Software outsourcing is a proven way to provide a company with the right software without having to develop applications in-house. Using the services of a software house helps to reduce expenses, increases mobility, and makes it possible to outsource the project to people who have taken part in similar undertakings.
How to find out whether a given software house will meet our expectations?
Table of Contents
Determine our needs
Before we contact the first company, we need to prepare detailed information about our project. This will greatly facilitate the exchange of information and also help in choosing the right company. The most important data in this case are:
– requirements and specifics of the project – what role is the software house to play? Is it to create an application from scratch, consulting, or testing? What are the requirements in terms of usability, programming language, and security?
– time – how quickly should the project be completed? How much can the delivery date be postponed in case of additional changes or delays, and what is the deadline?
– budget – how is the project being financed? By how much can expenses change and where is the impassable budget limit?
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Portfolio and experience
As with any other branch of the market, relevant references are the best way to find out whether a potential partner offers a satisfactory level of service.
Checking references, certificates, and previous projects will allow us to form an opinion about the company, but we must remember that in some situations, the contract obliges the software house to maintain confidentiality, so even long-established companies cannot boast about some of their achievements.
For this reason, it is worth looking not only at the website, but also at the profile on LinkedIn, checking the opinions of employees and customers, and seeing how the software house communicates with people via social media.
This information will give us a complete picture of a given company long before we send the first message with an offer of cooperation.
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Communication
The way a software house responds to our messages can be one of the most important factors that will determine a future software outsourcing collaboration.
The way in which the company responds to the project proposal, the detail of the response, the clear language, and the way of presenting the issues perfectly illustrate the commitment with which the software house approaches the client.
At the same time, it must be remembered that software development requires the rapid exchange of detailed, sometimes specialist information between the client and the contractor. Also, you would also need to do a bit of research in order to find reliable software testing agencies which won’t be biased when testing the final product.
Implementation of the client’s vision depends not only on the skills of the team but also on the ability to clearly explain expectations, while delaying the response – regardless of which side – leads to delays that can paralyze the entire project.
In order to maintain a free flow of data, companies use applications such as Trello or Jira, thanks to which both employees and the client can observe the progress of work at every stage of software development.