How to Choose a Good Software Development Company
Written by Pius Henry
Choosing the right development partner can have a huge impact on the success of your project. Whether you’re building a mobile app, creating an integration with another system, or just trying to modernize your legacy application, this is true.
You’ll want to make sure that all parties involved understand each other’s needs and expectations. Hence, here are 8 essential things you need to consider when choosing a good software development company:
1. Look for a company that has experience in your industry
It’s vital that you work with a software development company that has experience in your industry. An experienced team will understand the requirements and challenges of your business, and they’ll know how to build a solution tailored to your needs. This is particularly important if you’re working on an enterprise-level project with complex data requirements or planning to sell your product or service at scale.
Asking about the experience is easy: just ask! You can ask what types of projects the software development company has worked on in the past and whether any have been similar to yours. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to ask questions about their specific experience with similar industries as yours.
A professional team will be happy to answer all of these questions. Even if they don’t have any first-hand knowledge from previous projects, they may be able to point you toward other sources who can provide insight into how similar companies operate in your space (like customer testimonials).
2. Good communication is important.
Good communication is the key to success when working with a development team. Without good communication, both parties can end up feeling frustrated and confused about what’s happening with their project.
A good development team will:
- Communicate openly and honestly about what is and isn’t possible for your project. They’ll give you an estimate of how long things will take to complete and some advice on what can be done now and what should wait until later. A good development team understands that you have other projects at the same time, so they’ll work hard to ensure your current tasks don’t get in the way of any future ones.
- Keep you updated on progress regularly when appropriate (e-mail updates are fine here). If something changes or goes wrong during development timeframes, it’s important that everyone knows immediately so they can make adjustments accordingly before it becomes unmanageable down the line; this is especially true if deadlines are involved!
3. Does the company use an agile or waterfall approach?
Depending on the size and scope of your project, you’ll need to choose between an agile or waterfall approach. Agile development is a method of software development that relies on iterative cycles (or sprints) and frequent feedback from stakeholders to deliver high-quality solutions with minimum risk. Waterfall development typically involves a series of sequential steps, with each phase completed before moving on to the next.
However, there are also several reasons why you might want to consider choosing an agile approach:
- It’s best suited for projects with short deadlines and frequent change requests due to its rapid feedback loop. This makes it ideal for startups or businesses that need their products quickly so they can get them into their customers’ hands ASAP use ‘as soon as possible’ instead
- Agile processes help reduce risk because they allow you to make changes as needed throughout the course of development instead of trying out all kinds of new features at once just because they’re possible or easy enough. This means less wasted time and money down the road when everything doesn’t go according to plan.
At The Bulb Africa, our product development team leverages the power of agile methodology to develop seamless digital solutions for clients in a variety of industries.
4. What about continuous integration and continuous deployment?
Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) are the two most common ways that software development teams use to automate the testing and deployment of code. In a nutshell, CI/CD automates the process by which developers check in code to version control, which then triggers automated build tests, package management (including dependency resolution), and automated deployment to staging or production environments.
The benefits of CI/CD include:
- Code quality — Continuous integration helps ensure that your product is always built using the latest version of all modules. This reduces bugs because you have fewer changes in each release, allowing you to catch any regression bugs before they go into production.
- Testing — You can run tests against every commit as soon as it’s made. This means you won’t have any broken builds later on in development when lots of features were added at once or patches were applied too quickly without proper testing first — which often happens when developers manually merge their own changes instead of using automation tools like GitLab Flow!
5. How does it handle documentation?
It’s a good sign if the software development company is documenting your project early on. Documentation should be part of the project and not left until later in the process when it’s too late to fix any problems or make changes.
The documentation should be written in plain language so that non-technical people can understand it. It should also be reviewed by both parties before anything goes into production — this ensures it’s clear what each party is responsible for and reduces confusion down the road when something goes wrong or needs updating quickly.
Lastly, documentation should keep pace with new features as they’re added to a project — you want to know where things are stored so that if anything needs fixing later on (for example), you won’t have trouble finding what you need because someone forgot to update their work logs!
6. Ask about how many QA testers the company employs.
Asking to see how many QA testers the company employs is one way to gauge the quality of their testing. The number of testers should be proportional to the size of the project, as well as its complexity and risk profile. The more complex a project is, the more likely it is that there are bugs lurking in its codebase — and thus, the more QA manpower you’ll want to be assigned to your project. If a company has fewer testers than you think necessary for your project, this might mean they’re cutting corners on QA and moving forward with incomplete testing processes (or none at all).
Another way you can ask about how many QA testers will be assigned to your project is by asking what percentage of their time will be dedicated exclusively toward quality assurance efforts. A good indicator that someone is doing thorough work isn’t just how many other people they employ; it’s also how much time they spend on each task!
7. Make sure you know how the company handles change requests.
You should make sure the company handles change requests in a timely manner. We all know that things can change during development, but not every company has a process for handling these changes. If you’re not sure how your team will handle change requests, ask them to share documentation of their process. You’ll want to understand how they prioritise requests, keep track of them and manage the flow through the team until they’re completed.
If there is no documented process or clear guidelines for dealing with change requests, then it could mean many things: either there is no formal system in place, or the company leaders are not willing to invest time and effort into making sure that changes get done efficiently. In either case, this is something worth looking out for!
8. Choosing the right development partner can have a huge impact on the success of your project.
Choosing the right development partner can have a huge impact on the success of your project. Choosing the wrong one can cost you months, or even years, and thousands of dollars in wasted time.
Choosing a good software development partner will help you avoid problems and get your project done faster.
Some things to look for when choosing a development company:
A team with the right mix of skills and experience A good track record An understanding of your project requirements and priorities
Conclusion
We hope this post has given you some insights into choosing the right development partner for your project. If you have a project you’d want to build from scratch or need a team to complete an existing project, The Bulb Africa offers quality product development services using industry best practices.
Get access to the best engineering talents and a company dedicated to building quality projects by visiting our website today.