Let's get started with a simple question: How much does custom software development cost? It is a tough question to answer for anyone in the industry as costs can vary significantly depending on the solution, expertise, where the product is built, and so on.
In our experience, a robust custom software project will range between $50,000 and $250,000 mark to design and develop the application. It's a broad range, and probably this type of software is tailor-made to match the unique requirements, processes, workflows, and objectives of your company which makes it the most expensive one.
In this article, we tell you some
industry-verified tips and tricks to reduce custom software development costs
and afford a custom software solution without compromising on quality.
Outsourcing Software Development
If you are wondering what is outsourcing in software development, the answer is simple: to hire an external software development agency to effectively carry out all the tasks of a software development project. With software outsourcing, you can reduce software development costs.
It enables the company to skip the tedious recruitment process and will be able to get to work with, professional, highly experienced, and trained experts to execute their work in a more efficient and quick form.
In addition to that, outsourcing is far cheaper compared to other developed countries like China, Ukraine, Mexico, India, etc., resulting in an almost 40% decrease in software development costs. Indian outsourcing industry statistics imply that by 2023/2024, the country will have the highest number of software developers, becoming leaders in the number of IT professionals with extensive technical skills.
Create Your Software Requirements
You know your requirements the best. So, start by defining the purpose of your product with a pen and paper and start jotting them down. This is basically to avoid ambiguity in requirements at unclear requirements lengthen software development time and increase the costs.
For example, if your development partner misunderstands your requirements, then they'll spend time working on knowing what your project is all about. If the requirements are misinterpreted or not read in their entirety, you'll face problems such as improper functionality, poor design, and low business value.
Any software company looking to build great software would be happy to take a look through a proper requirement document as they will get a road map of how a software system should be developed.
Also, if they already
have a detailed document, they don't have to spend much time understanding what
needs to be built as they will be fully aware of the clear and fully detailed
functional and non-functional requirements goal - scope, functional
requirements, challenges, and budget regarding the software. This will reduce
the overall software development costs, helping you focus on other important
business models.
Great Communication
Communication is extremely important for software development. For most people, this may sound counterintuitive, but remember, software development is a team activity these days.
So, your requirements must be understood by the software team. Every deliverable, every constraint, and every assumption can elongate the project schedule, have a significant impact on a project, delay development, or increase costs rectify.
From a communication perspective, start with daily meetings, where both the management and development team members should discuss the documentation process to the point and make it easy to understand. Now treat this document as the road map. Without a map (or well, Google Maps), you wouldn't know your destination.
Similarly, in software development. Any
deviation from these specializations will lead to additional costs. When solutions
and ideas are communicated clearly across all channels, it will reduce the
overall cost of software development, and save your precious time to focus on
growing your business.
Test! Test! And Test!
Start Testing Repeatedly - Statistically speaking, software testing plays a very crucial role in software development. One of the software testing principles says that "Start Test Early" in the software development, life cycle to prevent the release of poor quality products and to avoid small mistakes that slip through leading to large financial losses.
Most software bugs can be traced during the requirement or design phase only. Testing in the initial phases means identifying issues and bugs in the software before the implementation phase. Also, bugs discovered during the later phase of software require to rework and rework, and fixing bugs found during the testing phase could be 15x more.
Involving QA from the start brings potential issues and conflicts to the surface and also, and helps in maintaining a balance between work on the project and documentation generation. And obviously, saving a lot of money and time in the process.
Prioritize Features
When it comes to software projects, stakeholders come up with a bunch of features of the software before costs are drawn. To ensure that you don't leave some important aspects uncovered, make sure to focus on the critical features of your software that are necessary for the first version.
Choosing the right features to build means prioritizing your long list of good ideas, and focusing on essential requirements that are valuable and profitable. Remove nice-to-have elements of the scope of your project for once and add them to your backlog. You can return to them once with the subsequent extensions of the software. That way, it will reduce the cost of building software in the future.
These are a few hacks that will help you build effective custom software development projects at a much lower cost without giving up on quality. To sum it all up, Software development is a bumpy road, but when there are effective software product development life cycles and a very clear idea in mind, software development can be more smooth and affordable than most people realize.
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