How To Choose A Software Team That Will Support Your Startup In The Long Run

For new start-up businesses, software development will often present some major barriers to overcome. Successful development of digital products usually requires a cohesive and highly skilled team to be working together over a period of time.

Unfortunately, staff, time, money and a strong team dynamic are usually limited in the early days of any business. The solution may be to hire a remote team of developers to assist with your software requirements, especially in the early stages. However, outsourcing can yield disappointing results if you make mistakes in the hiring process.

To minimise the chance of failure, here are our top five points a start-up founder should be considering. Assuming all your potential options are fully qualified and accredited on paper, this list should help you come to a rational decision about who will handle your project best.

1) Establish your objectives – At the beginning of a business’ life cycle, the most important thing to share is a strong vision. Everyone must be working towards the same goals. When developing software, you should be trying to solve a known problem in an innovative way, so make sure you are ready to convey this to your team.

2) Consider your expectations – When considering your options for hiring a team, check that your expectations match the proposals you are seeing. If they seem disjointed, you may need to re-evaluate your own ideas about what to expect, or look elsewhere.

3) Recognise value for money – A very cheap option will rarely produce the best results when the project is complete, because the necessary skills and experience you are looking for may not be available at a low price point. You need to remember that paying more in the short term for a fantastic, fully qualified development team could make the best business sense.

4) Think about scalability – If your business shows signs of success early on, you may well want to increase the size of your team and set your sights higher. You need to be sure that this will not negatively impact the effectiveness of your initial team. For instance, your entire team cannot be dependent on one person or resource with a finite capacity, because this would make scaling up impossible.

5) Focus on problem solving – One of the most crucial things your team will be working on, regardless of your goal, is problem solving. Developers can only succeed if they are agile and adaptable, otherwise your entire timescale could be thrown off by minor setbacks. Your team needs to be highly adept at communicating and finding creative solutions in a fast-paced environment, otherwise your business will probably be changing too fast for them to keep up.