Application Development Outsourcing: Trends and Best Practices

According to HFS Research, 48% of companies plan to increase application development and maintenance outsourcing over the next year. Why are so many companies outsourcing application development? It boils down to time and cost. Having your in-house staff take time away from their current day-to-day assignments to work on a structured project development team can impede overall productivity and result in major timeline delays. If you were to hire additional headcount it would be extremely time-consuming and expensive. When you factor in the real cost of additional sophisticated development hardware and tools, specialized development software, and potentially a new physical environment to house your larger staff and/or better facilitate team collaboration for the new project, it’s clear to see the value gained by outsourcing  application development projects.

Best Practices for Outsourcing Application Development

The Proposal Development Process is Critical

Typically a proposal addressing an application development project will describe the reason for the project, the project scope, the deliverables, the acceptance criteria, the timelines and the fee. A professional services team typically spends many intensive hours to meet with customer stakeholders to analyze the requirements and determine the criteria that become the foundation of the proposal.

Only work with a professional services provider that has a long, proven track record with proposal development to assure a thorough analysis, documentation and a complete understanding of your requirements. This is a key step in the process; if it is not initially completed with care there will be unanticipated costs and delays throughout the project.

Project Management and Quality Control is as important as Technical Expertise!

Use a professional services team that has the knowledge and experience of using development protocols such as AGILE. This can enable developers to deliver results with working pieces of the project within days, vs. waiting months and longer for the final design to be completed. The development team you work with should be dedicated to attending daily stand-up progress meetings. They should also be working under the direction of an experienced and seasoned staff of Certified Project Managers.

With team members that are Windows User Interface (UI) and User Assistance (UA) trained, it will help when it’s time to work with your non-technical staff as well.  Additionally, the Quality Assurance (QA) component of a development team assures a precise match up of requirement spec to the end product.

By using a professional services provider that is local you can cut down on travel costs and facilitate easier project management. Additionally, if the services provider employs a full-time, salaried staff of legal citizens you can maximize quality and minimize disruptive turnover in the course of your project.

The Proven Method is an information technology (IT) firm in Atlanta, GA with a 25 year track-record of providing the industry’s finest professional services, staffing and cloud, collaboration, network and security solutions. Learn more about our application development services.