Overview
According to Clutch, there are around 27K custom software development companies in the world. It means that you can find an IT partner practically with any expertise you can only wish for. But how can you choose the best company for your project? How can you be sure that it will be comfortable for you to cooperate with the chosen team? Over the years of our work in the software development industry, we’ve managed to understand the core parameters that clients should take into account. And in this article, we’d like to share with you a list of the most important questions that you should think about when you will be considering different companies to work with.
What services do I want to get?
That’s the most important question that should be answered in the first turn. Though there are a lot of companies in the market, their offers differ from each other. Companies may specialize in different aspects of software development or focus on some precise industries. It is a very common thing when the range of services provided is limited to work with only web or only mobile solutions.
Moreover, a lot of development teams prefer not to deal with legacy software as in this situation it is required to work with code that was written by other programmers and very often there is no access to technical documentation.
That’s why at this step of your search, you need to filter the companies based on what they can offer you. For example, at Softacom, we provide full-cycle development services and can also help you to modernize or migrate your software solutions built by other teams.
What technologies are required for developing my solution?
Already at the planning stage, you should get an understanding of the tech stack that will be applied for developing all the desired functionality. To find out what features should be built for your solution, we recommend you deeply analyze the tasks that you are going to fulfill with your new software product and study in what ways already existing products cope with similar tasks.
And based on this, you will need to check whether your potential software development partner has experience of working with the desired tools and technologies.
What expertise is needed for my software development project?
Though a tech stack that a company can work with is a very important factor in making a decision, it is also necessary to pay attention to industry-related expertise. Your software development team should have good knowledge of your business domain in order to deliver a solution that will perfectly meet both your expectations and industry standards.
As a rule, companies indicate such information on their websites and you can check on your own what industries they usually deal with. But it will be also useful to have a look at the portfolio of the companies and consider the specificity of real projects from their practice. It’s also important to make sure that your development team will be ready to study the peculiarities of your business in order to elaborate the right requirements and offer the relevant solution.
Softacom is a legacy application modernization company, so we understand that clients want to see examples of what the development team can offer them. On our website, we share details of the most interesting and challenging projects. Here, for example, is the development of a software solution for woodworking machines. To deliver a really high-quality product that will digitize and enhance the manufacturing processes at our client’s enterprise, we closely cooperated with professional woodworkers and the client’s team. And we should admit that the results were really worth all the efforts.
How will the development process be organzied?
If you see that company’s developers have all the required skills, expertise, and qualifications, you need to find out how the project realization will be organized. In the majority of companies, the development process is built the following way.
The first steps include studying the project goals, preparing the requirements, setting deadlines, choosing a text stack, as well as many other preparatory tasks. Then it is time for software design, development, testing, and bug fixing. And after that, the solution is deployed. It is also important to ask whether your development partner will be able to support and update your solution if you do not have in-house resources for that.
But what about the confidentiality of your cooperation? Will the company have any rights to disclose the details of your project to any other parties during the development process or after the release? All these things will be clearly stated in a non-disclosure agreement that should be signed before the start of project realization. If your potential partner doesn’t offer you to sign an NDA that will guarantee the protection of your sensitive business data, that’s already an alarming sign.
Will I have the possibility to discuss my project with developers?
It is obvious that even when you rely on an external software development team, you still want to have direct contact with those people who are working on your project. When you are looking for an IT partner, it is also highly recommended to find out in advance whether you will have the possibility to have a consultation before the start of the project and how your communication will be organized during the active development phase.
We greatly believe in the role of such consultations and discussions as quite often they help us to find the right approach to reaching the set goals. In our practice, we have a lot of examples of situations when clients changed their opinion after listening to our arguments. For example, sometimes customers come with a request to build a new solution from scratch but agree to migrate their legacy software to a newer version of technology after we prove the feasibility of such a solution. But such interaction is a win-win game. Thanks to it we can also learn a lot about the peculiarities of the client’s business and it helps us to offer the best solution.
