Software development for startups Expectations v/s reality

When a person starts any business, they definitely wanted to grow and do well and when it does start going well, after a couple of years it hits a stage where the owner needs a plan about the future of the company, how to expand it and start exploring new avenues.

And then everyone gets stuck around some questions

• How to take your product or service to the next level in the market?

• What features should be added to improve the connectivity with the users?

• How to increase your market share?

Developing a software application in one of the most challenging aspect for any startup business. Almost the whole future of that startup depends on how efficient their software developers work and how effective the software is. They even have to think that should they build up a software developers team within the company or hire someone to do the job. These are the question every startup have to find an answer for.

While they’re deciding over all of these factors and choose to outsource the software developer for the job, they do have some expectation from the software developer, that they will enhance the existing model, and define a specifics, an expert tech team who can add value to their company, and work with their best potential toward the company. But the ground reality can be totally different from the expectations of any business owner.

So let’s dive in, and take a close look on some of the expectations v/s realities of software development for any startup businesses.

First let’s look at the expectations startups have.

Requirements of the startup company:-

A startup will always have a great and creative idea behind it, a lot of enthusiasm and sources of funding as well at times, what it may lack at is experience of market and resources. You can do as much as research as you want to do before starting a business but the real market will always going to shock you even when you think that you are completely prepared for every obstacle. And this is the exact reason they choose to outsource, so that they can get someone experience on board.

Expectations from any software company a business owner choose is to make their vision for the company come true, to document the idea they have, give it the right shape, give a definition to the whole process and execute it in the best way possible. They want a software developers to keep the whole process of software development organized and effective.

Complete expertise in the field of technology:-

It’s an essential skill that any starter would like to see in the software developer team it chooses, as it is crucially important for the software developer to be able to perform the task which are important for the expansion of the company product with evolving technologies.

Working with a software developer who is efficient in taking care of the whole technical requirement smoothly is what a startup looks for while searching for an outsource option. It would unrealistic to have different people to handle different aspect of the work for a startup which has a limited funding from the market.

Expert developers:-

Software development is a task which includes a huge range of different responsibility, as such analyzing requirement, taking action toward it, implementing new and developed features and fixing bugs. Every startup expect that the person they are hiring should have all the required expertise, like software development, complete exposure to programming and require qualities of even a software engineer.

Quick processing:-

Developing a required product within the company in limited time period can become a tough task for a startup, as having a skilled software developers and enough manpower with all the expertise seems like a dream for a startup business.

But with established software development company it becomes easier to achieve any task, as they have required skills and expert in every field, have tried and tested models and automation processes, that make the task for any startup company much easier and completing it within the limited time period seems like a task that can be achieved.

User centric:-

Any startup expect that software development company will provide them a software which will be technically enhanced and user-friendly at the same time so that they get acceptance from the user in the market easily without any complaint. They want a simple yet attractive user interface which isn't difficult to navigate and can easily search the required functions for the users.

Now that we have seen the expectations of a startup. Let’s know about the on ground reality which is far more different than what expectation look like from a software development company.

Actual requirements:-

Most startups like to believe that their software requirements are very defined and doesn’t need much rectification, but the reality is that they forgot to consider that business requirements can be dynamic. As, the startups are themselves just started their journey, well defined and specific requirements are very early to decide. When the startup grow and the business start to pick up speed, many new projects coming with different requirements, which leads to change in the startup requirements too. The ground reality is that a startup or any business cannot have a well defined requirement all the time. With time, most startups grow and their requirement varies with the requirements of every new project.

So if you outsource a software development company it needs to focus on all aspects of the product, they also need to consider the future aspects for improvement because of the fast changing technologies, need to go through market trends and what users are expecting an accepting, and they need to be able to enhance the product from time to time for better experience of the users.

Meeting deadlines:-

Opposite to the expectations, meeting timelines can be a really tough task for startups because of the continuous change in requirements. Most startup owner have aim to follow cost optimization, their work is hectic and resources are few and expectations are high , this is a normal scenario of any startup. And, this is why the pressure of meeting deadlines is exceptionally high for the software development startup. In the real world, an unorganized software development startup may not be able to work in such a fast paced work culture.

User centric projects:-

Even when a startup initially start with a motive and dream of making their product user centric, with time and increasing workload, it started to get settled with their basic features which are same for everyone rather than customizing the products as per customers need and want.

This is why software development become a crucial part of a business. It’s easier to update the software time to time than creating a solution for Each and every customer’s problem specifically.

Best practices and standard processes:-

Every software development projects should keep a well curated blueprint of the process and should follow the best route to make sure that the final result is as close as possible to the desired application that the customer want. So it become important to know and understand what’s the requirement of your customer.

You need to understand that software development is a journey and market is updating every day, you need to make plans, set a standard for product, keep a close eye on the market trend and constantly trying to provide your best work to the customer so that it will increase your goodwill in the market.

So, now that we have come to an end, we can understand that there is a big difference between the expectations and actual reality, startups have to face many inconsistencies and roadblocks but if you will keep moving and doing the best work, you are going to make it big in the software development industry.