Does this sound familiar? Your business has a great idea for a software product, maybe even a mobile application, but you aren’t sure how to proceed. Your in-house IT team is well-respected but they are already overwhelmed with projects and ongoing workload and you aren’t sure what skills you will need to employ to adequately address your software product requirements.
The investment and time required to conceive, design and develop a software product is significant and the business cannot afford a misstep. If a software product goes off track, it can damage the business reputation with its customers or partners and it may even expose the business to legal liability if privacy and security risk is not addressed.
Even if your in-house team has some time to address your new project, you will still have to consider the fact that software product development is not the same as application development.
When compared to the scope and lifecycle of an application development project, there are additional factors, skills and phases that must be included in a software product development project, if it is to result in the success the business envisions.
Here are three critical areas involved in software product development. Consider them carefully and be sure that the decision you make will comprehensively address all of these areas:
Setting the Table
- Competitive Analysis
- Technical Feasibility
- Product Roadmap Management
Executing the Vision
- Development
- Configuration
- Integration
- Testing
- Submission to App Stores (for mobile applications)
- Security and Standards Compliance
- Implementation and Deployment
- Technical and/or User Documentation
Protecting the Product Brand
- Software Product Upgrades
- Support and Maintenance
- Continuous Integration and Migration Initiatives
- User Training
Any software product development project must include state-of-the-art software engineering practices, appropriate technical architecture, versioning control, detailed technical and user documentation and high development and quality standards and must address clear goals to meet business and technology objectives, mitigate risk and produce products and output.
“ The investment and time required to conceive, design and develop a software product is significant and the business cannot afford a misstep.”
Prospective IT consultants and software product development experts must have applicable experience in all of these areas and understand and work with cutting-edge technologies, programming languages, frameworks and platforms to provide a flexible, scalable product that can accommodate growth and change. Prospective partners must ensure clear protections for intellectual property, legal regulations and guidelines and privacy and security procedures to protect concepts and software product details throughout the lifecycle of the project and the product lifetime.
If your business plans to undertake a software product development project, we invite you to explore our services: Software Product Development Services.
This White Paper provides a selection overview to help you choose the right IT consultant for your software development and Offshore Development Partner.
