So you found a low cost development team. Maybe they’re offshore, or it’s a couple of guys working from their house in Des Moines. They gave you a killer estimate on creating your app and they sound like really sharp techies that know their stuff.
You make an upfront payment and they start working. Everything’s going great until…
…you realize it’s not going well at all.
You’re finding that:
- your development team isn’t meeting project milestones
- the resources you thought were on the project are no longer working on it
- you’ve spent nearly all the budget you have for the project but still don’t have a version to test
- the key member of your development team took a job elsewhere and the “team” has no one to replace him/her
- you can’t get the source code for your project to get someone else to review and advise
We wish we could say that the above scenarios are fictional, but they’re not. The list is based on true stories. We know because we get the panicked calls for help.
The mobile industry is full of innovative and industrious individuals, all buzzing with ideas. Unfortunately, not all of them have the experience in both the technology and business systems to effectively develop and execute an advanced, well-thought-out mobile application.
We get enough SOS calls these days that we’ve dubbed one of our internal groups the “mobile app development rescue unit.” We’re usually able to jump in and get things back on track. The catch is that the ultimate cost to the client is often much more than it would have been if they worked with a more experienced, development / marketing company from the beginning.
Fortunately, our clients who have experienced these issues were proactive in coming to BestFit to correct the matter.
Morale of the Story: Having a strong, strategic development partner is crucial in order to survive the mobile marketing gauntlet.