Consultancy and software development
The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s software development outsourcing Knowledge Base.
Code Inspiration is a consultancy IT development company. We noticed that consultancy is a very important part of any successful IT project. In this article we will have a brief overview of what should you expect ordering consultancy from an IT company and which benefits does it bring to your business.
Consultancy in IT outsourcing is one of the most important parts which should be done before the start of the development of any project, as well as it should be also ongoing during the development stage. Consultancy is required even after the project is completed. As any successfully delivered project means necessity of further maintenance and development of additional functionality in order to expand the number of users and the presence of the project itself on the market.
So, the consultancy for your IT project can be provided at the following stages:
- Predevelopment consultancy;
- Ongoing consultancy;
- Consultancy at maintenance and support stage.
So, the main question of a customer is:
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE IT DEVELOPMENT AGENCY AT EACH STAGE OF CONSULTANCY?
Predevelopment software consultancy
At this stage the representative of the company which provides you with consultancy should study the documentation or develop a detailed specification guide together with you. What a specification guide should contain? – First, it will consist of screen mockups and a prototype, together with this you will get detailed explanation of logic on each screen and a document with general description of the logic of the software and possible scenarios inside the project.
Also, at this stage the consultant should provide you with an overview regarding the technological stack. Explain all risks, pros and cons selecting the list of technologies, programming languages, frameworks and other important details. While this consultancy seems to be very easy to be provided simply by a development company, it is not so. Business Analyst will provide you with not only tech stack itself, but explanation of benefits in long-term perspectives. Because in many cases it is possible to have the same number of hours for the development, i.e. the same budget, but further maintenance cost can vary.
And the most important part of consultancy you can expect is formation of the development strategy for your project.
Who is a Business Growth Consultant and why hire one?
Ongoing software development consultancy
When the project is already at the stage of the development, especially if the methodology is Agile, the requirements for the project and the business goals might be changed. As well, each big project has iterations of usability testing when a set of amendment is done to the project’s specification guide. At this stage it is of a highest importance to consult how and when to apply changes and how to apply them the way, that it doesn’t require too much additional efforts in order to do them. Also, sometimes, a consultant sees that adding this feature will impact the delivery date and will prevent you in advance about this. For start-ups it is sometimes extremely important to show the project to the investors in order to raise funding. The consultancy will help you to plan iterations the way that you show bug free pieces of the functionality to the stakeholders and other important people when needed.
Software maintenance and support consultancy
When the project is released, it doesn’t mean the development is finished. Any project at the early stage or at the stage of success needs quality updevelopment and maintenance of the existing software. A consultant will help you to achieve the balance how to proceed with the development and maintenance the way, that only fully tested and ready for use pieces of the functionality are added to the software which is already released. Also, a quality consultancy will help you to avoid a situation, when the software is a success, but the initial architecture of the software cannot support required number of users. At this stage many businesses lose their users, because of impossibility to scale existing software.
These are only general aspects to provide with an idea of the benefits which you will get having a consultancy development company.
SHOULD I HIRE A CONSULTANT SEPARATELY OR SHOULD I USE A CONSULTANCY WITH THEIR OWN DEVELOPMENT OFFICE?
Of course, it is always up to you to decide, and while many individual consultants will tell you that their services are separate from all development stuff and the consultancy would be more reliable as they don’t think about the resources which might be needed to ”use” in a development office.
However, when the consultancy is provided by a professional software development company with consultancy services the responsibility is always higher for them. Also, this will help you to avoid the common situation when you will lose your nerves trying to understand who is right and who is wrong when your consultancy and development team will tell you about two different approaches. And the last thing, is communication, when a consultancy is made by a team representative, he is not only your consultant, he is a teammate of developers, and this simple but very important point can resolve many potential difficulties in communication between an external consultant with a development firm.
Code Inspiration is happy to provide consultancy to your project at any stage. Having professional development team, we are fully responsible for the delivery on-time and communication with detailed explanation of what is done about the project.
Consultancy not only saves budget at early and ongoing stages of the project. Consultancy will help you to sleep well when the project is guided by professionals and will let you concentrate on the business goals instead of going into development details.
The formula of any successful development project is:
The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s software development outsourcing Knowledge Base.
