If a business needs to develop a mobile application, then, the following question arises: how do you choose a contractor?
Let us see how usually the selection of a contractor happens.
A client comes to a studio and enquires how much the project may cost. At this stage, a developer asks for specification requirements document or draws it together with the customer.
Using the specifications document a studio calculates the project budget for the client.
Once the client receives budget estimates from a few developers, they make a choice based on the price and personal impression.
This is exactly where most of us go wrong in selecting a developer.
When studios ask to provide a specifications requirements document or suggest doing it together in order to provide the budget estimate, in 98% of cases clients do not get the result they actually need and have to completely reconstruct and rebuild the product after.
This means that the client will have to spend significantly more time and money in the process of correcting and reconstructing the product.
We can illustrate it in the following way.
Say, a client comes and asks to build a bridge from one side to another over a river. And actually, the first right thing here to do is to establish what this bridge is needed for.
In most cases, it turns out that a ferry crossing is enough for accomplishing the outlined tasks.
But may be it is a tunnel that is needed.
Or it may be better to build this bridge in a different place.
And still sometimes it is smarter to move it by 500 meters and this results in a simpler engineering approach and a completely different budget.
The same goes for mobile application development.
Only after identifying specific business requirements for the application that a client wants and after analyzing how the application fits within the client’s business model, a list of functions can be drafted and the budget calculated.
A list of functions can be drafted and the budget calculated only after identifying specific business requirements for the application that a client wants and after analyzing how the application fits within the client’s business model.
And so, the effective approach to a mobile application development should look like this:
But, most of companies today choose to operate in this way:
Well, most of companies reason that is easier to get the customer to choose them that way.
At this stage, the customer prioritizes getting a budget estimate, and so the contractor provides it. And this way of course it is easier to just give the customer some or any estimate and then adjust the budget later during the project.
“Well, everyone does it this way, why shouldn’t we?” they say.
But no, some companies do work differently.
A truly smart company is not afraid to tell the customer the truth, “Well, we understand that you want to get the budget estimate here and now. But it makes no sense at this stage. First, let us determine what business aims the application has and how exactly it fits within the business model”.
So, we believe this is one of the really important criteria when choosing a developer – start working with developers who follow the approach described above.
With this approach, there is a much better chance that a client will get exactly what the business requires and avoid unnecessary rework and costs on the way.
The second criterion is whether a developer has the right people that are best capable to address how the application will resolve the required business needs and fit within the business model of the client.
They are not people who are just business analysts and list functionalities the application needs. But people who have been in business for a long time and have real world experience. People who really will be able to see the best ways to address the business needs and not just build some other application with a list of fancy functions.
Just like in the illustration about the bridge, the right people will say that instead of building the bridge, the best solution is to have a ferry or build a tunnel. Or may be move the bridge up or down the stream and use a different engineering construction approach altogether.
Now, the third criterion may sound unconventional and sound somewhat too subjective, yet in our experience, it is no less important.
It is whether you and the developer are on the same wavelength, can speak the same language and are able to communicate clearly with each other.
This is because building an application is a no ordinary technical task. But with the development team you hire, you are going to be developing a new part of your existing businesses.
It is important to understand here that the application is not just a set of features. It is a new addition to your business model.
So here you have the three major criteria that we believe are best used when choosing a developer.
Now, if you share our views and approach, feel free to contact us to get a free consultation and analysis.
After the consultation, you will get a better picture of possible directions on how to realize your project ideas.