Recognize the right software development partner
So you had a great business idea for a web or a mobile application. You started a company, and through many ups and downs, smiles and frowns, you achieved initial success.
NOW YOU NEED SUSTAINABLE GROWTH! You need designs, efficient algorithms, write and test code, provide tech-support, but beyond all that you want to share your passion and bring your vision to life. And you want to do it all in a lean and efficient manner!
YOU NEED A GREAT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PARTNER!
A great software development outsourcing company is not just a contractor, but rather a partner. And the right partner will align their goals with your vision, and aim at creating “VALUE” for the stakeholders, not just build a mere product. This path is at best trodden together, with mutual efforts. On the contrary, it could be devastating when a development partner is not capable to see the big picture or fails to align themselves with your values and vision. It’s not always an easy process to select the right partner, so here are 8 qualities, we think that one should look for while marrying the right development partner. “Well, it is almost like a marriage, but not exactly the same”
Culture and Management Style
At times your scrum teams will be sitting thousands of miles away. It is absolutely imperative to develop a culture that thrives on your values and desired methodologies. Your partner should be prepared to implement right project management methodologies and create an environment to nurture your company’s culture in the scrum teams working with you. Your partner should be an expert in implementing various methodologies suited to your application development requirements, Such as Agile and Scrum, for developing rapid prototypes and producing high-quality software quickly. We love to implement agile methods here at Mascottech | Techverx, simply because it helps us develop a culture focused on adding value to the user experience, instead of becoming paralyzed in the fear of scope creep. It is important to select a partner who accelerates the delivery of initial business value through a process of continuous planning and feedback and who is able to ensure that value continues to be maximized throughout the development process.
We will discuss “How to develop a great culture” in upcoming blogs … stay tuned
Knowledge & Skill Enhancement Processes
Technology waits for no one, and there are many firms out there that can’t keep up with new knowledge and skills. Find a partner whose teams possess the most up-to-date skills and experience relevant to your requirements today, but at same time, they should have a great working plan to enhance skill-set of the scrum teams to ensure future-proof support to you! Three absolutely important things to look out for:
Your partner’s talent Acquisition Plans, and Onboarding processes.
Your partner’s Training, and Development plans and process.
Your partner’s employee Retention plans and processes.
We will cover these 3 discussion items in detail in the next blog… so stay tuned
Relevant Experience and versatility
The best software firms out there bring versatility through extensive hands-on experience on variety of projects. They have a diverse, largely senior team of experts who have experience working in multiple domains. They've put in the time in the trenches and have encountered pretty much every thorny software development problem. Moreover versatility is important, the more knowledge they have of your particular domain, and experience working in it, the better off you’ll be.
Growth and Scalability
While it’s essential for your partner to be extremely well-equipped to handle the most demanding projects today, you also need to have one eye fixed firmly on the future. In architecting an outsourcing solution, every effort should be made to select a partner who is committed to scale-up according to your unique future requirements and be able to pivot if required.
We will cover “Sustainable Growth” in the upcoming blogs… so stay tuned
Consistency
One of the most important quality of a great partner is “Consistency”. Consistency comes from repetition of processes. Make sure all the management processes are well mapped out, tried and tested. Let it be recruitment processes, utilization tracking processes, billing processes, training processes, QA & Testing processes, or any other process, ensure your partner has mapped it from beginning to end and has tested it several times.
We will cover “How to achieve consistency through processes” in the upcoming blogs… so stay tuned
Ability to Innovate
Equally important to consistency is your partner’s ability to innovate. Choose a partner who takes the unexpected break-down as an opportunity to improvise. A partner who looks out for Incongruities or Conflicts between opposing functions, requirements or values as a chance to innovate. A partner who constantly looks to improve all processes, even if they already meet your expectations.
We will cover “How to innovate” in the upcoming blogs… so stay tuned
Trust and Credibility
Any great relationship is built on trust, and if you’re going to work successfully with anyone on a project, you need to able trust their judgment and believe that they can and will do what you've hired them to do – like make the right technology decisions and ensure the finished product is of the highest possible quality. Trust is sometimes tough to gauge, but when you find a partner you believe in, it makes going forward with the next project much easier.
We will cover “How to build Trust” in the upcoming blogs… so stay tuned
Don't Partner with A-HOLES
This doesn't need much additional explanation. Partner with companies built on the right values and principles. Find a partner who treats employees, customers, and other stakeholders with utmost respect and care.
The first contact is often make or break. The more you learn about your partner, the more you become confident whether or not you share the business philosophy and approaches to work. Great partner is always interested in your success, and understands your challenges, core values, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And they use their expertise to help realize your vision!
Choose a great engineering partner!
