Users spend 3 hours daily in applications ─ and 10% more every year. However, not all applications, like not all startups, are successful. According to the CB Insights report, up to 70% of technology startups fail for one reason or another, for example, due to lack of market demand or lack of funds for development.
In search of expertise, the business turns to IT companies for outsourcing services. Due to its resources, a correctly selected outsourcer can predict and eliminate most risks.
Path to choosing an artist
The following tips are true when a business task and budget are defined, it remains only to find an executor. If you first need to determine the budget, it is easiest for the customer to find similar applications and contact their mobile developers for an assessment. If the company has relevant experience, already during the first negotiations you can find out what minimum development budget should be expected.
Step one. Identification of candidates
Typically, artists are searched for using the following sources:
- cases of mobile developers;
- recommendations of friends;
- business contacts received at specialized exhibitions;
- personal contacts.
If you are faced with the task of finding a contractor, study the activities of each selected company. Go to the site, look at the portfolio, try to assess the scale of the work. Find the group of the company on social networks or the profiles of its leaders to make sure that it is an active market participant.
Important evaluation criteria:
- the company has recommendations from colleagues in your area of business;
- the presence of relevant or similar in scale experience;
- evidence of the company's practical activities, the availability of relevant news on social networks;
- company maturity.
If you are potentially willing to work with a company, enter its name and contact details in the report. After that, you can send your request to each of the participating companies.
Step Two Collection of commercial offers
The success of your project depends on how efficiently the collection of commercial offers will be held. It is important to evaluate the resources of each developer and provide everyone with unified data about the planned project.
If all participants have a different idea of the implementation of your ideas, then as a result you will get completely different numbers. Moreover, the high cost of services does not guarantee that your project will not go beyond the planned budget after taking into account all the features of your idea. Similarly, the low cost of services in itself is not an indicator of risk; it does not mean that the estimate is underestimated or that certain problems will arise during the development of the project.
Participants in the competition can, in their own way, present the scope of work and choose various implementation technologies, which is bad. For example, someone can offer native development of mobile applications, and someone ─ cross-platform. Each developer will offer their own cost of services, each option will have its pros and cons, which are determined by the technologies used.
There are times when new ideas for the project come to the customer after he has sent his requests to the developers. In this case, all clarifications and ideas must again be sent to all participants. This will allow outsourcers to adjust their proposals - they will be more relevant, which will subsequently reduce the likelihood of contentious or contentious issues.
Step Three Conduct of negotiations
After sending requests, you proceed to the next stage - conducting negotiations and meetings with developers. Teams will present themselves and ask you questions. Your goal is to determine which companies have their own resources to carry out your project and which delegate tasks to their contractors.
Ask a few questions to minimize the main risks.
1. Does the company have its own development staff? Does it involve subcontractors or freelancers in its projects?
It is important to determine the ratio of your own and invited specialists at the moment. If there are more external developers, it is obvious that the mobile studio will not solve the potential problems of contractors on their own.
2. Is the company ready to provide access to the task tracker of the project?
The more transparent the work, the less the risk of failure. Having access to the task tracker, you can immediately see which of the specialists is working on tasks, how quickly these tasks are closed, how much is left until the end of the project, etc. In case of problems you will recognize them at a much earlier date.
3. Is the company ready to connect you to team meetings?
You do not have to participate in them daily. However, the ability to connect and chat with the team is of great importance (and eliminates the possibility of “substitution” of specialists if you communicate using video).
4. Does the company provide source code as a repository?
If subsequently other artists come to the project, this will make their work easier.
5. Does the company currently have free resources to implement your project?
There is no problem if you can wait. And if the task is very urgent, then you should evaluate exactly those resources that are available at the moment, and will not appear “in the coming week”. As practice shows, the completion stage of ongoing projects may be delayed, for example, in connection with the implementation of additional customer wishes.
6. Will the company itself do all the components of your project (server, CMS, mobile and web clients)? Or will another partner be involved for this?
The participation of another partner is a risk, even if the company has previously successfully implemented similar projects with the participation of various contractors.
Step Four Filter Offers
After you have received a sufficient volume of proposals and held initial negotiations, you can begin to filter the contest participants.
First of all, exclude companies that have risk criteria. For example:
- hiding information about the development team;
- lack of access to the task tracker and rallies;
- There are doubts about the competence of the company, etc.
Do not choose a team with risk parameters only for the reason that you liked to communicate with them. You should not deceive yourself that in your case everything will be fine.
At this stage, it is advisable to leave no more than 2-3 potential performers. Other participants are invited to draw up a rough work plan (roadmap) for the project and then hold a rally with the team that will be involved in the development. Using the roadmap, you and the performer will be able to plan the work and the necessary resources. And through communication with a potential team, you will understand the competence of specialists and increase the likelihood of success of the project.
If the individual components of the system will be done not by the main contractor, but by other executors, it is advisable to invite them for discussion too.
Step Five Decision-making
At the final stage of choosing a mobile developer, everything is simple: you need to make a decision. Naturally, various factors can influence it, including the timing and budget of the development, the team’s approach to work, and general impressions of communication. Assess all information and potential risks.
In the case of mobile development (front-end), parameters such as a combination of company resources and capabilities have the greatest weight. At the same time, you should be comfortable on an equal footing with the performer.
To summarize
There are many mobile studios on the market, but in practice it can be difficult to find a reliable team. We hope that the described algorithm will help you save time when choosing an artist and release the application on time and without unforeseen situations.
Thanks for attention!