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Dedicated TeamForrester analysts Jeffrey Hammond and Michael Facemire predict the new demands for more effective interaction with customers:
“Well-defined API ecosystem is required for a front-end (mobile or otherwise) experience to be flexible enough to adapt to continuously changing customer demands", otherwise "firms are forced to maintain separate back-end architectures for each front-end channel, which is simply not scalable.”
So, as you see, business and market needs are growing exponentially each day. Yet, most of them can be satisfied by smart and responsive management. Because at the end of the day it's all about people, their skills and ability to understand business objectives, and overall commitment to projects they execute.
Let's check your readiness for the tough battle for the best mobile app developers that will ensure success and sustainability of your mobile products.
Planning Your Mobile Development Budget
You need to know your financial limits before you start your partner search. However, there's far more than just the cost to consider. Just keep in mind - You get what you pay for! And that is very true as far as mobile app development is concerned. If you have a budget of $50K, but your mobile project idea actually needs $500K to be brought to life, it may be worthwhile to distribute your mobile development among two or more service providers in different locations to leverage lower-cost talent pools and do more for your available budget. All you need to do is prioritizing your mobile development vendors so that you have one team responsible for your mission critical tasks and the other team(s) responsible for non-mission critical projects. There're service providers out there who have sufficient resources and expertise to meet with your low- and high-end budgets, just be sure to expand your search globally, because, as Thomas Friedman said:
"The world is flat - but it’s up to you how far you want to expand your search"
Services You Need or Do Not Need
Having planned your budget and shortlisted your potential development partners, start selecting one(s) you believe will fit best into your project environment and needs. Make sure you select one that is able to not only help you build a highly efficient and productive development team, but help with your mobile product ideation, design concept and monetization strategy, since you alone may not be able to prioritize mobile development services you need for your project. For instance, depending on your business specific app, you may need to prioritize UI design over custom integration with other platforms, or in-depth analytics embedded into your solution over 3D graphics design. The right partner will help you make decisions based on research or your industry best practices, prevent you from falling prey to feature-creep, and plan properly your future iterations.
Look for your mobile development partnership with a bigger picture in mind and think upfront about things other than design and development (your app's technical support, marketing strategy, monetization, pitching to potential investors, etc) when evaluating your partner's capabilities.
Mobile Talent & Experience Evaluation
"If we do not identify and employ the best people for the right roles, by considering person/job/organization fit, there is a chance that development will either be elongated or new hires may lack the necessary capabilities to be effective. This can lead to a waste of money, time and effort, and a reduction of productivity,” Lance Mortimer, director of learning and development at U.K.-based talent development firm Silent Edge.
With "just 22% of organizations being able to provide in-depth information on the immediate development needs of new recruits", how will your development partner evaluate mobile development talent and their experiences and competences for building a truly cutting-edge mobile solution for you? Here're some tips from our HR team:
1) Your prospective partner should evaluate each candidate's recent projects in terms of the role they've played and project contributions they've made (ask about systems used, technologies and architectures, how they integrated own tasks into systems, etc). Make sure your partner checks if the candidate is able to provide a detailed description of the past projects through a self-reflecting and critical lens.
2) Your partner should verify your future team member's practical processing capabilities by asking them to solve a given problem by prototyping a simple application or solution (even on the paper).
3) Your partner should triple check that the candidate has in-depth technical knowledge and skills that fully match seniority / expertise level claimed.
4) Make sure your partner checks your candidate's soft, teamwork and leadership skills, as a mean, selfish and scandalous personality will spoil your positive project environment for sure! You better stay away from negative people no matter what stellar developers they are! Ask if your partner has checked the candidate's references from the previous employers and colleagues!
Do you need more tips on how to evaluate your partner's mobile workforce before engaging them? Ask us now!
Hire "Ninjas", Not "Zombies"!
Partnership is a battle so you need mobile development team to be comprised of "ninjas" that will focus on details, challenge your product features and functions, ask you tough questions and keep you focused on the big picture.
A “zombie” developer is good for building exactly what you want - without asking clarification questions or suggesting your app's enhancements and improvements. In this fast-paced and knowledge-driven world - do you really need someone to just follow your instructions (that may be wrong as well)? I doubt so!
You Don't Want Your Team To Be Cheap, You Want It To Be Cost-Effective!
Cheap work often results in cheap looking products, so you can choose cheap services as long as you don't want your final result to look superb! On the other hand, you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for having your mobile product built in today's globalized environment. Always ask for a low-end and high-end proposal and make your final partner selection decision based on this and the above!
To get a rough estimate of how much it may cost you to build your mobile or web solution with Intersog, please try our Project Cost Calculator!
Also read our "10 Steps for Startups to Attract and Retain Best Software Developers".
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Sources: Intersog; talentmgt.com; readwrite.com; Featured image - ShutterStock
