This is when you bring your idea into reality and finally have something to show for all of your hard work. But, which agency you choose for developing your mobile app can make or break your entire business idea. Choosing the right development agency for your needs can lead to a long-term partnership giving you invaluable advice throughout your entire venture. Whereas the wrong agency can lead to headaches and high costs that lead to little or no results. So, how do you choose a mobile app development agency that acts as an asset instead of a liability? While there’s no way to guarantee the agency you choose will work perfectly for your needs, there are a few ways you can minimize your risk. Some ways to help you choose your mobile app development agency include:
Ask your professional network for referrals Extensively review the development agency’s portfolio Review their development methodology Send project documents with a clear scope and deadlines Request a detailed breakdown of the agency’s QA/QC process
LITSLINK has extensive experience of working with a variety of partners and vendors. Based on our cases and lessons learned, we prepared a list of tips that will assist you in choosing the right mobile app development agency to meet your business needs.
Ask Your Professional Network for Referrals
Simply put, referrals are the single best way to find a great mobile app development agency. It gives you real feedback on how the agency performed on past projects as well as how difficult or easy it was to work with them. Analyzing online reviews can be great, but getting real, honest feedback from people you trust can never be beaten. Online reviews are often populated with fake reviews or competitors trying to sabotage a business, so they can be hard to trust. Asking your network for referrals also gives you a great starting point in your search for the perfect mobile app development agency. You can go from the referrals you receive then look for their competitors as well to compare prices and quality of past projects. This allows you to conduct a competitive bid for your project ensuring you receive the best price possible while still maintaining a high level of quality.
Extensively Review the Development Agency’s Portfolio
Any experienced development agency will be able to send you a portfolio of cases similar to your project. Looking through an agency’s portfolio and thoroughly examining each project they’ve completed is really the only way to know for sure the quality they can produce. You can also use their portfolio as another source of references that you can contact to see how they enjoyed working with the agency.
When looking through a portfolio of mobile apps, always look at the code of the app to see how clean they write their code. You should be able to understand what each piece of the code does even if you are not a developer. They should leave comments throughout the code telling you what each piece of the code does. The process of leaving comments within the code is crucial. It allows you to use other developers to add features to the code and gives you a point of reference for any debugging that may need to occur. After looking through the code of the apps they’ve developed, also take the time to actually use the apps they submit in their portfolio. This gives you an idea of how well-polished the apps the agency has produced in the past are. You can also look for any bugs or user interfaces within the apps they submit to get a feel for what your end-product would look like if you hire them. Finally, you also want to look for how many of the samples they submitted closely resemble your project. An agency with experience developing similar solutions can offer you guidance throughout the development process for potential improvements in your app based on their past experience.
Review The Agency’s Development Methodology
One way of figuring out how well an agency might fit into your organization and goals is to ask them about their development methodology. The two most common development methodologies are the agile and waterfall methodology. Agencies that use the agile methodology generally aim to release a minimum viable product as quickly as possible. This methodology gives your team a product to review and provides comments at a fast pace and at given intervals. However, constantly providing feedback can become cumbersome especially for a startup that just wants the agency to use their best judgment. With a waterfall methodology, the agency follows a strict order of work to create a fully fleshed-out end product. They can create a timeline with discrete deliverables based on your overall timeframe. While this methodology allows for less input from you and your team, you end up with a final deliverable that’s fully functional.
Send Project Documents with a Clear Scope and Deadlines
Before requesting quotes from mobile app development agencies, start by creating a comprehensive set of project documents with a clear scope of work and deadlines for the project. This helps avoid any confusion as the project goes on and saves your business from being hit with unexpected change in order costs. It also ensures the agency you hire fully understands the project, allowing the company to give you accurate quotes and relevant samples in their portfolio.
Request a Detailed Breakdown of the Agency’s QA/QC Process
Oftentimes the most overlooked aspect of hiring a development agency is the QA/QC process that they use. Hiring an agency with a strong, clear QA/QC process keeps you from receiving a final deliverable that’s full of bugs or confusing interfaces. It also gives you an opportunity to look at how thorough they are in writing their code as a seasoned agency will always have a detailed QA/QC process they follow for every project they work on.
