Ideas for Working with Software Development Companies
Some of my recent consultancy work has got me thinking about the important things that clients need to do when they start to work with a software development company. The advice below is largely common sense but I think that for the non-technical client in particular, the process of commissioning and implementing complex business software is challenging and it is often easy to overlook the obvious.
- What’s your budget? Get a feel for what you can afford. On a bespoke software development get a rule of thumb estimate of the number of days of effort you can buy by dividing your budget by £500. As a supplier I find it easier to sensibly quote for work when I know the client’s budget.
- Think long and hard about business requirements - getting the scope/requirements right is crucial and it takes time (often more than you think) . It is perhaps the single most important thing you need to do.
- Don’t try to model every business process in the software - do less better and add more later if required. Think - what is our minimum viable product?
- Avoid complex documentation that is difficult to read; write requirements as simple short user scenarios. Busy colleagues struggle to read long documents and important requirements get lost. Ask your supplier to write in simple, plain English.
- Does an off-the-shelf solution really fit or would a simpler, bespoke solution be better? Configuring or adapting an existing system that doesn’t quite fit can cost more than a bespoke development and this seems to be especially true on some large CRM and ERP projects where lots of time and materials days can get spent on increasingly complex ‘configuration’.
- Have you got the capacity to work with your supplier?
- Be clear about what the deliverables are and be clear that it is fixed-price; let the supplier carry the risk of overruns.
- Be very wary of low quotes. Has the supplier really understood the requirements? Is the plan realistic? How much of the quote is really fixed-price and how much extra change control (that can effectively become T&M) will in the end be needed to finish the job?
- Agree a plan that includes opportunities to review work in progress - become involved in the development.
- Agree acceptance testing criteria with your supplier before any development/configuration work starts - does your supplier understand what the software must do to pass acceptance testing? Link acceptance testing back to the user scenarios in the business requirements.
It can make sense to appoint an experienced part-time IT consultant/project manager to help you manage both your own stakeholders and your supplier - it will almost certainly save you money and time on a larger project. SkillsLogic do both consultancy work and bespoke software development and we’re always interested to hear from people who’d like us to help with their software projects.
