It’s not always possible to develop an application/solution in-house; so you may look to an agency to help you create your application. This agency may call itself a systems integrator, consultant, dev shop, freelancer, app developer, or mobile app specialist among others. The Challenge is always to find the right organization that will not only deliver the solution in a timely and cost-effective manner but that share a great appreciation for quality and craftsmanship and have the right skills and culture 

I have spent the last couple of weeks consulting for a number of organizations around outsourced development so I thought id share some of my leanings. I’ll do this in a number of posts in the coming weeks. 

So here goes nothing

Preparation

This is very key to the success of the application and for identifying the right partner. the client set clear goals and expectations before embarking on the project. they need to be clear on what they want and expect from the agency. 

1. Determine that the agency approach is right for you: Understand the importance of the app to your business and your own organizational culture, focus, and experience. Use this knowledge to decide whether you should build the application yourself or partner with a development agency.
2. Understand your internal stakeholders: Understand who in your organization has a stake in the app, how they should be involved in specifying the requirements and executing the development project, and how you should manage and communicate project updates with them. Once this is done, brief your stakeholders so that they understand your expectations of them and their respective teams from the start of the project.
3. Adopt the right app strategy: Consider taking a unified web and app approach to your offering to maximize its accessibility to your users and potential users.
4. Budgeting: When you’re discussing the budget, remember the objective is to create a quality app that brings value to your business, not simply on one that meets a feature specification in a given time.
5. Measuring success: Set goals so you can measure and understand the success of your project. by creating  Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) the numbers you’ll use to measure your performance. You need to understand how you’ll measure success to help ensure that your app meets your business objectives. It will also support your reporting to key stakeholders post-launch. 

See you next week