Why mobile matters?
It’s not by chance that this year Google has announced its complete mobile-friendliness. Just imagine: today, those companies that have no mobile presence (neither native nor web app) lose up to 45% in sales!
One in five Starbucks sales in the US made with mobile payments
The fact remains: the speed of how mobile changes the world is dramatical. But do businesses change their products/services with the same pace? Do they follow the market or just catching-up the development?
Very often companies face lack of development staff who can bring their business mobile. But the good news is that the market is fulfilled with agencies, local and global outsourcing companies and freelancers capable enough to deliver your dream app. There are plenty of providers you can choose from.
But there’s no any ultimate company that will be a match for any project. You should precisely choose the provider, select out of numerous candidates, unless you wouldn’t like to have one of those 35% of projects that fail for unrealistic estimates (75%), vague project objectives (71%) or ever-changing project objectives during the development process. Assuming that your team is skilled and competent.
Incompetent teams go in development not realising the real purpose of the app, they don’t have detailed requirements and planned process. That’s the mistake of providers who eager to earn the money but not deliver the result.
Choosing your outsourcing provider is one of the most daunting tasks for most entrepreneurs. But in order not to have your house built on sand you’ll need to pass this stage to avoid frustration and build the app of your dream.
So what is the criteria?
Know-hows
The first impression is the strongest. So when you google for your future provider do your best to pay the most attention to their portfolio. Very often our future customers started collaboration with us just because we had previous successful experience of working with the same technology, already implemented chat function or integrated some GPS or API service to the app. So if you have any specific feature you need to build, first of all make sure your future partner is already a bad hand at it.
You can also pre-check their skills by sending a brief. If you receive the answer like “We are the best to develop it” – forget the company. And if you get a couple of technology-related questions and suggestions for idea-improvement, this is a sign of their competence and expresses the desire to help you.
Flexibility
Coding is not enough. You’ll need a number of additional services depending on the stage you are currently at.
- You have an idea only and a hand-written mockup
Then you’ll need to get a prototype. You can make it yourself using proto.io service or order from company. We suggest that for complicated projects with multiple screens and complex navigation you ask a company to develop it for you, so that they deliver it together with the specification document with recommendations on how the coding should be done.
- You have made a prototype, but no idea on how to develop it and which technology to choose
Then you should probably ask for research so that specialists estimate on which platform your app will perform the best. They’ll also consider all the features you like to implement, and how they would fit the market, their role for the app and provide detailed estimation for each of them.
- You have a scheme prototype with documentation
Here you’ll need to choose the team with relevant designer on board. Make sure you give a detailed review on the app’s appearance and general look to get exactly what you like. A good idea would be to provide the designer with the samples of apps and ideas you enjoy to help him meet your expectations.
- You have a designed prototype with documentation
Well, that’s the most rare case because at this stage customers usually have already chosen the development company.This is where coding usually begins. Most customers want to start here (ignoring the prototype and specification). But if you’ve already done all the preparation and are ready with documentation, that’s a fine opportunity to pick an experienced team that would be ready to provide you with high-quality, bug-free code and further testing.
So if you review all the stages of mobile app development, you’ll notice that having a single provider for the whole process is not enough sometimes. If you like to hire experts in their field at smart cost, think of asking an agency for help to direct you to right companies specialising at niche solutions.
For example, sometimes it’s smart to hire multiple companies for testing to get independent feedback on how the app performs on real devices or otherwise split prototyping, design and development between several providers to get high-quality result for each of the stages.
Having a single provider to maintain all your mobile outsourcing activities, get regular feedbacks on development progress and limit the risks sounds good, agree?
Well, first things first. Let’s move on to the next point.
Technology
This aspect plays major role and most customers put this first and foremost. We won’t list technologies that your provider should work with, but want to argue more on their competence in general.
The company should NOT aim to sell you the most expensive option, but review your project description, evaluate and provide a detailed consultation on technology you should use. That should be an unbiased estimation without attempts to fit any of their standing team. A good provider will explain, for example, why you shouldn’t choose a cross-platform solution (Xamarin for example) and reveal that they don’t work faster or are more rich in features than their native analogues. So that should be a frank talk and the most optimal offer as a result.
Ability to further support your app
If you have enough technical experts in your team, that doesn’t have to be an issue. But once you need to implement updates or debug something, there should always be someone by your side. Here a good advice would be to have the most advantageous agreement in order not to come down with your money.
Be your good friends
Do you imagine working with someone (remote or in-house) who doesn’t understand your objectives, vision, style, business approach at last? We bet you wouldn’t want to.
So opt for a team that would spend hours together with you doing their best to come up with the best solutions. Because in order to develop an app that would stand out you’ll definitely need to work with your remote team as one single smoothly-running mechanism.
We’d like to share a representative case from our recent experience. Not so long ago one of our customers requested to develop an app for night club-goers. We honestly noted that implementing a chat function is too pricey and useless there. As a result our customer is still very grateful that we were impartial enough to share our thoughts.
So what are the aspects that you look for in your mobile development partner is a matter of every individual case. But we suggest you remember our recommendations and here’s a list of questions you should ask:
– How you deal with missed deadlines?
There’s no need to discuss deadlines since we all know there’s no such company that has never missed them. But a tricky question might be is how the PM deals with postponement? If the company realises they are out of budget/time, will they ensure you are well aware that your app is behind the schedule?
A good company will make sure that your app is on track to meet the deadline and budget with no bad surprises and extra costs.
– Do you have process?
That’s another question to help you understand if your app can be delivered not only on time but is also developed right. From the beginning your provider should describe you the point they start (mockups, hand-written schemes) and the whole process they’re going to develop your app (design, development, testing). The more often they contact you for feedback the more involved they want you to be. That’s good.
– What do you think of the app idea?
Involve your provider to participate in idea creation. They are those guys who are going to build your app! Moreover they are likely to have positive experience of delivering alike solutions so it’s their opinion which is much appreciated. Professional and experienced providers are very open to such questions and will give detailed and competent feedback proposing to add/replace some feature or use technology you haven’t considered before.
With satisfying replies to the questions above, your partner is likely to obtain the necessary qualities to deliver your project on time and of high-quality.
“If you throw peanuts – you get monkeys”
Just give me some time and I’ll get you some copy!
And another parting word. An everlasting advice to all our customers who choose their providers with our help: do not focus on rates. We bet you know that skilled developers are always in demand and companies with relevant human resources that build high-quality products hire the best and are to pay them good rates. So it’s not a matter of cutting the costs, but more about choosing relevant specialists for effective collaboration.
The trick is that you can experience service only when you go through it. Our customers have already done and enjoy collaboration through a number of projects in a row. Would you like to hire a single company to handle all your outsourcing activities and be responsible for project management?
We can discuss it. Let’s talk
