False Economy of Low Cost Contractors - the common misconception that less expensive resources save you money - Tag1 Team Talk #020

Too often, organizations believe that contracting more affordable and less expensive resources for a project will lead to better savings. Here at Tag1 Consulting, we've in fact discovered that the opposite is true: Hiring cheaper often leads to worse results. Though it's often convenient to look at the hourly rate, or the provided quote for the project, this can often lead to less attention on questions and issues that should go into any project calculus. At Tag1, we often hear this come up from both our new and existing clients. But it's a siren song: Though many organizations want to get the best bang out of their buck, it doesn't necessarily mean that going the more affordable route is the right direction.

In recent years, the explosion of software consultancies and professional services has led some to argue that software implementation has become a "commodity business." This is couched in the mistaken belief that any engineer, if afforded the right tools, can rapidly assemble pre-existing components to manifest solutions quickly with minimal investment. However, such a notion of assemblage doesn't avoid the Frankenstein effect, in which organizations seldom have a single monolithic tool that can be leveraged horizontally. Instead, software architecture is not just about putting the pieces together; it is about understanding the optimal conjunct that those components make up.

Digging into some of the secrets we've learned at Tag1 as a business, join our latest episode of Tag1 Team Talks, with Peta Hoyes (Chief Operating Officer, Partner at Tag1), Michael Meyers (Managing Director at Tag1), and your host Preston So (Editor in Chief at Tag1 and author of Decoupled Drupal in Practice). We'll dive into how grappling with the right questions can help alleviate some of the damage that the misconception of less expensive resources leading to a better outcome has wrought not only among our clients but also among software consultancies writ large.