What you need to pay attention to when hiring a custom software development comp

Posted by CesarMuler on March 4th, 2014

The process of hiring the right custom software development company can be a daunting task. The number of different companies out there which can help you with your custom software project can be overwhelming and even make you feel like you are comparing apples to oranges at times. To help, you must check a few key criteria which can be broken down to the following: past work, pricing model, communication, development team, and development process. By using these criteria to evaluate each custom software development company, you can start comparing apples to apples and separate the not-so-good companies with ones with whom you can work long into the future.

First and foremost, make sure you get interested in their past work. This is one of the easiest things to do when looking for a custom software development company, and can, often, be done just by looking through their website. Looking at the company’s portfolio,when it comes to custom software, lets you know that they have the competency to ship a product and where that competency lies.

Many websites and companies today are offering work at a fixed rate. Almost 9 out of 10 times you will be overpaying. These development companies generally take a pre-existing website, change some content, and send it to you. This might take them 2 hours or it might take them 8 hours, but no matter what, you will have to pay them the flat rate agreed upon. So, be careful with companies that do not give you a straight answer on how they charge clients and what they charge you for. Anytime they give you a price quote, make sure you know precisely what they are charging you for. More times than not, they charge you on perceived value instead of actual work done. Instead of getting a price quote for work that needs to be done, find out how many hours it is going to take someone to work at your customer software and base the price around that.

What should you look for? Find a custom software development company that offers a flat hourly rate for work. With these companies, you will be paying for only the work you have agreed upon and actual hours worked so you know you are not just being charged for perceived value.

Another very important part of the process is to ask the soon to be hired company where their developers are located. This is extremely important and often times not found out until too late. Always ask up front about the actual developers that will be working on your custom software. If they tell you they outsource overseas, it typically means that once your project begins, they hand you off to an overseas development team that you deal with for the rest of the project.

This should not be confused with onshore distributed development. Onshore distributed development means the team is distributed around the country, but all work directly for the company as employees. There is a new age of development companies that do this to acquire the best talent in the country while being able to offer development at better rates than their competition.

It’s not hard to find the best custom software development which can take proper care of your custom software order! All you need to do is to have the plan and an idea of what you want! They will take care of the rest!