So, you’ve decided you need a software vendor to build an application for you. It might be an idea you have for a great new product, or a tool that needs to integrate with an existing system, or an application to automate a manual process in your organisation.

I assume you know a little about software but you do not have much experience in how applications are built and how software development teams operate; you would like to know how to pick a software team that will build a quality product, that will understand what you need and contribute to the success of your business.

To give you some background, I am a software engineer, have led software teams, outsourced projects to remote software teams and delivered work for remote clients. I would like to share a few ideas to help you judge if a software team is worth their weight in gold.

How well do they communicate?

You will be spending a fair bit of time with the team you pick. You’ll explain your idea to them, they’ll explain their approach to the project, It’s important that you understand each other, that you click, that you are on the same wavelength. When you explain your idea to them they should understand it and be able to contribute constructively to it. When they explain their implementation to you it should be in such a way that you can understand. Successful communication is critical to the success of your project – pick a team that you can communicate well with.

Do they understand your business domain?

It is incredibly valuable if the team that you engage with understands your business domain or the industry that you are in. Have they worked with clients in your industry before? Do they specialise in a specific domain and does it overlap with yours?

A software team that understands the context in which an application will be used, will spend less time trying to understand the problem space and more time focussing on the solution. You might have a very clear documented vision of your application but inevitably decisions need to be made during development by the development team. A software development team makes better decisions when they understand the business domain.

Do you like their existing work?

Past behaviour predicts future behaviour. You can tell a lot from a team based on work that they have delivered in the past. Most teams would be happy to share a portfolio with you of applications that they have built before.

Do they design clear and easy to understand user interfaces? Is it intuitive to use their applications? Do you get a sense that they have thought through every scenario in which the application might be used? Do they take pride in their work?

Are they willing to involve you in the process?

A good software team values continuous contribution from their client. Be wary of a team that vanishes for 3 months with your requirements with the promise that they’ll deliver the perfect product when they return.

Before any line of code is written they should involve you in their planning process or at least give you clear visibility on their planning. When development starts they should be able to show you their progress on a weekly basis and invite your feedback.

A good software team understands that requirements may change during a project and they embrace change, knowing that certain things become clearer only during development.

Do they have good software development practices?

Even if you are not very familiar with software development you can still make a judgement of a team’s engineering practices by asking a few simple questions.

Do they test their software? Good software development teams have diligent process through which they test their software. You can reasonably expect testing to be partially automated and partially manual. I would be careful if they do not do a fair bit of each. Most teams would be happy to discuss this.

Do they break their projects down into small testable chunks of work? Similar to manufacturing, it is best to break a software project into small well-defined pieces of work that can be tested from a user’s perspective. Successful teams have a well-defined process by which they define, implement and test pieces of work and measure their overall progress (protip: why can’t developers estimate time?).

Do they frequently deploy their code to a production like environment? It is important that deployment to production is part of the development process early on in the project. This eliminates surprises at the end. It is also important that this process is automated.

Do they have a process in place to deal with bugs? Teams should have a process in place through which they track, prioritise and fix bugs.

Are they familiar with software security? Good software teams consider security from early on in the development project and have checkpoints in place during the project to review security of the application.

How do they stay on top of the latest technologies? Software development is a fast changing industry. Good software teams encourage and support their developers to read, attended conferences, have side projects and experiment with new techniques.

Do they contribute to the software community? All software teams rely heavily on the wealth of knowledge that is provided by the software community. Healthy software teams give back to the community through publishing their knowledge, contributing to open source projects, speaking at conferences, etc.

What is their public reputation?

A good software team has happy clients (client testimonials), they engage in conversation in the public domain (twitter, mailing lists), they are regarded as specialists in their own domain (blogging, speaking at conferences), etc.

Wrapping it up

The above pointers are aimed to help you to judge a vendor’s maturity in few fundamental aspects of software development without having to know the industry jargon. There is more to software development that can be covered in a single blog post but hopefully the above will enable you to have a confident discussion when engaging with a software team for the first time.