How to choose a custom software development partner

The most reliable signal

A supplier who tells you a requested feature is not worth its cost has just done three things in one sentence.

They have shown they understood your need, since they can tell what serves it from what clutters it. They have given up part of their immediate revenue. And they have shown they are reasoning about the length of the relationship rather than the size of the first quote.

That is the hardest signal to fake, which is why it beats a portfolio. A portfolio shows what a supplier has built; advice against their own interest shows how they will work with you when a hard decision comes up mid-project.

Conversely, a contact who approves everything, finds all your ideas excellent and quotes a price before understanding the need is doing one of two things: selling a disguised standard product, or planning to make it up in change requests.

What the questions reveal

The second indicator reads in the first meeting: the nature of the questions asked, and their order.

A serious supplier asks about your business before talking technology. How many people will use the tool, how often, in what conditions, and what happens today when an exception comes up.

They also ask, very early, two questions others defer: what systems does it need to talk to, and who, on your side, can make decisions during the project. Those two answers determine budget and schedule more than the number of screens.

And they ask you to prepare something: examples, written rules, access to obtain. A project that asks nothing of the client is one that will not touch its business.

Freelancer, agency or services firm

The market splits into three families, and each has a legitimate domain.

• The independent developer: controlled cost, direct relationship, high responsiveness. The risk is availability, since continuity rests on one person.
• The agency or studio: a team of a few people, assured continuity, complementary skills. The format that suits most business projects.
• The services firm: large capacity, established procedures, suited to long projects and large organisations. Higher overheads, more changeable contacts.

The criterion is not size but proportion. A project of a few weeks given to a hundred-person organisation will be handled by its least experienced profiles. A project running over a year given to a freelancer rests on a bet.

Six questions before signing

Six questions are enough to tell a solid proposal from a sales pitch, and the answers should be in writing.

• Who will actually work on the project, and what share of their time will go to it?
• What happens if that person becomes unavailable for three weeks?
• Who owns the code, where is it hosted, and what is handed over if I change supplier?
• What is explicitly out of scope in this proposal?
• When will the first production release happen, and on what scope?
• What does annual maintenance cost, and what exactly does it cover?

A supplier who answers those six precisely and in writing has already demonstrated most of what you are looking for.

Four clauses that decide your freedom

These are negotiated before signature, never after, and they express no distrust: they guarantee that maintenance stays a competitive market.

• Assignment of rights over the bespoke developments, to you, as each phase is paid for. It does not cover everything: open source libraries stay under their own licences and the supplier's pre-existing components come with a usage licence. What matters is that those three categories are distinguished and named.
• Hosting: service accounts in your name, with administrator access on your side.
• Exit terms: the timeframe and format for handing over code, access and documentation.
• Maintenance terms: what is included, the response time on a blocking fault, and the hours covered.

A supplier confident in their work accepts them without difficulty, because they know you will stay by choice. On a project of any significant size, have these clauses reviewed: intellectual property is not presumed, it is drafted.

What to write before approaching suppliers: how to write a specification for custom software

Compare, then try

Quotes from the same specification stay hard to compare until you bring them to the same format. Reconstruct four figures for each: framing, building, connections, annual maintenance. The gap then almost always explains itself.

In most cases a markedly cheaper proposal is not offering the same thing: it has left the connections aside, has not priced the data migration, or includes no monitoring.

When the choice is still open, one method reveals more than any reference: ask each supplier for a framing phase, then a first deliverable. With us, framing is free and the first deliverable is money-back if you are not satisfied, within five days. You come away with a document, an estimate and above all a concrete experience of working together, with no commitment.

One criterion fits into no table and yet weighs heavily: who do you want to talk to every week for three months? Projects turn largely on the quality of that relationship, and it is sensed from the first meeting.