How to choose the right software development company?
Businesses today are only as strong as the software behind them.
The demand for high-quality digital products comes from both the customers and the business side. Customers want a superior user experience, while companies, in order to meet these high expectations, aim to accelerate the digitization of their business processes.
Image Source: Google Images
A scalable custom software will generally produce the most efficient systems as it is can provide support for the specific business needs.
It is not uncommon that after a long process of evaluating commercial off-the-shelf software you’re finding yourself in a situation where simply nothing quite fits. Or you have a great business idea, but you lack skills to execute it. Another scenario is that you’re a developer yourself, but your internal IT team is overworked and overburdened at the moment.
In all these situations you will be looking for a custom software development company to work with.
How to choose a good software development vendor?
It is very much a question of confidence. Hopefully, this blog post will ease your fear of the unknown (in case you’ve never outsourced software development before) and help you make more informed decisions.
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1. Translate your customers’ needs into a project objectives
Successful custom software development project starts from designing the future state regardless of current constraints. Therefore before you go looking for a business partner to help you execute your idea, prepare the scope and, most of all, the objectives of your project.
Your initial input is crucial and must be rooted in the insights from your target customers.
Software either enriches or degrades your brand. By accurately capturing your customer expectations you’ll not only know what can advance your business but also you will be able to quickly resolve initial constraints of the project.
Forrester has identified four key dimensions that each significantly affect brand preference. These should help you define initial project requirements that always have the customer in mind:
Image Source: Customer Expectations: The Start, Middle and End of Software Development
2. Make a shortlist of developers with strong business skills
Software development requires both programming and business competencies. Even the best developers can fail if they don’t understand what you need from them.
The ideal custom software development team should be able to elevate your initial idea by translating your needs into business-led functionalities of a future software.
You can validate software house technical and business experience by doing a background check on their references and past projects. Your goal is to find a software company that will add technological value to your internal team.
If you want to make a shortlist of potential software houses that fit such requirement, check up unbiased testimonials on Clutch: B2B Ratings & Reviews. This is an honest service which contacts each and every client who wants to submit a review to confirm it’s authenticity first.
From your shortlist, focus on vendors who have proven track of successfully executed projects and good relations with their clients. Such verification is crucial for a stress-free cooperation.
Do not be afraid of asking a potential vendor to contact you with their past clients. This is the best type of reference you can get. If a software company is good at the work their doing, they will willingly refer you to the right person to talk to.
The final verification before you narrow your software vendor options down to a few vendors is technical due diligence evaluation. Some software houses are already verified by tech due diligence companies if they meet heavily data-driven standards. It should remove all your doubts about development skills and ability to deliver on time.
3. Choose agile software development company
Bespoke software business solutions must scale and adapt as the business grows and evolves. During their development you often need to request incremental changes without entering into a negotiation.
Good software developers work according to the agile methodology and understand that only true cooperation will result in working software satisfying your needs.
So you do not need to be afraid of being unable to provide a potential software development company with a full specification. Neither be afraid of being 100% sure what you want at a given moment.
The Agile Manifesto principles enable your project requirements to evolve in time through a collaborative effort of cross-functional teams. Simply put, you have a greater control how things are being managed and executed.
If software development company works according to the agile framework and is confident in their skills, they might offer a free 2 weeks trial. There is no better way to test the outsourcing team than simply start working together.
During the trial period, you can get to know each other and see the visible progress after the first iteration is completed. You will see first results and, as this is usually a big concern when outsourcing IT projects, you’ll check if there are no communication issues.
Wrap up
There are many requirements for a good custom software development company. Regardless of technology stack and vendors’ projects, these 3 steps of vendor selection mentioned above are crucial when looking for a perfect hire.
If they are in place, you can be sure to end up with a bespoke software that is accelerating your business in delivering a top-notch customer experience.
Still have some questions about how to choose a perfect custom software developers?
SoftwareMill clients had almost always similar queries in regards to approach, experience, work quality, competences, security, workflow, and people. You can find a recap of it in this FAQ.
