In communicating with our clients, we often hear many questions about the development process. Most of them hide the client’s fears. These fears and risks prevent many business owners from starting to develop their own online project. Analyzing the subject, we have compiled our TOP-4 risks in web & mobile project developing. Check them out, it can be useful for you.

TOP-4 client risks in WEB & Mobile Development

#1 Excess of budgets and terms of project development

The disrupt deadlines and, as a result, exceeding budgets in developing web or mobile applications are the most common problems and risks. This situation is always unpleasant for both customers and developers. First of all, it is important to determine the reason that led to delay in delivery. If the whole matter is the lack of development team competence and in their laziness, then all responsibility and fine should be assigned to them. But the issue may be in unforeseen tasks, which became known after the development start. And here are two ways to get out of the situation:

1. Increase budgets and development time to get the application with the full list of features.
2. You can adhere to the established terms and budgets, but receive the application with the cut down functionality.

Ways to minimize risk:

• Determine in the contract allowable errors in the timing of implementation and in overspending budgets, and also penalties in these cases.
• In advance, determine together with the development company a third party, which will help you resolve the dispute. This will save your time and nerves if there are any disagreements will be. Don’t forget to write about it in the contract.
• Always plan the budgets with a margin. If this money won’t be used for development, you can invest it in marketing.

#2 Low quality of development

Low quality of development can lead to slow operation of the application, the appearance of errors in some functions, to an ugly interfaces design, etc. Very often it happens when the client chooses the cheapest offer on the market.

Ways to minimize risk:

• Carefully approach the selection of the developer company. By the way, here is an article on this topic with our tips.
• Study reviews about the company and their cases.
• Begin cooperation with the company after the test task.
• Take care of your competence in software developing. You will need this to determine where the developers made mistakes.

#3 The impossibility of the project modernizing and developing

Sometimes clients turn to us with the task of finalizing an already existing project. Somehow modernize it or extend functionality, etc. Having studied the code, our developers say that they need to either completely rewrite the application or most of it to complete the task. How did it happen? There are two reasons for the appearance of this problem:

1. Previous developers wrote a very bad code.
2. The source code was lost.
   1. Negligence on the part of the previous development company.
   2. Antecedent developers deliberately don’t give the source code. Simply put, this is a quarrel between the customer and the performer.

Ways to minimize risk:

• Make sure that the developer company professionally approaches the writing of a code structure that will make it easy to make changes in the future. Read more about this in point 2
• Upon completion of the development, ask for source code and project documentation. It is better to determine in the contract. And immediately think about how and where you will store them. You can use Github or Bitbucket

#4 The project works but doesn’t sell

Sometimes it happens that the project is done well: the code is written well, the functional works correctly, and the design, in general, is magnificent. But the target audience does not like all this. You’ve seen it on the lack of sales or of other targeted actions if it’s a non-commercial project. In this case, the problem lies in the project marketing or the wrong business model.

Ways to minimize risk:

• Marketing research. Before implementing any project, you need to study the situation in the niche: learn competitiveness, measure the volume of the market, as well as supply and demand.
• Selection of functionality and interface design. We recommend that you proceed to this step only after the previous step. Your goal is to solve the client’s issues, and not just give him a bunch of different functionality that you saw from competitors.
• Start with MVP. Using the Minimum Viable Product, you can test your offer, functionality, and design. In other words, you create the same project that you dreamed about, but with minimal financial and time costs. If such a product can attract your target audience and bring the first sales, then with the improvement of design, performance, and functionality, the project will bring you the desired results.

Conclusions

1. The most important assets when you creating a project is people who will develop it. No technology will replace the human mind and the ability to resolve contentious issues. Therefore, look for those developers with whom you are pleased and easy to communicate. By the way, here’s an article where we wrote about the main aspects of effective communication with remote developing team.
2. Before starting a long-term cooperation, don’t hesitate to check the developer company with a small test task.
3. Do not rush to develop immediately a huge project with complex functions and pretentious design. Test your idea with MVP.
4. Again all agreements in the contract, and describe a real strategy for the development of your project. Avoid typical contracts.
5. Iteration development is the best way. We have seen this in our experience.

We told you about the most common risks in web & mobile development and tried to disclose ways to minimize them. If you have something to add, don’t hesitate to write comments on our articles. Have questions? Write to us at office@syntech.software.