(Newswire.net — December 16, 2015) — Every startup has to solve the problem of hiring competent developers. It’s always a tough choice since hiring in-house developers is always better but always more expensive, while outsourcing can be sufficiently cheaper, yet riskier. Indeed, outsourcing is always associated with certain risks, and the choice of a web development company is crucial. Let’s take a look at the most important questions a startup CEO has to ask himself/herself before making a final choice of an outsourcing development company.
Docs and Specs
You may hire Google or Amazon engineers who will fail to cope with the work unless you provide them with docs and specs that describe how the product should look like. Yes, specs are important and you should never close a contact with a web development company before you have specs that are reviewed, discussed and agreed. The biggest mistakes inexperienced startups make is starting work on something that is not well defined in specs. As a result, product owners expect certain features while outsourcers deliver something else.
Platforms/Where to Hire?
Elance, Freelancer, Upwork are the leaders. Of course, there are smaller sites where you can find contractors, but if you are looking for a long term cooperation you have to settle with reliable companies and freelance sites that offer protection programs for customers.
Experience/Portfolio
Never start working with a company that has little experience in a particular field. Yes, it can be a great company that creates PHP sites but they can be nearly helpless in Java or C#, even though they have access to great engineering resources. If you are about to launch a fantastic AngularJS powered site, you have to look for a company with at least several enterprise level Angular projects in their portfolio.
What Others Say
Indeed, references are all-important. If other good companies trust a chosen web development team, there should be few reasons why you shouldn’t have the same mindset. Analyzing references and contacting other companies to get more details will save your time. There are no perfect web development companies, but there are ones that have excellent reputation.
The Variety of the Services
Any project is a complex process, requiring all-around specialization. It includes not only code writing but also such areas as the scoping study, teambuilding, providing and control of high-quality level, risk tests and risk reduction in every stage of web development. You have to clarify this division of labour in order to understand the areas of responsibility. Managers proficiency. Pay attention to the quality of the services provided by business development and project managers. Make sure that people you work with are constructive and polite as you’ll need to get in touch with these specialists not once.
Versatility
It’s always sad when the company you hired has no competence in a neighboring technology. Say, you need a cluster of databases, perhaps NoSQL like Mongo, and the company you are working with has no devs proficient in Mongo and its API. You have a problem because hiring a different company to write a connector for Mongo will be a nightmare. Of course, there are no universal developers, making inquiries in advance never hurts.
Costs
The last but not the least is the costs. Cheap isn’t always good. Expensive isn’t always good. Find the golden mean. Get quotes from various vendors. Think of what you will get for this money.