle plugin to project

This code enables sentry gradle plugin. This prepares scripts for your convenience like uploading aab to sentry with proguard mapping files.

Nice things to know

Assign someone to new issue

Every issue in Sentry can be assigned to someone and you can do that manually or automatically with rules.

Create Jira issue directly from Sentry

If you setup the Jira integration mentioned in the previous article, Sentry enables you to quickly and easily create Jira issues from the issue itself.

Discover page

Discover page let’s you quickly query in all yours collected data so you can answer analytics questions or analyse potential health issues in your project. You can use predefined queries or create, edit and delete your own queries. It’s really powerful tool but it’s limited only to Trial and Business Plan.

Pluggins for Sentry

Sentry for Android offers plugins which let’s you automatically collect more specific data. For example:

Some stuff like Android Fragments, okHttp events and logcat are already logged automatically from Sentry version 3.1.0.

In order to disable them, change the sentry config in the project’s build.gradle.

OkHttp plugin

Like said above, from Sentry 3.1.0, Sentry will automatically log OkHttp event via manipulating your final bytecode and inserting SentryOkHttpInterceptor. This will create breadcrumbs which would look like this:

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If you use Sentry 3.11.0+, Sentry will also insert SentryOkHttpEventListener which will log even more data from http requests. Everything will be logged with logcat:

Thank you for diving into the second part of our series. If you have any questions, feel free to catch up or reach out.

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#meetcleevio

1 min read

From Code to Culture: The Backbone of Our Backend Team

Přemysl Rucký

Backend Lead

Hey there! Curious about what makes our backend team tick? Let me spill the beans on what keeps us running at Cleevio.

Team Contract: Our Secret Sauce

Ever heard of a team contract? It's like our BE team's rulebook but cooler. We all chipped in to create this gem, covering everything from our core values to nifty Slack etiquettes (like no-reply expectations after 4 PM). It's not just a newbie guide; even our weathered developers learn a thing or two from it.

Bringing the Team Together

With team members scattered across Prague, Brno, and beyond borders, building bonds ain't easy, but we're not ones to back down from a challenge. That's why we came up with Backend Onsite Day. Originally a monthly affair, we scaled it back to every two months to make it work for everyone. It's a chance to catch up, brainstorm, and maybe even grab a beer together.

Sharing Know-How Like a Boss

We take knowledge sharing seriously. Our weekly BE meetings aren't just about updates and project briefs - they are also our chance to pick each other's brains. Plus, we've got knowledge base packed with tech insights and project learnings. It's like having a cheat sheet for all things backend.

Reflect, Refine, Repeat

We're all about improvement. That's why we love our team retrospectives. Just recently, at the start of 2024, we huddled up for about an hour to chat about how things were going. Turns out, everyone is pretty happy being part of the team, which is great to hear - but we also came up with some ideas to make things even better next time. It's all about celebrating wins and figuring out how we can crush it even more in the future.

Growing Together

Personal growth is big on our agenda. Regular performance reviews and one-on-one chats keep us on track. And with internal training programs, education budgets, and buddy systems in place, we're all set to level up together.

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At the end of the day, it all comes down to communication. Whether it's a quick Slack chat or a face-to-face meeting, keeping the lines of communication open is what keeps our team humming.

So there you have it—our backend team's recipe for success. With a healthy dose of teamwork, communication, and a sprinkle of resilience, there's no limit to what we can achieve together at Cleevio.

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