If you are about to embark on the journey of developing your own software program, you may be overwhelmed by the different ways to accomplish the task. How do you choose the right team? How do you know if someone is capable of coding the kind of product you need them to?
You don’t have a huge budget and can’t afford to waste money trying different developers out hoping one of them will be up to the task. Watch our video, and let us answer some of these questions for you. You’ll get some valuable ideas about finding the right coding partner and you’ll feel a little less stressed as a result.
Video Transcript:
How to Assess the Quality of Software Development
Know thyself and what you want to pay for. Once again if your developer says, yes, I will do a great job they may not have the support around to make it a great project; through the assistance of Project Managers or particularly with the assistance of UX. In recent years there has been a change to be more UX focused and customer focused. Really finding out what the customer needs and then developing a development project around the customer is of high importance. It is a skill that will define the quality of the development process.
Referees. Call their referees. Ask for referees of similar size and give them a buzz. Talk to them not only about their development project but how they engage with you as a developer. Were there people at hand? Were they quick to respond? Did they deliver on time? What methods are they using to move the project along?
Small tasks. This one I used quite often. It’s giving any developer, particularly overseas, a task where I’ve chunked a large project down to a 5% piece. I would give each of three or four final developers, it was the final filter process, I would give them a really small chunk of the project and I’d say I need this built.
I’d sit and watch. I’d be interested in how they were going to communicate with me, how quickly they deliver it and the quality of software development and of the product at the end. You get a very good taste of what the service is going to be like from a very small piece of the work, without spending a huge amount of money. That is one strategy.
Regular demonstrations. Alex will talk soon about regular demonstrations in terms of sprint weeks. One thing with international development is that when demonstrations stop, they’ve run into a difficulty of delivering the project. It’s gone beyond them and everything stops. I spent a good three months trying to get the software developer in Russia, because he got to a point that he couldn’t complete the work because it had got beyond him, beyond his skill set. When that stops, that is when you should be looking at the warning signs for yourself in terms of the project and whether you need to move it to someone else.
Look for the signals:
- Code review process. In Alliance we have tech leads who will be reviewing the code from those developing under them. So there is a constant review process going on.
- Automated testing. Have they got an automating testing in place? Are they suggesting automating testing as part of the project?
- Do they think about users? Have they got a UX expert within the team or are they considering that what they’re building is actually going to be used by someone and therefore the look, the feel, the functionality is working for the end user?
There’s no way to know if a coder is going to end up being the right fit at the start of a project. Before you lose time and money, you can apply some of the concepts we’ve introduced in this video. Test your coders out with a few smaller pieces of the project and see how they approach the job. Is it getting finished? How elegant is the result? You are better off spending a little money to get a feel for the right people to work with than to spend more money on an entire project that you can’t get out of.
Do you need to work with a gifted team of developers aimed at understanding your goals? Contact us, and let’s discuss your project today.