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Watch That Bottom Line - Avoid Price Creep in Software Development
- By R. Barkman
- Published 02/5/2010
- Computers and Technology
- Unrated
R. Barkman
Ryan Barkman specializes in writing articles that deal with Information Technology (IT) and software development. Specifically, he writes articles that help provide information about Denver IT consulting solutions. For more information, visit his Denver IT staffing site.
View all articles by R. Barkman
If you hire software developers you know the difficulty in defining the product you hope to have in the end. Most who are new to outsourcing software development think it is enough to tell the developer what you want the end product to do and leave it at that.
You may be fortunate and end up with a piece of software that is perfect but that's unlikely. More often, you will either buy a product that does not fill the need or find yourself paying more and more to correct problems that should not have occurred in the first place.
Price creep in software development occurs most often when the client either doesn't clearly explain what is needed or when he changes the criteria during the process. It can also be a problem when a programmer takes on a job that is more than he thought it would be or where he must outsource portions of it himself and feels he deserve to be paid more than originally decided. The extra costs may for hiring services or people to evaluate or add to the project. The cascade of costs for the project may become prohibitive for the client.
When planning software development you must plan for functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirements are the specifications for what you want the software to do. If you have not fully documented the tasks the finished software should be able to accomplish the software developer may feel he has fulfilled your needs while you find yourself with software that seems patched together or poorly
designed.
Non-functional requirements are the tasks most often ignored by customers when they hire software developers. It is not enough that the product allow customers to complete a task - the user experience must be smooth and easy. If the software is slow, difficult to use or understand, lacks security features or is not scalable it can be difficult if not impossible to correct these deficiencies after the development is completed.
When you entrust your software development to a large company for completion, communication may suffer. The person you directly work with will not be the person building the software and some instructions may be lost in the relay of information. For this reason, it is important to have a clear policy to control changes made during software development. Any changes considered should be tentative until you ascertain whether they will improve the software and how the change might affect performance.
Provide for wide testing of the software. Companies refer to this process as configuration management and when poorly done this amounts to one test of one version of the software. What you want is multiple tests, full testing of every function of the software and retesting after any change or addition is made to the product.
Testing during software development can reduce costs significantly in the end. One small error in the program may be easily corrected when it is identified quickly through testing. That same small error can become a massive repair when the software has been completed before the mistake at the beginning is noticed.
You may be fortunate and end up with a piece of software that is perfect but that's unlikely. More often, you will either buy a product that does not fill the need or find yourself paying more and more to correct problems that should not have occurred in the first place.
Price creep in software development occurs most often when the client either doesn't clearly explain what is needed or when he changes the criteria during the process. It can also be a problem when a programmer takes on a job that is more than he thought it would be or where he must outsource portions of it himself and feels he deserve to be paid more than originally decided. The extra costs may for hiring services or people to evaluate or add to the project. The cascade of costs for the project may become prohibitive for the client.
When planning software development you must plan for functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirements are the specifications for what you want the software to do. If you have not fully documented the tasks the finished software should be able to accomplish the software developer may feel he has fulfilled your needs while you find yourself with software that seems patched together or poorly
Non-functional requirements are the tasks most often ignored by customers when they hire software developers. It is not enough that the product allow customers to complete a task - the user experience must be smooth and easy. If the software is slow, difficult to use or understand, lacks security features or is not scalable it can be difficult if not impossible to correct these deficiencies after the development is completed.
When you entrust your software development to a large company for completion, communication may suffer. The person you directly work with will not be the person building the software and some instructions may be lost in the relay of information. For this reason, it is important to have a clear policy to control changes made during software development. Any changes considered should be tentative until you ascertain whether they will improve the software and how the change might affect performance.
Provide for wide testing of the software. Companies refer to this process as configuration management and when poorly done this amounts to one test of one version of the software. What you want is multiple tests, full testing of every function of the software and retesting after any change or addition is made to the product.
Testing during software development can reduce costs significantly in the end. One small error in the program may be easily corrected when it is identified quickly through testing. That same small error can become a massive repair when the software has been completed before the mistake at the beginning is noticed.
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