5 Signs You Can Trust Your Development Team

Most of us hire developers randomly without a proper evaluation system in place. This system helps us assess developers based on what they are delivering and place our trust accordingly. Following our intuition is indeed very important, but not enough. Therefore, we reveal today 5 signs you can use to recognize whether your development partner can be trusted to successfully deliver or not.

1. Do they communicate or simply talk?

Most clients understand that developers might encounter unexpected problems or circumstances beyond their control which might affect the time needed to deliver. However, a client needs to be notified when this happens because not being updated makes them assume the worst. So, when hiring a developer, make sure they communicate well by asking them very specific questions.

For example, instead of asking them if they understand the project, ask them what they understood from the project. Ask them technical questions and let them explain the reasons they chose a certain development platform. If their answer is general, then they don’t communicate well. Whereas if they explain how choosing this platform saves you money and serves your business goals, then this is a good communicator you want on your team. Good communication is always a sign of trust.

2. Do their actions match their promises?

If they ask for 5K to develop a system in one week and fail to do so, then they deceived you. Whereas if they take two weeks instead but explain why it’s taking them more time and communicate to you the problems they faced, then they are trustworthy.

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs do is betting a lot of money on one development firm they haven’t worked with before. Even if the firm is reputable, you might become of less priority if they get a bigger project. Therefore, make sure to do the following:

• Don’t give a big project to a developer you are working with for the first time.
• Don’t pay a big amount of money from the start.
• Give them a small amount at first for a small task to check how they deliver.
• Give them a big project later if they prove to be trustworthy.

3. Do they understand your business model?

Technology is about solving business problems, not about solving technological problems. Developers should be able to understand business in general, your business model, and how you make money. This helps them define a technological solution that solves your business problems. If you tell a developer you want to build a website to sell clothes, they might simply set up Shopify and be done. However, a good developer who has a sense of business asks more thorough questions like:

• How much clothes you have?
• How much money you make?
• What is your marketing strategy?
• Are you going to use social media?
• Do you have something that might go viral which we could put in a prominent place on the website to get you more sales?
• What is your client profile?
• Are your clients considered high spenders or do they seek cheaper products?

These questions help developers create a brand identity for your website and build a technological solution that compliments your marketing strategy. An entrepreneur’s goal is to sell more. So, if a developer suggests a website color that he knows sells more, the client will directly agree, while if they are given the choice, clients choose their preference which might not be a good marketing choice. This is why a developer should understand the business side of a project. Therefore, hire a professional who has a lot of experience, aside from developing.

4. How do they handle failures?

Failures are part of the process, and how developers handle those failures is what makes the whole difference. We pushed a release once for our client’s high traffic website, and the release ended up bad, causing bugs. We immediately rolled back the system, assessed what went wrong, came up with a proper testing process to ensure this does not happen again, implemented code reviews, and changed our coding standards. The lessons here are:

• These steps helped us avoid encountering this problem again.
• If we had only fixed the bug, we could have gotten a similar one because the problem was in our process.
• Developers should always dig deep to understand the cause of the problem.
• A proper infrastructure like having version control helps a developer easily fix issues.

When you’re first starting your business, anything would work because you still don’t have a lot of traffic, and you haven’t stress tested your system yet. But once traffic starts to increase, that’s when problems will start to appear.

5. Do they regularly exceed your expectations?

Do not settle for anything less than what your developer promised they would deliver. Hire someone who would put energy and enthusiasm in your project, delivering even more than what’s expected, even if this means charging extra.

Good developers usually choose their clients and not the other way around. Our philosophy at Staggering ROI consists of choosing our clients based on whether we relate to their project or not. We want to work on projects we’re excited about and through which we can make a difference. We cannot work on a project unless it’s a cause we believe in and it does not contradict with our principles.

Go to our website www.staggeringroi.com and check out “Our Process” for an exhaustive step-by-step, in-depth, 12-page article that explains how you can have a proper development process, how to hire the right developers, how to monitor their work, and other steps. Check out our YouTube channel for our videos and watch all the valuable content we put out there! And if you have any questions always feel free to contact us!