Many businesses want to develop their own apps, but most don’t want to hire a team of developers to that for them.
Fortunately, they can count on the busy software development market that provides a wide range of options for developing apps – from agencies and outsourcing centers to freelancers and software houses.
There are plenty of companies who can help you realize your app idea, but how do you cooperate with an app developer?
Here are 3 critical tips to help you develop a great collaboration with developers who are working on your app project.
1. Collaborate with one company
If you’re planning to hire app designers, usability analysts, and developers separately, prepare for trouble.
It’s smart to find a company that can provide all these services for you within a single collaboration. One way to find out whether a company has all the strengths you need is checking them on app developers rankings.
When collaborating with just one company, you’ll be dealing with a single point of responsibility and avoid contractors blaming each other for not keeping deadlines. A company can organize its work efficiently and assign different specialists to various areas of your app development to steer clear of bottlenecks.
Even if the company doesn’t deal with some of these aspects internally, they might have an network of partners with diversified skills who can help deliver various components of your app project.
2. Decide on the pricing model
Nothing helps more in organizing work and managing expectations than a clear pricing model for your app development.
You can basically choose from two pricing models:
- fixed price
- time and material
If you know exactly what you want to build and don’t expect your project to change, you can agree with developers on a fixed price contract.
But requirements often change in an app development projects and you might end up regretting your decision when the developer bills you for more than expected. It’s pointless to sign a contract with a fixed content and price when the market is so dynamic.
Time and material pricing model will help you to smoothly collaborate with software developers. Once you agree on the number of iterations, you’ll be able to pay for each of them separately. That way you’ll stay current on the project and apply changes as you go.
That pricing model enables agile software development that can quickly address changes and maintain flexibility – and that’s something that only helps in cooperation between technical and non-technical professionals.
3. Write a good brief
A plan of how you want to proceed with the project is necessary at start of your journey and it can make or break your collaboration with the developer. This is why you need to make sure that you know how to write a good brief.
Your brief is there to provide the developer with key logistics information that will have a huge impact about the development and delivery of your project.
Here’s what you must absolutely include in your brief:
- The start and release date
- The platforms or operating systems you’d like your app to support
- Information about the availability of any internal resources such as designers, testers, or back-end developers
- Preferred pricing model
But that’s not everything.
Your brief should also outline your value proposition for the users of your app. What kind of problem does it solve? What is your app’s right to exist?
Developers should be aware of the rationale behind your product’s existence and how it relates to your business model. They need more than just the technical scope of the project – in fact, if they’re not asking questions about your business, you should rethink hiring that company.
Finally, your brief needs to show which functions you consider essential to your app and which ones are just optional. That’s how you avoid potential communication problems later on – you wouldn’t want developers to focus their effort on something you don’t even consider that important, right?
Collaborating with software developers isn’t easy, but follow these 3 tips and you can be sure to create a smooth cooperation will bring your app project to success.
Guest article written by: Thomas Raynott