Once you have made the decision to work with a custom software developer to address some of the key pain points confronting your company the work begins in finding the right fit for both the project and for your company.

Why is finding the right partner important? The answer is quite simple: “the success of your project likely depends on finding a collaborator whose philosophy about designing and building custom software aligns as elegantly as possible with yours.” In fact, the most common failures of outsourced software projects can all be attributed to some degree of a “bad fit.” Common points of failure include:

• Misaligned expectations about price, quality, and process between the client and the custom developer.
• Miscommunication between the client and the custom developer, which is most often related to how each group values (or not) communication within their own company.
• Conflicting interests and misaligned understanding of work and development processes. Your company understands work (how teams work, how managers manage, and how leaders lead) one way and your outsourced developer understands it another way is a common scenario that can prove challenging to negotiate (at best) or become a deep source of costly conflict (at worst).

The most decision-making models

In order to avoid these common risks, it is important to enter into your decision-making process with an honest and clear set of expectations and priorities. Having this in place early will help you sort and sift through the dozens of proposals that will inevitably cross your desk in the early stages of your decision making. When setting these priorities there are basically four options to decide from:

• Price point is the easiest and most common approach. Securing multiple quotes, ensure each one addresses all your key needs, and acknowledge that the lowest number is the best number at this point in your company’s development.
• Experience requires a bit more upfront thinking about your specific project requirements in terms of user experience, technical (hardware and software) requirements, and exactly what you want the custom program to do (not always as clear an answer as you might expect). Your process is focused in this approach on choosing a company that has likely built a similar program for another company at some point.
• Culture and management bases your final choice on the “fit” between your company’s philosophy and management style and those of your custom software developer. Do both groups share similar philosophies around Design Thinking, for instance, or are you both inclined more to a focus on Agile approaches to development.
• Communication emphasizes how your partner will communicate throughout the collaboration process. This will also tell you how they manage the changes in a project that inevitably occur as well as something about their internal culture.

In the end, you are looking for a custom software developer that you can partner with (not simply hire) and that you can trust will work in the best interest of the project and, by extension, in the best interest of your company. By building a relationship with a trusted outsourced developer you are taking important steps toward a partnership that can develop over time into a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties. 

To begin determining what you need in your custom solution - try out our Tentacle Solution Builder. The experienced team at Tentacle Solutions is happy to assist. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, we deal with all facets of database design, custom software, predictive analytics, testing, creative UI/UX services, and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help you create a one-of-a-kind app to suit your unique needs.