The 8 Most Critical Mistakes in Outsourcing Application Development

🗃️ Mobile App Development Pitfalls at the Stage of Team Selection

When you entrust your app development to another team you need to be 100% confident that they are the perfect match for you. Outsourcing isn’t about picking any random team to work on your project. On the contrary, a careful preselection process may be the most important task that you have to do on your own.

⚙️ App Development Pitfalls To Avoid During the Working Process

The second group of mobile app development mistakes often drops out of sight. As we already mentioned, sometimes people erroneously think that after signing the contract all responsibility lies with the development agency. Yet, project management and communication processes are essential for successful cooperation.

Chaotic feedback process is also among mistakes to avoid when outsourcing app development. Inconsistent and unorganized feedback is difficult to monitor. Thus, it may slow down the development and will require more time and resources from you.

Without establishing a regular feedback channel you won’t be able to plan properly and at one day you will just lose the understanding where your money is flowing or “why you paid for a table, but received a WC-door of gold” if you know what I mean.

Our advice:

Try to use different channels of communication (messages, Skype calls) to always keep up with the latest updates on your app and be ready to provide developers with all the necessary information.

A good practice is to arrange meetings with your team on a regular basis. For example, when using the Scrum approach, it may be the Sprint Plan Meeting, Sprint Retrospective and a short written 10-minute daily standup. If both the client and the team are involved in these activities, the difference in time zones will never be a problem.

Make sure you speak one language (literally and metaphorically) with your team or at least with the project manager. Communication breakdowns may put you in a high-risk zone without a way out.

🏁 Mobile App Development Mistakes at the Final Stage

Last but not least. There are a few mistakes in application development which you may face after releasing the first version of your app. We decided to highlight 2 of them:

1. Poor marketing.
2. No after-release support plan.

Here’s what I mean and how to avoid it.

Mistake # 7: Poor marketing 🗞️

What’s the problem?

This app outsourcing pitfall is typical for the companies that were totally concentrated on the development part but neglected the marketing side.

The importance of pre- and postrelease marketing is often underestimated. Even the most interesting and well-built app needs strong marketing before it reaches the top and starts hitting million dollar revenue.

💡 Conclusion

Let’s briefly remind what was on our list of top 8 mistakes to avoid when outsourcing app development:

1. If you’re a young idea-based startup, do a market research before starting app development.
2. Adjust your schedules with the future team to benefit from the difference in time zones.
3. Set a range of hourly rates which you can be comfortable with, but don’t consider this as the most important factor.
4. Before making the final decision, carefully review all the candidates.
5. Set clear requirements (a good project manager can help you to handle this).
6. Arrange meetings with your team on a regular basis and try to use different communication channels.
7. Take care of your pre- and postrelease marketing program.
8. Prepare an after-MVP plan beforehand so as to have a clear strategy when your MVP is released.

They say that the wise man learns from the mistakes of others. That’s why we decided to share our experience with you and help you avoid the most common pitfalls when you are outsourcing your mobile application development. Keep them in mind and everything is going to be just fine! 😊