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The First Steps To Take When Commissioning Software

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Every year in the U.S., companies lose millions of dollars on poorly thought-out software projects.

Weak planning, slack lines of communication and insufficient buy-in cost companies both time and money. When the project involves outsourced software development, that underpreparedness can be disastrous.

Those pitfalls can be avoided, though, when everyone working on the project is committed to achieving a clear, common goal. That’s what a software prototype should be.

With the right plan in place for building and testing the software, a financial organization’s in-house teams and outsourced developers can get aligned on the steps they need to take to get a working prototype built.

Here’s what that road map looks like.

 

Identify Goals For the Prototype

Any software project should start with the question, “What problem do we want to solve?”

Perhaps your banking app needs a UX refresh. Perhaps your fintech platform needs a new feature. Whatever the case, define the problem and set goals for what you want this prototype to achieve.

You can achieve this by doing the following:

  • Take your customers’ perspectives or your users’ needs into account.
  • Take your own business objectives into account.
  • When imagining your goals, leave some wiggle room so that the projects can incorporate new information as it’s discovered.

By starting with this macro perspective, you frame software development in a whole new light. Goal-setting can incorporate broader perspectives, which can help the resulting product offer more value to a wider audience.

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Sell the Project to Your Team

Getting buy-in for new software requires that you articulate a clear vision of the finished software and what impact that software will have on the company. The prototype should offer a demonstration of how that vision will be realized.

But let’s not get too far ahead. First, the goal is to get all stakeholders on board with the vision. Here are some ways to frame that pitch:

  • Describe how the software will directly benefit the company.
  • Expand on that idea. A good product should offer several benefits. List those all out in as much detail as possible.
  • Anticipate questions and maybe pushback early on. Think about ways you can handle objections from your colleagues and company leadership.

Getting others on board means giving them a chance to share in the project’s success. That’s where the idea of co-creation comes in. Co-creation happens when everyone on the team contributes to the vision and goals for a project, and it’s one of the most powerful means of securing buy-in.

Encourage others to build upon your initial idea and take partial ownership of the overall project. This sense of ownership will increase the chance that they will commit to seeing the idea succeed.

 

Get Internal Teams and Outsourced Developers Aligned

When you outsource software development, you need to set up strong lines of communication between your in-house teams and the dev teams.

Here’s what that work looks like:

  • At the beginning of the project, make sure everyone on every team has the information they need.
  • At each subsequent stage of the project, you’ll need to do this again.
  • Give all team members an opportunity to raise a question or a concern when they need to.

By committing to these rules for open communication, you help reduce bottlenecks, anticipate sources of conflict, and provide pathways for the easy resolution of issues.

Likewise, be clear in the roles you assign everyone. When internal and external teams can visualize how the work they’re doing aligns with the shared, common goal of the project, it’s easier for everyone to focus on their responsibilities (and harder for teams to accidentally interfere with each other’s work).

 

Identify Key Metrics and Set Benchmarks

Finally, you’ll need to give everyone a clear way to measure their progress within the larger project. That’s where clear metrics and benchmarks come into play.

Start by assessing the quality of the code. When developers spend their time fixing code rather than writing new code, they are spending time and money that could be better deployed elsewhere.

Next, be sure to track project costs against the budget and deadlines for deliverables. This is a fundamental part of any project management methodology, and it’s what keeps a software project on track.

By laying out clear timelines and deadlines, internal teams can see exactly what to expect from an external developer and when to expect it. This clarity allows the internal teams to organize their own efforts more effectively so they can be prepared to get work done as soon as the external team hits its own milestones.

When the project is complete, you should have a working prototype that you can test, analyze and tweak as necessary. From there, your team should be able to make an easy decision about how to progress in the development of a full software solution.

 

Images by: Kelly Sikkema, Annie Spratt

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