Five things that ruin any business strategy and lead to a total product failure. Avoid them to reach the project goals.
Late product release, budget blow up, a low-quality app, a poor UX and a few more pretty items ruin any successful business strategy. Hiring wrong people into a team is the reason for these problems. We’ll give you a short insight into the five common mistakes that companies make when hiring mobile app developers.
Mistake 1 – Dismissing Credentials Verification
It’s not good to ignore checking the qualification and credentials of a candidate. The first step to never make this mistake is viewing the portfolio with the list of apps. The second step is installing and launching them. Test the app as an average user.
Was it easy to install? Did you have any problems while the launch? What about the scenarios? You can ask some specific questions about a few blocks from one or a few screens from the app. And make sure this candidate had a real experience in building this very app.
Talking to the developers is not enough. Each candidate can read the app description and how they have built it at Github or another platform. Mind the technology and ask why the developer chose it. You don’t have to be super good at JavaScript or any other programming language but this will let you see if the candidate can give reasons for using some specific technologies.
Mistake 2 – Paying a fixed price
It’s super great to have a fixed budget for the project. You can even tell the candidates the sum and they will quickly calculate the exact hourly fee for their work. Experienced developers may refuse to work with you for the reason of having a fixed price for a piece of work. It’s good to offer a few variants of payments of an hourly fee that is popular today.
The drawback of a fixed price is a risk that developers will have to work more hours than expected. You cannot fully predict the number of bugs or any new features that you will add to the app during the development process.
Another drawback here is having a long-term project with one fixed sum that you pay afterwards. A few developers will agree to such conditions and you will probably hire newbies that don’t have any relevant experience in developing mobile apps.
Flexible pricing may become a big benefit for you if you hire an outsourcing developer. Hourly fees vary greatly in different countries. You can have $100 and $50 per hour for work of qualified mobile app developers. Don’t rely only on the price as you can get the best quality of work for any sum if you spend some time looking for the best team players.
Mistake 3 – Hiring a development company without a technical expert involved
Hiring a new person or a team consists of s few stages where you check the qualification, the credentials and conduct interviews. It’s great if you have heard or googled some data about Cordova, React, Angular or other JS frameworks for developing mobile apps. You can use information from the online articles to check the essential knowledge.
You should have a person that is the best at developing apps at least for a period of interviewing. Hiring such an expert will cost much less than working with a wrong developer for some time and looking for a new person. You can make a kind of testing that you will finish with a short conversation.
You will need an expert to find out some specific details about past projects. Ask the candidate to tell you about the bugs that had in the past and how they fixed them. If you have an ongoing project development, you can ask some questions regarding it.
Mistake 4 – Not Considering Product Life Cycle
Building a new product has a traditional set of steps: idea, designing, coding, testing and deployment. If you plan to hire a developer for a completely new project, you should describe the idea of it and the role of that person in the development process.
If you have an ongoing project, you should find a developer that has a clear understanding of a typical product lifecycle. You will save a lot of time. Be careful with the candidates that are ready to start coding without learning the requirements. A new person should go through the full lifecycle.
A perfect candidate should examine the idea and the design of the future product. These steps are obligatory for a successful result. It’s okay to have some time for the newcomer to read, ask questions and dive into the ocean of coding afterward.
Mistake 5 – Lack of Experience in Your Niche
Theory in mind is great. We value the intentions of developers to improve their qualification by learning something new. But we don’t advise you to hire a person that has never dealt with the applications from your niche. If it’s impossible, you may end up with a poor user experience.
It’s absolutely fine if the applications were not commercial and they are hosted on any repositories. The key idea here is knowing and predicting user requirements and expectations. Another thing is saving time as a new developer won’t spend time examining the niche and similar products. And this is not just a few hours.
If an app is commercial, it’s not so hard to see its success. You can have a short talk with the candidate about the reasons for its popularity and what kind of value it gives to the users. Developers are not always good at marketing, so this is optional.
The bottom line: what really matters
The success of your business strategy fully depends on the ontime product release, fixed budget, high quality of the app and a good user interface. We have cooperated with a great number of mobile app developers and we see that hiring wrong people may ruin any of the issues that influence the success of the product.
Check the credentials to see if the candidate is aware of real cases of product development. It’s good to consider having an hourly fee for work rather than a fixed sum of money that doesn’t depend on the number of hours that people spend on work. Find an expert in the app development to help you pick up the best candidates for working on your project.
Experience in your business niche and understanding the product life cycle will save you a lot of time as the candidate will already know the essentials. You may hear about some other mistakes that companies make but they are not so common. Think of your business goals and find the right person that will help you reach them.
