If you’ve been through several mobile app development companies for your business app development and now need to finalize the one, this article is for you. This phase of calculating the pros and cons against each shortlisted vendor and weighing them, is often the defining phase of the direction in your business’s digital transformation journey. Ironically, a majority of the failure/subdued success of the development process come from non-core
often underestimated aspects like communication, expectations mismatch, commitment and work ethics.
For instance, let me share a story of an ex- colleague and now an entrepreneur based in India. Being a bootstrapped startup eager to get that digital avatar in lesser resources, he turned to newer and smaller firms that could deliver on his requirement. After the initial agreement on the technology, timeline, resources and delivery, the work began. Fortnight into the process, he realized that the developer team was a close knit unit of 6, divided into multiple projects at once. And the rest is history. Delivery delays, lack of communication and dedication to get the product up and running resulted in sour taste and the process is still in jeopardy even after a six month delay on the timeline.
For sure, we would want to avoid such a mess right? The takeaways from the case above and many such instances where the non core issues create a hurdle, cannot be preempted and assured for. However, there are certain checks that help keep both the teams in coordination and conjugation.
Choosing the right development technology and dedicated resources: The most important factor in the development process is the technology you depend on. The in-house team has to have that comfort with the technology to understand the progress by the developer. Moreover, is the developer offering you the required resources in a dedicated capacity or will they be working on multiple projects at once? For example, there are new age development platforms that not only facilitate open source, template based codes that are quick, effective and traceable in real time.
Transparency/ Real time Process tracker: Another key factor is to ensure that the development process is in line with the expected outcome, at all times. To make this happen, you need two things. First, the availability of real time progress of development. And second, the in-house expertise to gauge and ensure things are on track. This may require hiring an expert specializing both in technology and the business part of it.
Real time/regular and periodic compilation/prototyping: proving very handy both for developers and clients are the new age development tools like Flutter, Python, Swift etc. They give you unmatched control and traceability over the process that wasn’t so easy earlier. For example, if you hire a Flutter app development company to do the job, their performance and delivery would be a lot different from the one specializing in Java or React Native. The key here is to understand that through different technologies today, you can reach a similar target, but with different capabilities. You need to comprehend what suits your requirement most.
Hosting/Security/GPS/Cloud/No.of Users/AMC and other add-on costs: Have you estimated and agreed upon the costs that are not generally a part of the development process? Moreover, based on usage, you may require some third party SaaS products. Is your development compatible for a seamless integration? For example, Maps usage is a majority running expense for businesses specializing in the hyperlocal arena. An easy integration that not only makes operations smooth but also maintains a tab on the expenses would be desirable right?
Testing, debugging and support: While often agreed at the outset itself, these phases of the software development lifecycle are often tough to see-off. Having a full blown emphasis on the testing and debugging, at the desired time is paramount. The better you test your product, the more marketable it becomes. But debugging and improvements are endless. Is the team you wish to finalize on terms to support these crucial phases.
