So you are looking to develop some bespoke tech for your business?
The first thing you might do is jump on Google and start searching for ‘App Developers’. You may find a few companies that has a portfolio of work that impresses you, and so you decide to fill out their enquiry form and fire it away.
Now you have a handful of App Development Agencies you are talking to, but what do you look for and what questions should you ask?
It can be a daunting task, especially if you have a tight timeframe and high project stakes.
At Moonward, we have put together this small article with a couple of thought provoking questions and conversation starters to discuss with the app development agency you are investigating.
In todays modern world, there are two app development teams that you can work with: in-house or off-shore.
In-house means the team is in the office, working together under one roof. They have a shared benchmark, team culture, established systems, and importantly are united by a common goal. If you are a client who is based in the same city that they are, and are the type of person who likes to meet in a face to face environment, then in-house could be perfect for you. An in-house team is not siloed from each other, they don’t communicate through email and calls, instead they build meaningful relationships in the office and interact daily. This isn’t a fluffy, good feelings metric. This is how hard problems gets solved.
Off-shore means the team may consist of members in different time zones and locations. This may be beneficial to you if you are looking to launch your product in the market that the offshore team is based in, as they will have a local understanding of what you are trying to achieve. If the team is split into different time zones, it also means that you may be able to have people working on your project around the clock. Because the team is not in the one place it’s important to keep an eye on the quality and output of the product. As the offshore market saturated, often individuals may be working several different jobs at once in order to maximise their own profits. You can read more about this here: https://www.moonward.com.au/blog/why-offshore-development-is-hurting-the-tech-industry-we-should-know-we-acquired-an-offshore-development-company
Beware teams that claim to be in-house. You can sometimes rule them out by looking through their website and social media to see if team members really are where they claim to be. Often times only the sales or design team is local and the development work is pushed offshore.
In development, the two most common working styles are Agile and Waterfall. The style of working is important as it will dictate how the development team approaches your project and how they will manage its delivery.
Agile refers to a loose scope of work where teams set short term deliverables. This allows developers to be flexible, by making changes and seeing results quickly as effort and resources are allocated towards areas that are a priority. Agile is suited towards long term, large projects that have a lot of moving parts, such as an internal Customer Relationship Management system.
Waterfall refers to a set scope of work where teams focus on the delivery of a whole. This allows teams to really lock in and focus on the path in front of them. Waterfall works well for short term, small scale projects, such as a sign in system.
No method is right or wrong. What is important is that you ask the development team what style of development they would use for your particular project, and why they believe that methodology would work for you and your project.
Although you don’t have to understand every tech plugin and framework available to you (after all that’s why you are looking for a tech team - to manage these decisions for you), understanding the tech stack that the team you partner with intends to use is important. Why do they suggest using it? Are they specialists in this framework? Do they believe it suits your product better? What are the future limitations of the stack? Asking these questions will not only help educate you as the client, but will gauge the teams understanding on what they are going to build.
There are too many different aspects of a products tech stack to mention as neatly as I have above with other points. My advice is to take your time with your questioning here, see if the particular app development agency has solved challenges similar to yours. If there is a particularly interesting use case in your tech product, ask the team how they would seek to tackle this from a technical solutions stand point.
Of course these points above are all general. Ultimately you should have your own wish list of items that you will discuss with the agency that you partner with.
And of course, all the best.
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