OVER 2 BILLION PROSPECTS

THE BEST WAY TO DEVELOP YOUR APP

In our highly-refined approach to software development, we help you fully spec out your app, so that programmers are actually willing to offer fixed project bids. From their perspective, a richly-detailed project specification gives them something they rarely see from app entrepreneurs or marketing managers tasked with developing a company app: a specific, detailed development target ready to be locked down.

This "lock-down"- sometimes referred to have having managerial blessing or being "blessed off"- is KEY to their ability to estimate exactly how many hours they will need to turn the description into a functional, polished app. With assurances from you/us that the project won't become a moving target (so, sooooo prevalent in the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants model, where the details of the app are being made up and/or changed on the fly), they can confidently commit to a project total fixed fee bid right up front.

You can offer them those assurances because our experts help you flesh out your app idea in full. It's already fully imagined as far as you/we can take it... like drawing up detailed new home plans and making a model to be sure the details are as you want them.

If some of the bidders have questions, we work with you and/or them (directly if you like) to clarify any areas within the spec from which those questions arose, and then share the added detail with the other bidders too. The end goal is a competitive selection of bids from quality developers to fully accomplish your objective. Then, you (or we) can choose the RIGHT team from the various bids and put those programmers to work. As part of an engagement, we can also manage their development work, functioning as outsourced project manager.

You are free to focus on other pressing matters, already knowing how this will come out because it is so well planned... and trusting us to hold the programmers to the target described in the finalized spec.

In offering a fixed bid project, the developers are naturally motivated to get the work done as FAST as possible, which means you can go to market sooner than later. You'll never get that same pace to market from programmers paid by the hour. The hourly-pay business incentive strongly encourages the opposite of the pace you want.

Along with helping you map out the look & feel and functionality of your app, we also leverage our expertise in marketing, recurring revenue models, business, etc, to help you think about the future of your app, with special emphasis on the many ways it can help you make money beyond the initial sale... and lure in relevant leads. This is vitally important for maximizing what is known as lifetime value. While such concepts can be added later, most of the business-related ones are best to weave in right up front. Tip: app customers HATE updates that seem focused on nickel & diming them. Put the money-making hooks in up front and you'll avoid that kind of backlash.

STEP 2. CONTRACTING THE RIGHT APP PROGRAMMERS

We've thoroughly explored the great importance of app architecture, summarized as planning your application all out in full detail and WRITING it down. This app spec is key to getting those fixed bids for the coding project. Once a developer is selected, the spec then becomes their marching orders... much like handing finalized new home architectural plans to a home builder and them using those plans to build the "specced" house. Now let's explore the details in choosing the RIGHT programmer or programming team...

With a complete specification describing the nitty-gritty details of the app, we should be able to get a good number of fixed project fee bids for the coding part of your project. Here’s some of what goes into selecting the BEST programming team for your job:

• Invest the time to find the RIGHT developers from a sea of wrong developers. Look at examples of their work. Talk to references about the experience of working with them. If they’ve developed apps for others, be sure to take notice of app reviews in which the developer’s own contributions to the app- often the programming, but sometimes the design work too- are shared.
• Ask those who become finalists for your project about their current project load. They’ll always claim they have capacity but you want to insure that they actually do. Remember what we shared on the prior page about the importance of agility.
• Ask them for a realistic timeline to completely finish your app as architected in the spec document. Insure they are held to this quote.

• Ask WHEN can they start your project. Don't assume the answer is always immediately. Programmers manage multiple projects at a time. They generally do not have idle time slots waiting on a new client to engage them. When you do engage them, they generally have to work your project into their schedule. It will almost never be a scenario where you hand them a signed contract and a first fee and they immediately start coding your application that minute, hour, day and possibly week.

• Get their coding warranty and/or method of fixing bugs in their programming after the app is live. There's ALWAYS some bugs to squash. You'll need some rapid turnaround programming support to minimize bug-driven complaints in customer reviews. Bad reviews don't get deleted when some bug they are griping about gets fixed. Reviews are forever. Sales momentum can get hurt by long lags in resolving bugs. Be sure there is AGILITY built into the service agreement.

Final selection should not solely- or even overly- be about lowest fee. The task is about completely getting what you want out of the project.

#1 is basically about talent & skills. Every human on Earth has a unique mix of talents. Any 2, 2,000 or 2,000,000 humans could hold a title called "programmer" but that doesn't make them all the SAME person, nor mean they have the exact same skillset, dedication, professionalism, focus, etc.

What is YOUR job title? Think about all of the other people in the world who have the exact same title. Does them sharing your title mean you and all of them are basically interchangeable parts? If you went to their office tomorrow and they came to yours, would neither of you miss a beat? Would both know exactly what to do because the job tasks are exactly the same and use the exact same skillset? Could any of them do your job exactly the same as you do it... no better and no less? Not at all! Plug any 10 other people with your job title into your job and their skills/production/functions will not be identical to yours. They may run your current projects right off the rails.

Programmers/Developers are no different. Anyone who can write any code can call themselves a programmer. Perhaps they took one class or learned how to create a bare minimum website page. Some other programmer may be doing cutting-edge work for NASA or Hedge Funds or the CIA, writing artificial intelligence beyond anything anyone has ever seen before. Both are technically "programmers" and share an identical job title... but their skillsets are not even apples to oranges... maybe apples to aardvarks.

The point? When shopping for app developers, companies can sometimes forget that every candidate brings unique skills and knowledge. One programmer is not completely interchangeable with another. They should not be mentally commoditized on title alone such that you can assume a lower or lowest fee is buying exactly the same deliverable and talent as the higher or even highest-fee.

The very same, WIDE spectrum of talent sharing your own job title applies to programmers too. Consider this: shopping mostly by general fees with emphasis towards cheapest is likely shopping the weaker end of the talent pool. Are you the cheapest option with your job title? If not, would your company be smart to replace you with a cheaper alternative mostly because they have the same job title? Probably not. Why? Because your skills and the cheaper alternative's skills are probably NOT the SAME skills.

To #2, the low-ball programmers are quoting low FOR A REASON, which is extraordinarily unlikely to be remarkable generosity on their part... OR they live in a world where the bills of life are significantly cheaper than they are for everyone else. THINK that "bargain" over: WHY are they so cheap?

When considering a variety of bids for the same project, consider this good strategy...

When we gather multiple contractor quotes for clients, we usually dismiss the outliers- the crazy low and crazy high quotes- then make our recommendations from those in the middle.

The cluster of quotes in the middle are much more likely to deliver the app as described in your specification.

While not always the case, low-ballers often:

• quit on you,
• deliver substandard work and/or
• come back seeking additional money after you are somewhat locked in with them.

Low-ballers must be continuously chasing their next clients because the dirt-cheap rates they charge barely cover the costs of life. If they are spending lots of time trying to find the next client(s), that's time they are NOT coding your app.

At the other extreme, the crazy high quotes may want your project to fund their next big vacation extravaganza or hot car. They may not need your business very much or may have a quality of clientele where being relatively over-priced works fine for them. On the positive side, the gravy in their fee may give them MORE time to work on their projects. But, generally with a bell curve approach, you have a good chance of getting the same amount of focus and effort at the middling fee levels.

Yes, it is certainly possible that this approach can miss an extreme bargain in the low or a quality of work well beyond best expectations in the high... but, in our experience, considering the cluster in the mids avoids the pain of gambling and hoping the bargain basement delivers... or the high-flyer creates perfection plus.

DOMESTIC Vs. OFFSHORE PROGRAMMING TALENT

There are various pros & cons in the debate of domestic programmers vs. offshore programmers. Like many others, we have found that the latter sometimes comes with significant communications and other hurdles that can offset perceived savings.

For example, if you have to spend double or triple the time communicating what you want with an offshore team, their total billings can end up higher than going with a native team.

This is not necessarily only about language challenges but also about successfully conveying concepts: what you think you are describing is being communicated very clearly may not be interpreted & received that way. If not, the resulting actions can get off track, requiring time and perhaps more fee to correct them later. Choose wisely. Or... better yet... get OUR expert recommendation.

INTO THE ENGAGEMENT

After the engagement is underway, it’s important to BE PATIENT. Rushing programmers yields stress on both ends and/or shoddy shortcuts. Rushed and Quality NEVER go well together.

We always collaboratively craft specific development milestones with the programmers as part of their engagement. Attaching project development fee payments to milestone accomplishments is an excellent way to keep your project on schedule. This leads to a VERY IMPORTANT tip...

Never prepay for the whole project. Never! Never! Never! Once they have ALL of the fees they are going to get, the priority of time spent on your project is likely to fade.

Lastly: money talks in this space. Everybody wants non-sales talent like programmers to work for only a share of future revenue. Professional talent- if it is good- has plenty of other gigs and prospects demanding their services too. Some prospective clients will be willing to pay for that talent with hard cash now. Those clients always get top priority. Be one of them if you understand a fundamental key of successful entrepreneurs and marketing project managers...

Success is much more about the top line than how little you spent on the nitty-gritty. No massive success is made on pinching pennies to the max. Top-line revenue growth is most of the catalyst of business wealth.

Popular concepts like joint ventures, alliances, partnering, etc, all sound great to the risk-averse entrepreneur who wants lots of work done for them solely for "future potential," but all such concepts usually involve asking very skilled professionals to work for free today in hopes of some big payout tomorrow. When this kind of talent looks at their compensation options of future potential vs. hard cash today, the latter tends to heavily dominate their motivations. By nature, programmers tend to be very logical and practical: they can't pay THEIR present bills with all of the "future potential" in the world.

Of course, you would like to get your app developed with zero out-of-pocket risk. Who wouldn't? The problem is that there is a ton of competing entrepreneurs who have the exact same wish. They too have the greatest app concept ever conceived, and, once it's launched, it will probably make them into the next Google or Facebook too.

You can try to win programmer commitment that way... but you'll do much better by realizing that entrepreneurs who grow great successes out of ideas usually do so because they take tangible risks. If you want your project prioritized, showing programmers the money wins their focus over the countless other would-be app entrepreneurs in search of some form of sweat equity. It's very smart to step to the front of THIS line.

You aren't actually helping yourself by fostering "when we have some spare time and nothing else to do" relationships. Those "future potential" engagements may never get around to finishing work for you. Yes, you may not be spending very much... but you aren't getting very far either.

And don’t take a lack of enthusiasm or interest in your offers of some form of commission, stock or stock options as an expert vote against the potential ROI in your app. Swap perspectives: put yourself in their shoes. How often do YOU choose to put in a lot of professional work for free in hopes of getting paid some unknown amount of compensation at some ambiguous future point in time? You have bills from entities that have zero interest in being paid with a slice of a slice of some future potential. Programmers have bills too.

Skilled programming talent doesn’t need to take on 100% of the risk of getting paid nothing for only some potential share of ambiguous future reward.

They’ve got 10 more app entrepreneurs calling them every day with "this is the next Fortnite" programming projects. Some of those callers believe in their concept enough to spend some cash on realizing their dreams. If you believe in your app idea, you should too.

All of what you learned in this article can be used to help you intelligently approach the point of launch. Taking the app to market is a whole other topic and an important step building upon what you've just learned. We cover app launches in its own article...

Rather than trying to do everything yourself, you could hire us to help you with it, plus learn much more not included in this freebie information. If you want to focus on the parts you do best and explore letting experts do a great job with "the rest" FOR you...