The decision making process for how businesses select a mobile development partner varies a great deal in the industry, and certainly across the various verticals. We’re often approached by companies who have gone down a particular path with a partner and eventually become unsatisfied with their work and ask our team to come in and “clean up the mess”.

Price is generally a motivating factor; many companies select a partner with the lowest price due to their internal resource constraints. Given the current economic climate, this is not surprising. Of course, this strategy is hit or miss in terms of how the developer performs. For companies that are serious about their mobile initiatives, this is not a viable option.

When responding to an RFP, we often include in our response a list of questions that we recommend our prospective clients ask other potential vendors to help them understand their capabilities.

Some general points to consider when selecting your mobile application development partner:

Mobile Experience

Many companies claim they can develop mobile applications… If they don’t have proof, I would definitely challenge that! Mobile application development requires a different skill set than traditional web and desktop development. Mobile development experience is critical if you want your project to be completed on time and without surprises. Do they have reference customers? If not, can they provide examples of their work?

The RFP Response

As alluded to previously, the level of detail a particular company can provide in their development quote is often indicative of their experience and abilities to perform the task. Particular attention should be paid to the effort associated in the task breakdown. How much time is spent on design versus implementation? How much time have they allocated for Quality Assurance? How realistic are their estimates? Inexperienced development shops usually under or over quote by a substantial margin.

Communication

When outsourcing work, an effective communication plan is a critical component. This is an often overlooked component. Are the resources fluent in the language your team speaks? Are they available at the same time your team is available? Can they speak intelligibly about your product in the event they are required to represent your company or product in front of others?

Development Methodology

There are pros and cons to the various development methodologies used out there. Five Mobile and many of it’s customers prefer an agile mobile process as an approach to developing mobile content. Understanding your potential vendor’s development methodology will help your team understand the level of interaction required.

Design and Architecture

The proper design and architecture of an application is an obvious area where inexperienced shops will fail. Designing for portability and scalability is an important factor when selecting your vendor. Mistakes that are made early on are often costly to fix at a later date, so spending a little extra time up front can save your team considerable agony down the road. What about the implementation? Have the developers designed the application in such a manner that will allow for it to be easily adapted to additional platforms?

Final Payload

It’s often taken for granted, but understanding what the deliverables are and what access you have to them is paramount. Specifically, does your team get source code and the tools required to re-build that source code? Do you own the final product, source, and tools? Are there any 3rd party licenses required? Is the code well documented in a language your internal team can understand? Have the developers included the appropriate design documentation so that your internal team could potentially pick up this project and move forward?

Support Plan

How will your vendor support you after delivery of the content? What is the warranty on the code and binaries? Are they available to troubleshoot? What’s the likelihood that this company will be around in a year to assist you should you require help then? With some of the companies we work with, we effectively serve as their mobile arm for a period of time and then eventually help the customer transition to utilizing in-house resources.

Future Proof?

One of the most often overlooked, yet vitally important aspects to software development for mobile devices, online and desktop, is whether the code is robust, scalable and ultimately future proof. In the event that your product is a success, it’s likely that one will want to iterate on that version. If porting is required, how will this affect future releases? Can the developer recommend a strategy to manage this?

Asking these questions should help you select the appropriate partner that help your mobile initiatives become a success!

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