Make a decisive plan to overcome challenges
Choosing a website development team can be a complex process. But, that shouldn’t be so!
As long as you have a clear goal, business plan, and proper knowledge, you are very unlikely to miss the boat, no matter how many trade-offs there are between the business expectations and budget and the cost for development services.
Where should you focus primarily while looking for the right resources for your store on Magento?
Your focus should be fixed on finding out the right team, for the right type of project to be delivered at the right time. There are many individuals and corporate companies that tend to make the wrong choice for a Development Partner for their projects based on some misguided and mismatched estimates for vague project scopes and regret later.
To not repeat the same mistakes, ask yourself these following questions.
- Is your project involving the development of an all-new website or version upgrade or migration?
- Will you use the latest features of Magento?
- Why is the process of choosing resources so difficult given millions of them available there?
- Why project timelines are often not met?
- Why are the same mistakes made repeatedly about choosing resources?
Well, all these questions might naturally crop up in your mind too in the run-up to searching for a suitable development partner for developing your B2B or B2C eCommerce site on the Magento platform. And, we are going to answer all these questions so you can save yourself from making those mistakes.
We’ve learned them over the years and shall share them with you here in this post. If you’re an entrepreneur, read on.
Basic areas of consideration:
By going through this post, you will get to know how to browse through the software development landscape, whether to use modern software platform, proper ways for framing and scoping a project, whether to hire an offshore/onshore development team and how to sign up with a software development company having the right resources.
Regardless of your business size or types, there are multiple eCommerce solutions available to you. That you have decided to build your business website on Magento proves your firm intention to stand out in your business niche.
Determine your business goal
Having specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely (SMART) business goals can help your business grow, achieve objectives, improve teamwork and collaboration and help everyone understand the direction your business is heading in. As a business person, your first duty will be to take the time to set well-defined business goals. Your business goal has to be a part of your business plan and will likely become your business objective.
Research business niche and expertise requisites
Brainstorm resource requirements specific to your business product or service. Outline the business objectives and plan accordingly, so you can look for resources who do the type of work you need. Then, put them forward to your chosen software development partner.
Define the scope of the project
Project scope is the first step in setting your project goals and objectives. Without it, no matter how effective, how efficient and how hard you may work, you are unlikely to pull off the process and get a website to your expectations, especially when you want your webstore to be built or upgraded onto the latest version of Magento platform. Framing and scoping a website development project should include considerations like whether you should get your business website on modern software, budgeting, and probable cost.
Get familiar with software development service models
The software development landscape features a variety of service models. Each model can be a fit depending on project requirements, budget and software among others. The right selection of a model will have a huge impact on the delivery and quality of the project.
Check out standard software development service models below:
- Offshore model
- Onshore model
- Nearshore model
- Hybrid model
Offshore software development model refers to services delivered by resources outside your country. An offshore software development service partner costs much less than an onshore service partner. But, that partner will require detailed project documentation and regular communication over mail/skype/phone. In-person interaction in this service model rarely happens. In fact, it doesn’t need too, if you can contract with a reputed software development service company and provide them a well-documented project work.
The offshore model has a good reputation for lower service costs and higher development quality. If you ask who should choose this service model, we would suggest it’d be a good choice, especially for those companies with a tight budget, but at the same time looking for a software development team with practical project management experience and customer service. For more insights about hiring an offshore Magento development team, click here.
The onshore model refers to development services provided by resources inside your company. This model costs much higher and provides quality services in a tight timeline. This model allows for ownership and control of your project without having to commit your own project resources. Who should use this model? It is especially a good choice for large companies with a huge budget! Click here to know what more you can get out of partnering with an onshore software development team.
The hybrid software development model refers to those services which are completed in a joint venture approach combining services of an onshore partner and an offshore partner. Who should use this model? It is recommended for those businesses which already have a product manager statewide and require development resources for extra help.
The nearshore model refers to a development service approach where services are provided by resources in the same country as you. It is known for the higher cost, higher quality, and higher hands-on customer service. Recommended for those clients who require dedicated project manager, account manager and face-to-face regular communication with the software team.
Go over the company landscape
After setting goal, fixing budget, scoping the project and getting familiar with different models, now is the time for you to go over company landscape to find and select a potential partner. How will you select a partner? This job can be a bit hard if you factor in all options.
Here, one thing needs to be clear that there is no one factor that can help you uncover/select the best software development partner for your service requirements. What are those essential factors that you must take into account?
- Get a quote from 2/3 companies
- Evaluate quote proposal
In addition, you should check how comfortably they can communicate with you, including email/skype/phone communication. Secondly, verify how well those companies’ tech stack or specialty and evaluate the team. It is especially necessary when you want to choose the right resources for the Magento store. Thirdly, check portfolio to ensure if they have relevant work experience and expertise in store development from scratch, providing services for migration and upgradation to the latest version of Magento.
Select, negotiate and contract with a company.
As you choose a company that has the right resources for developing a Magento store, you have to sign in a contract or a set of contracts with the company. Check out the probable contracts you are going to sign in. Those include: Confidentiality Contract/Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA), Masters Services Agreement (MSA), and Statement of Work (SW). These contracts are proofs of mutually agreed upon company’s services, cost, timeline, resources and commitment against your (client) payment.
Choose an engagement model that suits your goal and budget
Based on project scopes, development resources need to be engaged. It will save you costs and headache. So, proper engagement of resources in symmetry with project scope is equally important to ensure the success of the project and overcome various obstacles encountered during the development process. Get an overview of two main engagement models in the diagram below.
From the diagram, it is clearly understood that one is for large projects and the other is for small projects. Model-specific benefits are also outlined in it. Click here to get to know more benefits of these engagement models for Magento development solutions.
Wrap-Up:
To choose and hire the right resources for a Magento store calls for a well-defined plan. We’ve discussed most of them here. Hopefully, you will now be able to find the right resources to develop your Magento store. By the way, scanning through the company case studies will be a sure help for you. The higher the number of projects completed successfully not only on Magento but also on other eCommerce platforms like nopCommerce, CS-Cart, or OpenCart platform, the more reliable that company will be for hire.
We would suggest you take an overview of the services provided by the team of Magento experts at Citytech.
Do you have an interesting project? Let’s talk about that!
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