Size is a factor when choosing a development partner

Sizing Up Your Needs

Size should be a consideration when choosing one or more development companies to partner with. Organizational structure and team size matter on both sides of the relationship.

Vendor size matters with regards to the depth of the bench of skilled employees, the diversity of software development contributors they can provide, the variety of technologies they have experience with, and the supply of senior leads and managers that can support the team, identify complex solutions, and triage pressing issues. In addition, you should look for a company with sufficient experience and operational infrastructure that can show healthy statistics on employee engagement, low turnover, and their ability to hire additional resources.

Too Small

This isn’t to say small software development companies should be ignored; on the contrary, there are times when a small boutique shop may be an organization’s best bet. If your company and the size of the team that will be engaging with the vendor’s software developers are small, and if you are new to software development projects or have not previously worked with an external vendor, then a small company may be a good fit. Smaller businesses, where the company’s leadership is involved in your project, offer high-touch service and are able to spend a higher proportion of time in stakeholder meetings. They may be able to be more hands-on with helping to define requirements and milestone deliveries. However, being small does not mean only having a few employees; more likely, these are companies with more than thirty-five employees. Anything smaller will create a heightened risk related to company stability and viability. The vulnerability for disruption of daily operations is greater, and their ability to manage turnover and handle business continuity events is challenging. Boutique players may fit the bill if your company needs basic technical products such as simple marketing websites and third-party integrations for a low-volume web product. Targeting an individual freelancer or a company of just a few employees often extends project deadlines, whether due to their limited abilities, incorrect estimations, or juggling of multiple commitments and the inability to provide exclusive focus to your needs.

Too Large

Large, global software development shops hosting thousands of employees generally have years of experience across many industry sectors, possess deep benches of development resources, hold certifications for operational and information security proficiencies, and have worked on major, large-scale applications. Big tech vendors are the right choice when a Fortune 100 company or a top US bank needs dozens or hundreds of engineers for a long-term project. These global development firms have experience in areas such as financial transactions, data security, and governmental regulation. They employ multilingual staff that can work with stakeholders in numerous countries and deliver products and features in multiple languages. They can scale more quickly. They have the economic resources to hire aggressively. They have seasoned professionals overseeing IT, Legal, and Compliance departments. There are redundancies in place that help guarantee delivery milestones, and their economies of scale are easily leveraged to a large client’s changing or growing needs. This doesn’t mean that large companies only work with, or should only work with, one vendor.

When a large corporation employs a significant number of engineers through vendors, working with multiple software providers is a strong diversification strategy. It is the same strategy as any investment portfolio. This approach reduces business impact risks should hackers compromise one vendor or should the vendor operate in a manner inconsistent with the customer’s ethics. Working with more than one vendor offers backup in scenarios such as a breach of physical operations due to environmental circumstances that leaves a vendor unable to quickly restore data and services as part of their disaster recovery procedures. Working with vendors across geographic regions and time zones allows for nearly 24-hour operations—coding during in one part of the world and conducting QA tests against the newly submitted code on the other side of the globe. Different departments in a large company will have different levels of technical expertise on staff, have different development needs, and utilize different technologies. Business or operating units (BUs & OUs) also may not want to compete internally for development resources from a single vendor and, rather, have options and resources dedicated separately to the BU or OU.

Most businesses do not generate annual multi-billion dollar revenue or employ tens of thousands of employees. Working with large software consultancies is often too costly for most companies; rates are higher, and more overhead is included, impacting both cost and efficiency. Often, the provider cannot deliver more personalized attention to their smaller clients.

Just Right

For most companies with a consistently budgeted expense for software development of modern web technologies and business operating applications, a software development vendor with over a decade of experience and a staff of over 150 should be targeted. As your project needs scale, so should the software partner’s profile. A development company with more than a decade of experience should be able to offer a good diversity of skills, prove their operational consistency and staffing abilities effectively, deliver quality code consistently, have mature security processes in place, and would likely be compliant with industry-standard protocols such as SOC2. Mid-size software development suppliers possess the best of both worlds, small enough to provide more personalized attention to your development needs and assist in understanding your business roadmap and goals. Leveraging this relationship for the long term allows the client and the vendor to form a partnership where each can bring strategies and solutions to drive user engagement, optimize the application’s performance, capture new revenue opportunities, drive cost-saving initiatives, and minimize future maintenance efforts. Mid-size agencies have staff across multiple disciplines, from design and architecture to product owners, and from business analysts to software development, QA, and DevOps engineers. Software agencies in excess of 150 employees can most effectively operate as a natural extension of your team or be independently managed to deliver results on your behalf. They can also support multiple initiatives simultaneously, even in different engagement models: one team could work in a staff augmentation capacity, fully integrated with an existing team, while another group works on a milestone-based project independently.

When choosing a new software development partner, examine your company dynamics to identify what you need from your new partner. Some of the questions relate to your company’s size, organizational structure, or operational standards.

• Do you need a partner with more time to spend on product definitions and stakeholder engagement?
• Do you currently have experienced technical leads on staff?
• Does your technical team have the required expertise for the upcoming project?
• Are your company’s technology responsibilities centralized or distributed across teams and operational units?
• Is your team distributed across geographies and time zones?
• Does your company have a process for approving and onboarding new vendors?
• Does your company have certain certification or security requirements a vendor must meet?
• Will you need to work with multiple software teams on different projects simultaneously?

Finding the right vendor is hard. There are thousands of vendors out there. Too often, clients struggle to find a transparent, consistently available, fully invested partner who can quickly adapt to changing priorities and remedy issues. When vetting a partner, evaluate their expertise, experience, and ability to both offer the diverse array of services you currently need and also grow with you. Key factors when evaluating include transparency, stability, security, scalability, and consistency. Avoid unsuccessful partnerships by evaluating your next software development vendor not just on technical expertise but also on a full assessment of their business model so that you ensure they are the right fit for the long term.