Web development & outsourcing

How do you work with developers and what are the things you need to look out for? Finding the right people is only the first step to completing your project.

I’ve broken down some of the important points as follows:

 

How to find the right people

Finding people is easy, they’re all over the internet. The challenge is finding people you can work with. This will depend on you and your needs. Are you limited financially? Are your requirements clear? Do you know what technologies will be used? What programming languages will be used?

 

There is no secret shortcut to this; get in touch with as many people as possible, to compare offers and get a feel for how they work.

 

Requirements

When you begin a project it’s important to have discussed the requirements and document it. If you’re not already experienced in the field, you want to be guided through this. Unclear or missmatching expectations are very likely to cause problems further down the line and are often expensive to fix. You may also discover that what you initially wanted has become redundant.

 

The other challenge is understanding the technical issues that can arise from your requirements. Your requirements might not be viable technically or simply be too expensive to implement. It’s best to stick to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle when possible. Issues arise when the solution is too complex or the technology does not match the requirements.

 

Pricing & Payment

In principle, the more experienced people or teams will charge you more. Experience should mean they are better at choosing the right technologies for the project, managing requirements and expectations. The bigger and more complex the project, the more you should expect to pay.

 

Ideally, you should be working on a time and materials agreement. Which means you would make regular payments based on the amount of work done and the costs involved. Regular updates should be made on where the project is with regards to the agreed upon budget. This more flexible approach to payment is favorable to a fixed budget, since when unexpected issues arise or change requests are made, corners are not cut further down the line to make up for the lost time.

 

Stages of development

The best way to proceed is to go through several iterations throughout the development. This will of course depend on your budget, time constraints, the size of the project and your experience or understanding of the problem for which you are creating a solution.

 

Upon commencing you should have documents such as a proposal, a timeline, branding guidelines and a project outline. These will give you a solid basis to work with.

 

Next you should create wireframes (mockups). It gives you a better idea of what the final product should look like. This is the best time to make changes since it’s easier to modify graphic elements rather than having to re-write the code later on.

 

Once you’re ready, you can create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) which will allow you to test out the basic features. You’re laying the foundations. At this stage significant changes become more expensive. Once you’re content with the result, you can move on to the final stage and get it online.

 

Each stage allows you to get to grips with the solution you are creating and after each iteration your understanding of the problem will change, affecting your requirements. Without going through the stages and iterations you risk creating a website or tool that doesn’t match your needs.

 

Tools & Platforms

There are no one fit all tools, however, please find some examples below.
 

Project management:

  • Trello
  • Asana
  • Jira

 

Wireframe tools:

  • Invision
  • Figma
  • Marvel

 

Communication:

  • Slack
  • Whatsapp (People tend to be more responsive on Whatsapp)

 

Knowledge management/Filesharing:

  • Confluence
  • Google drive & Co (sheets, docs, slides..)

 

Marketplaces:

  • Fiverr
  • Upwork
  • Designcrowd