Questions to Ask a Software Development Company Before Choosing Your Vendor

Choosing a partner that supports your project through its lifecycle

Access to specific talent from platforms like the above may work for some projects. However, many companies require a robust partner with a team that is capable of bringing a vision to life, ensuring functionality, usability, quality, and security. What’s more, they need to achieve this while working alongside the company at every stage of the design and development journey. 

With so much at stake, it’s important to get the decision right, which means properly assessing the potential partner. Here are important questions to ask a software development company before making an investment to ensure your project is a success.

 

1. What sets you apart from other companies?

Every software company has their own approach to developing solutions. Ideally, you want a company that demonstrates a strong level of commitment from the first time you meet, whether the relationship develops or not. 

At Asymm, for example, we take pride in researching new projects from day one. Our goal is to craft plans for solutions that will exceed expectations and detail the user experience of a product that we’ll build for a client. Our sales process is more of an understanding and due diligence phase than it is of a sales phase that’s templated standard. Since our business model is selling services, we start off every relationship or potential project with the goal of understanding our potential customers' problems and start to put the pieces together of how we can solve their problem by helping their current team or working on a specific scope of work. 

Our practice is that our team invests our effort up front to properly understand a project or engagement even before any agreement or deal has been made. We help prospective clients by investing our time and resources into fleshing out ideas. In a recent example for a mobile app, we researched various ways of connecting and integrating with a company’s hardware before a deal was signed. 

We understand that this won’t always lead to a project, but we believe in researching and ideating with a prospective client before both parties commit to a project. When the projects do pan out, it leads to a stronger and more productive relationship and a really strong foundation for understanding and estimating the time, length, and cost of projects. 

Not all companies take this approach, however. Many won’t agree to carry out any research until a deal has been made – which can set the tone for the level of service throughout the project.

 

2. How do you manage your projects?

As a rule of thumb, quality software development companies are going to take a highly collaborative approach to projects. But specific project management styles can vary widely from one company to another. 

There are set approaches such as agile or waterfall development methodologies – and it’s important to know which works best with your own goals. The waterfall approach follows project phases, with the team required to finish each one before moving onto the next phrase. The clear deadlines and linear progress makes this approach great for large projects or ones with lots of different stakeholders – such as various departments in a multinational company. 

However, it is not the most flexible approach. As it doesn’t incorporate as-you-go feedback from clients or users, it can lead to design flaws that derail the project once discovered. It is also difficult to change the scope of a project during development. 

In general, for small-to-medium-sized businesses, we would recommend taking an agile approach. Agile, offers greater flexibility for client feedback throughout the project and will allow you to remain more hands on throughout. This is particularly true when you have an experienced team that is used to working with each other as there is less need for the rigid organization of waterfall.  

 

3. How do you price your projects?

Software projects can be priced in a number of ways depending on the services provided by the firm, the complexity of the product, the platform where it will be used, and the size of the team – among other factors. For example, a software upgrade or enhancement will involve less work than developing a new product from scratch. 

In general, the pricing model will fall under three categories: fixed price, time and materials, and dedicated team. Fixed price projects are at the simple end of the development spectrum, such as creating a landing page. For a company to offer a fixed price, they need to have a very clear idea of time, outcome, and complexity. 

More ambitious projects will need a different approach. The first option here is paying for time and materials, which is where the customer pays for “real work done.” This is a flexible, high-quality, and low-risk approach, with plenty of control and transparency. The main downside is budget control as there are no (or fewer) defined deadlines and no budget cap.

The final approach is dedicated team pricing, where you get a full development partner at your side. In many ways, it is like hiring your own team in house, except you don’t need to deal with onboarding, holidays, sick leave, and vacations. Also, once the project is over, there are no layoffs, as can happen with short-term project hires.

At Asymm, we take a nearshore development approach, which allows us to offer a dedicated, high-quality team in a more cost-effective way. What’s more, within this setup, we can offer different levels of partnership – staff augmentation or full outsourcing – to ensure that each project receives the level of support that’s right for them. We also make sure that any discussions on pricing take place at the beginning of the relationship so there are no surprises later on.