By: Carol Vercellino, CEO & Co-Founder
As an entrepreneur or business owner, you probably have a great vision for the product that you want to build. But, do you know how much it’s going to cost and how long it’s going to take?
Much like building a house or buying a car, informing yourself and understanding the process can really help set your expectations and help you have a great relationship with the software development partner that you choose.
So today we’re going to talk about three things that are really important to understand with software development – or for pretty much anything else you’re going to spend a ton of money on.
Read on or watch a quick video here.
We call them kind of the three levers in software development: time, quality, and cost.
What do we mean by those things? Well, when you buy a car, if cost is the most important thing to you, then you might be willing to forgo quality a little bit. And you might be willing to understand that the car is not going to last 10 years and may not retain its value for a decade.
In software development, it’s the same thing. If cost is a driving factor for you, then understand that quality may not be as great. And the delivery of the product timewise may not be as great.
We often see people who prioritized cost as the most important factor but end up coming to us because the project never got completed [with their first developer]. And what did get completed didn’t have testing built in. If you don’t know what testing is, I’m pretty sure we’ve got a video on that!
So, what if you prioritize quality? You can bake quality into a product really well. But if you have a partner that overemphasizes quality, your timeline can get drawn out. And I know it sounds crazy to say quality may not be as important, but sometimes you need to ship your product to get it out to market.
Well, what about time? If you emphasize time, then you may find a development partner who deemphasizes quality as well as cost. If you want [an app] done quickly it’s going to cost you more, and the quality may not be there.
So, understanding these three things and understanding how those categories impact a project can be incredibly helpful to set your expectations – and your partner’s expectations as well. If you have any questions about time, quality, and cost, shoot us an email. We’d be happy to help.
