So, You Want to Create Your Own App?
Organizations often have a well-intentioned vision to take their services, products, or processes digital by creating an app. The principles are sound. They want to provide greater convenience for their intended users, become more competitive in their marketplace, increase process efficiency for internal clients — or a combination of any of these. What they lack […]
Organizations often have a well-intentioned vision to take their services, products, or processes digital by creating an app. The principles are sound. They want to provide greater convenience for their intended users, become more competitive in their marketplace, increase process efficiency for internal clients — or a combination of any of these. What they lack is expertise.
This lack can be fatal to any application development project. Without expertise, they’re missing critical context at best, and navigating completely blind, at worst. They may have a clear, feasible mission in mind, but when it comes to software development, it’s better to work with a trusted IT provider than brave unknown waters alone.
Deciding to Build an App
The ‘build versus buy debate’ ultimately boils down to criticality and control. How critical is the software to your organization? And how much control do you need over important parts of its development, deployment, and management throughout its lifetime?
Obviously, if you’ve decided to create your own app, then the choice to build has already been made. At this point, getting the right IT provider to plug in and integrate as a component of your organization already offers a few benefits:
- Reduced development risks as the right technology partner can uncover any potential design flaws, operational issues, and security vulnerabilities early on that might otherwise scupper your plans.
- Proper and realistic roadmapping of the product’s development timeline and quality of delivery, which makes it easier to navigate through budgeting hypercycles or accelerate projects when timelines change due to market forces or customer demands.
- Greater control over how you use new technologies in-house depending on the agreement with your provider – whether they provide services accessed via APIs, offer open-source middleware/app library components like blockchain gateways, or anything else. Additionally, you gain overall better managed options for integration into larger serviced solutions such as cloud storage and data lake offerings through strategic partnerships with vendors. This lets you retain flexibility if requirements change unexpectedly during deployment stages further down your development path(s).
Generally, bringing an IT provider onboard early on to assist with processes such as business technology analysis will yield better outcomes.
What Goes into Software Development
There’s always the option to offshore, which, on paper, creates a cost-effective development team under the umbrella of your own company. In practice, unless you’re sending an experienced core team member to serve as fractional CTO or project-based development lead, you’re actually doing the opposite of killing two birds with one stone. Not only are you building a department you might not need intact after deployment, you still lack the expertise that an outsourced, cohesive, experienced team can deliver.
This is the reason why many promising, forward-thinking startups are outsourcing their projects. They need the boost that only the right outsourced partner can provide, not the false sense of security that an offshore department of newly acquainted and inexperienced developers can give.
You need experience, expertise, and working synergy of a specialist IT provider, especially if your app is going to be mission-critical for your organization. It’s likely that specific features you require will not be straightforward or even achievable without expertise from someone familiar with the technology stack behind them. Working with a reliable provider is essential for timely completion on budget.
Additionally, with turn-key solutions like off-the shelf application development services, support and maintenance remain relevant after launch. Managed service models that enable monitoring and upgrades can also provide much needed scalability when required down the line.
In Pursuit of Mission-Critical Apps
Ultimately, if you need mission-critical software that’s going to be central for your business or the digital transformation you want to engender, it’s best to build it. You’re going to need customization and scalability tailored to your specific business requirements along with tight security protocols that can withstand evolving technology changes over time — not to mention the specific features, functionalities, and UX considerations for the app itself!
And if you want to build mission-critical apps with those complex considerations, you need a team with the professionalism, experience, expertise to drive the effort from business analysis, development, deployment, testing, and support.
In the development of key apps for your organization, you’ll inevitably find that solving problems and flexibly adjusting schedules, requirements, and budgets will become part of every step. You can find out how long that will take and how expensive that will cost you on your own. Or, you can learn how well-balanced and optimized the process can be with the right partner for software design and application building.
Get started with the right partner for your app development by emailing info@exelaration.com.
Will is a Full Stack Developer based in Washington, D.C. He earned his Masters of Education from the University of Virginia in 2018 and has brought his passion for mentoring and teaching to Exelaration since joining in November 2021. Will enjoys spending his free time outdoors either golfing, playing tennis, hiking, or just exploring D.C.