Every company running its own applications regularly faces the same question: we need changes to the software, so who should make them? In 2026 there are three answers: growing your own team, a classic software house, or a partner working with an AI-based process. Below is an honest reckoning of all three options, including the situations where your own team is simply the best choice.
Option A: growing your own team
The costs you see and the ones you don't
An experienced developer's salary in Poland today usually means a total employer cost of PLN 15,000–30,000 a month, depending on specialisation and region. Then come the less obvious costs:
- Recruitment takes 3–6 months: from the decision to hire to the first productive day of work. Business needs don't wait in the meantime.
- A bad hire costs several months of salary plus another recruitment round.
- One person is not enough. Real software development requires different competencies: programming, testing, security, infrastructure, interface design. A one-person orchestra means quality compromises and the risk described in our article on tribal knowledge.
- Competencies have to be maintained: technologies change, and the team needs training and retaining (which in IT can be the most expensive part).
When your own team DOES make sense
We say this plainly, because honesty demands symmetry:
- The software is the core of your business. If a digital product is your main source of revenue, the delivery capability should live inside the company.
- The stream of changes is continuous and large, and the team is fully loaded all year round, not in waves.
- The domain knowledge is very deep and unique, so handing it over to an external partner would cost more than the saving is worth.
In such cases a hybrid often works well: a small in-house team that knows the domain, plus an external partner for project work and load peaks.
Option B: a classic software house
Commissioning changes from an external development company solves the recruitment problem, but brings costs of its own:
- Hourly rates: on the Polish market typically PLN 150–300/h per specialist, and a project is priced in hundreds or thousands of hours.
- Every iteration requires meetings, arrangements, documents. In the classic process, a significant part of the budget goes not to programming but to coordination.
- The vendor slots your order into a queue among its other clients. A minor change can wait for weeks.
- Quality depends on team composition: the same vendor can deliver brilliantly or poorly, depending on who happens to be available for the project.
This model works well for large, well-defined projects with a stable scope and a predictable schedule. It copes worse with the reality of most companies: a continuous stream of medium and small changes that need to go in fast.
Option C: a partner working with an AI process
The third path, which we are developing at ESKOM AI, is an external partner where the production work is done by a team of specialised AI agents under the supervision of experienced engineers. What does that change in the arithmetic?
Faster
Production work that takes weeks in the classic model takes days in an AI process. A prototype for evaluation appears within days of the analysis being approved. Shorter time means lower cost, but above all a faster business response to market changes.
Cheaper
Since AI agents perform a large share of the working hours, the cost of producing the same change is significantly lower than in a model billed at specialists' hourly rates. We don't quote a single price list here, because we price after analysing the specific need. The principle, though, is simple: you pay for the outcome of the process, not for people's hours at the keyboard.
Quality guarded automatically
The most common concern about AI goes: "fast and cheap, but is it good?". The answer is automated quality control. In our process every change goes through a full battery of automated tests: unit, integration, E2E, UI, security, performance and regression. Regression tests (checking that the new change hasn't broken anything that worked) run on every modification, which in the classic model is often skipped for cost reasons. A human oversees the whole and approves every stage.
An honest caveat
An AI process is not a magic wand. You still need a good analysis of requirements, access to systems and decisions on the client's side. And in the scenarios described above, meaning a digital product at the core of the business and a continuous, large stream of changes, your own team (possibly supported by such a partner) remains the rational choice.
The comparison in a nutshell
| Criterion | In-house team | Software house | Partner with an AI process |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | 3–6 months (recruitment) | weeks (contract, queue) | days–weeks |
| Cost of a change | fixed payroll cost | hourly rates | lower, priced after analysis |
| Delivery speed | depends on workload | weeks–months | days–weeks |
| Quality | depends on the people | depends on team composition | guarded by automated tests + human oversight |
| Domain knowledge | deepest | needs handover | needs handover |
| Best when | software = core of the business | large, stable project | continuous changes, time and cost pressure |
FAQ
Is software built with AI involvement safe?
Security depends on the process, not on who writes the code. In a good process every change goes through automated security tests and a human review before deployment. Ask that question of every vendor, whether or not they use AI.
We already have a system from another vendor. Is switching partners realistic?
Yes, though it requires taking over knowledge of the system. If documentation doesn't exist, it can be reconstructed with AI. We wrote about this in our article on AI-generated documentation. It's usually the first step of working with a new partner.
Is a small stream of changes (a few days of work a month) worth outsourcing?
That's actually the best scenario for an external partner. Keeping a full-time position for a few days of work a month is uneconomical, and an AI process means small orders don't drown in coordination costs.
Let's run the numbers for your case
The best arithmetic is arithmetic on your own numbers. We invite you to a free consultation: we'll talk about your applications, your stream of changes and your budget, and you'll get a fair comparison of the options, including the recommendation "stick with your own team" if that's what the numbers support.