In today’s world the definition of a Tech Startup, means that at some point or the other a startup is going to be technology enabled. No matter what segment of the industry it belongs to technology will be required for any kind of product development, marketing, sales, accounting, HR or customer support.
Microsoft .Net framework is one such technology that enables the development of quality, reliable, and scalable applications for desktop, web or the mobile platforms. Using .Net framework you can create a number of applications right from CRMs, mobile apps, xml web services, inventory and warehousing applications to websites and many more. Since the applicability of this platform is so huge, finding the right and reliable partner to outsource the development of your product could prove to be a challenge in itself. There are a number of such service providers offshore, onshore or near-shore and have varied levels of expertise in this field.
The challenges that a company could face in outsourcing .Net Development
1. Is the service provider credible or not
This is one of the major challenges not just related with the outsourcing of .Net Development but any kind of software development that could be outsourced and relied upon that the software would once see the light of the day. Usually companies with longer work experience in the field are more reliable as compared to those who have just started off with a handful of developers.
Another key aspect that a company look into a service provider’s credibility is that how good a customer feedback or testimonials does it have. There are probably many cases out there that fraudulent service providers drain in the money of companies and vanish from the day one. So making sure that the company has proper permanent address and more than one .Net expert to guide you through the development process of the product for which you want to hire the agency.
2. Project Manager’s capability
Other than an agency’s credibility, second most important matter at hand is that the project is being handled by an expert in the field and is not someone who cannot even guide his team what to do. Making sure that the team has ample of technical experience and certifications with valid license numbers to work on your .Net project.
As far as the experience goes, a technical consultant must have at least 2 years of work experience in the field and for the project managers it should be at least 6-7 years of experience to make sure that your project is in good hands.
The team should have the expertise in Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, and ASP.MET MVC and how well the team has used .NET in conjunction with other technologies like Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Azure, Kentico to validate their experience in the .Net development domain. For example, for many large organizations it becomes a challenge to integrate the new systems with the existing legacy systems, in such cases the team’s deep expertise on Microsoft technologies comes in handy to solve the problems of interoperability and integration.
3. Experience on delivering complex .Net projects
More than the list of technical certifications that a ASP.NET developer has in his resume, it is his ability to work on the most complex projects innovatively that truly makes sense. Finding such an agency is hard to come by especially in cases where companies are looking at outsourcing their project at a dirt cheap price and that too to off-shore facilities.
This is one such problem that is inescapable in the case of outsourcing your project offshores.
4. Development support for Mobility
In today’s world there are very few software products that do not require the integration with mobile capabilities. Even if the service agency has expertise in .NET technology there will be a lot of project requirements for where your application needs the mobile capability to reach out the maximum number of users for your app. In such cases it is very important that the development company provides in-house development support for mobile development otherwise you will have to find another vendor to develop apps for mobile and integrate it with the product delivered by the service agency.
Therefore, the agency must be well aware of working on the following:
- Working with mobile features in an ASP.NET MVC 4 application.
- Building Mobile sites with ASP.NET MVC
- Developing and integrating platforms like desktop and mobile sites with Android, iOS and HTML5.
Takeaways
While it is always easy and convenient to outsource the application development projects to agencies, you should keep in mind the stakes involved and be prepared for a failsafe strategy. There’s a lot of money spent by companies these days but they don’t fruit just because they decided to trust onto the fraudulent service providers.
In such scenarios, we believe that this blog should save the day for you if you are looking for outsourcing the .NET development.