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Software development is challenged with late delivery, budget overruns, and project changes. Many business owners that tried to have an application developed will tell you that the result was not what they anticipated. What do you do when you need a system created or customized for your business?
1) Hire a competent firm and check their credentials.
- Is the “company” just a person doing work on the side from his other day job? If yes, find someone else. This is one time when hiring a professional really pays.
- How will the firm make sure they know what you want? – Listen for the words scope, requirements, “wireframes”, implementation plan, etc.
- Has the company developed a similar system or one of similar size to the one you need?
- What do they plan to give you during the course of the project? – There should be plenty of opportunity for you to see and understand what is being developed.
- Are they willing to give you references?
2) Be involved. Plan to provide a lot of input to the project. Your developer wants to create the right features and functions but he cannot know your business as well as you.
3) Identify the tasks that you want the software to accomplish. It’s easiest to think about each person that will use the program and identify what functions they will need the system to perform.
4) Identify any specific requirements/needs that relate to the tasks you’ve identified.
5) Make sure you understand and account for ongoing maintenance of the system being developed.
6) Changes happen. It is nearly impossible to identify everything up-front. The developer should document changes and identify the impact to scope, time, and project budget. Remember that the later in the process you request a change, the more it will cost.
7) Test. Test. Test. Expect to find some bugs and then retest everything after the developer makes corrections. The developer does test the system, but you test it as an end-user and might identify something that a developer might not perceive as a problem.
8) Plan time for rollout and training. Change is hard – depending on the system, you might want to rollout in phases. Consider training some employees and having them train the remaining personnel. This promotes buy-in to the process and creates “super-users” to act as mentors after the development team is gone.