There are various types of companies that can create custom software for clients. Some can handle temporary projects, work with other teams, or help to save you money. Some only work on large projects, while others can best handle small projects with short-term goals.
What makes for a great fit with a local company and staff? Watch this video and gain a firm understanding of the benefits of hiring a developer that can meet all of your needs, with a capable staff that knows how to handle a full range of tasks.
Video Transcript:
Hiring a Local Software Developer
Local single operator
This is basically single operators – whether you use a contractor or you’re hiring staff internally. Whilst when it’s good, it’s good, so you’ve got one person there. Obviously there is a risk. That is if the person leaves or gets sick, then the project stops, or there needs to be a transfer of that knowledge. That takes time and energy. The quality of the work is only as good as the coder actually working on it. So both of those options are good but, once again, you still need to have the suite of support staff around them to make a development work well in that space.
Local design agency
This is someone who produces beautiful work. If you’re looking for a great website, a great looking website, then head towards the design agency. In terms of ratios, and I think Ben touched on this earlier, in a design agency you might have the ratios of eight or nine designers to the one back end developer.
Up until recently, Alliance used to be a sub contractor for design agencies. So when things got tough for them, in terms of the engineering side of things, they’d call Alliance and say “can you work on some of the projects that are too difficult for us because we don’t have the engineers to do it”.
Local software development firm
Once again looking at staff, either 60% or thereabouts are the engineers. Then you’ve got testers, BA, PMs, UX design and other staff, support staff, helping the whole of the development move forward. You’ll find with local firms, they care about your business and success in the long term. It’s not a short term focus, at least for some.
Rent-a-coders
Another option is rent a coders. You can say to a firm, I need three coders. They’ll send three coders out. They’ll help you with the development and when you’re finished you’re finished and you move on. Once again it’s a temporary operation and you will still need the BA and all those suite of staff to assist you with the development.
IBM
Then you can also get IBM to do a project for you. IBM’s projects start at the $500,000 or more. You can get them to develop your project. Where IBM have their smaller projects would be where Alliance has their larger projects. I haven’t had any personal experience with IBM as yet. You’re obviously buying in the security of their name and they’ve got refined processes in which they do their development.
Product sellers
You then have product sellers which are configuration specialists. You can do SAP and Salesforce and those that are configuring the systems to suit your business. If you’re looking for someone in that space, you’re looking for a vendor list on their site.
Where do you find these folks?
If you’re looking for overseas development, sites like upwork.com, freelancer.com.au are where you can find some international developers. As far as agencies, go to Google and type in “web design”. If you’re looking for configuration, then you look at your vendor list. If your local customers are custom software development, then you type in “custom software development” or you could focus on the product itself. You might put in “custom software developer of CRM” or “LMS” (learning management system).
What’s the end result I need?
That’s the thing you need in your head. What is the key purpose for the development right now?
As I said, it could be your choice to make an overseas development if you have the resources and you have the skills to be able to project manage it and apply the BA skills to choose an overseas developer and get a quick job done. With that, look at throwing it in the bin when you prove your assumptions correct and then building with the local software developer.
Just a warning, don’t end up like me. That is, I didn’t intend to work for a development company necessarily. It’s because I went through the process of thinking, I will do some development work. I’ve got an idea, I’ll work with a developer overseas. I’ve got a small budget. I had to learn the skills of being a project manager, a BA, and a tester, developing wire frames. I learned all those skills and I’ve become very good at it and now I really enjoy it. My goal has shifted from developing a software package to developing others’ software packages.
Just be wary, if you’re going down that path, unless you want to end up like me, and working for a software development company, you may like to have the help of others.
Therefore, you can see how important it is to know what kind of project makes for the right fit in who you hire for software design and implementation. If you’re looking to go into the development field yourself, you may even need to ask yourself where your own skills are best used. Should you be an independent coder, or work with a team? From either perspective, it is important to match your needs to those of the right kind of team, resulting in the right kind of software product.
Are you looking for the software team that meets your coding project needs? Get in touch with us today.