How to choose a reliable developer for your IT project

How to choose a reliable developer for your IT project

By Alex Galaktionov

Each business needs to be present on the internet via a website or a mobile app or, at best, an integrated software system, which provides both opportunities and advanced functionality for the users.

Let’s find out how to choose a reliable developer for your software and not to waste money in vain. By the way, software development cost survey, dated July 2019 you can check here.

Three main alternatives:

• creating in-house IT department,
• addressing a professional development agency,
• or hiring a freelancer.

The pros and cons assessment

Let’s compare and see which one is the best in your particular case.

In-house development

Gather your own team, which will be 100% involved in the project. They share the in-company values and transfer your ideas into life. Also, they share the same level of corporate knowledge about all the details.

Pros:

Concentration: your team works on your project exclusively, which assures proper focus, agreed timing and high results (if we are speaking about a team of professionals).

Strong management: you are always in touch with the staff and top managers have good control over the employees.

Confidentiality and loyalty: data leakage is not an issue because there are no third-parties involved. All the staff is working hard and supporting each other sharing the same corporate standards.

Cons:

Long-time development: it will take more time to hire, teach and make a team out of your new staff compared to the developers in an agency that work together for ages.

High costs: forming a whole new department, including the creation of the working places and labour/salary expenditures will demand investment. For your team, you want to choose people with experience who are capable of quality performing. However, to hire the best of the best you will have to provide an additional motivation. The senior level in-house programmers and designers are usually very well-paid, if not to say overrated.

Additional efforts for the staff control: not only does it take money but also demands time and management efforts.

 

Resume: if  you can wait the first results for a year or so and your project is a long-term one and must be updated regularly, this might be the most suitable option.

Outsource development agency

Seems to be a relatively expensive way of software development. But you can be sure that the top IT firms do quality software development solutions and respect deadlines. Perfect for projects with high responsibility.

Benefits:

Comprehensive approach: the biggest plus of an IT agency is that they can take care of everything, starting from architecture and proceeding to design and quality control.

Proven portfolio: every company has a name that you can track. It’s easier to check the portfolio and reviews and simple to contact some clients directly for their feedback. Speed of development: you can get your software as fast as you want, if you choose a large professional IT corporation.

Value for money:  Working with a good development agency, you’ll get a great software, checked by quality assurance and worked out in accordance with the international development standards.

Cons:

High prices: cost per hour can be the highest among all the three options.
Communication: it’s not your own team. The developers need more contribution from your side to get familiar with your ideas and understand your business.

Some companies may limit your communication with the team, others are open and provide you with a personal manager to solve all your problems and collect your ideas on the go.

In IT, a top-notch team can solve your task within weeks, when junior developers will need months to do the same. Their hourly rate may be lower but the difference lays in the result.

The total cost for the project can be the same as in the case of the in-house development or even lower. If you do not intend to pay twice for rework of the low-quality code, created by a young programmer, cooperation with a proper development agency, is your first choice.

Freelancer

Finally, you can delegate your project to a freelancer. Usually, the cheapest way, though the riskiest.

Advantages:

• Low price. Software and mobile development is a very competitive market, so a lot of individuals work at low prices.
• Swift development. Very often the developer dedicates 100% of time to your project, since time is money. So, you can get you website or application very quickly.

Disadvantages:

One freelancer cannot work as an IT team. One person simply cannot be a guru in everything. So, choosing a freelancer you either need to be ready to compromise on quality or hire several professionals and make them collab.Inexperienced developers. Often freelancers are young developers that are trying to make some money and gain experience for the portfolio. So, a cheap hourly rate may lead to a money or time loss for you.

Lack of responsibility. The situation becomes less predictable: misunderstanding, failure to deliver on time, personal reasons not to finish the work at all can often appear when your developer works from home.

When you are really short of money, plan carefully all the steps. Add 60% of time for the failures and you will have time to fix everything if your freelancer lets you down.

Pay attention to reviews and choose only seasoned freelancers who got excellent ratings confirmed by hundreds of people.

Save your money by negotiating the cost per project, not the rate per hour.

Remember, the majority of the freelance projects demand code review. If you choose this option, invite some third-party experts to implement it before accepting the task.

Here are some popular sites, where you can find freelancers: Upwork, Fiverr; social nets like LinkedIn and Facebook.

How to make an objective choice

No matter which one you choose, you need to follow these 2 simple rules:

• Study the portfolio, reviews and check out the mentionings on different resources.
• Set your business priorities.

Find a balance between price and quality

When you make your project, you have to just accept one thing: you can’t get it all. It’s either high quality and fast but more expensive, or economical but with compromises on development speed and quality. You have to decide what you are trying to achieve to make the most reasonable choice.

About author

Alex Galaktionov, the head of Magora’s International Sales in London, was born in 1990 and studied at Hogeschool Gent, Belgium. He has been working for Magora, the leading software development agency, since 2013.  He provides professional business and IT consulting and regularly publishes educational materials on the latest trends in development.

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