Developing software or any kind of technology app is costly, and time intensive.
Through years of conversations with software developers, we have discovered that often the reason that developers even venture into building their own app or technology is that they previously came from companies serving similar audiences and saw core inefficiencies that could be developed for.
Many jump in with the years of coding knowledge, addressing what they saw missing in the previous platforms they contributed to building amazing solutions for particular pain points. These developers often then leave other pain points to address for later on. While these softwares see success, they can develop more slowly, are more costly, and ultimately hit more hurdles in adoption.
This can often be a result of the development team missing out on aligning with strategic business partners that have direct access to the industries or verticals you are trying to serve. They miss core competencies or best practices that would have been inexpensive to address in the early stages of development. They also risk greater competition in the future when others attempt to build stronger, native workflows.
Here at Clearinity we are passionate about helping our clients and software developers. We believe strongly that when developers are not siloed they can create more impact and better leaders in the businesses who use your technology.
5 Considerations for Software Developers
Our five considerations for software developers address what we often see potential platforms miss in the early stages of minimal viable product development. Many platforms are afraid to begin strategic relationships too early and with too little infrastructure. They believe by conserving monetary resources by excluding business consultants or partnerships so they can continue funding the development. What this creates in the long term is lots of reiteration and ultimately, more expensive development. If you aren’t paying attention to the below considerations, it may be time to!
- Who are your users?
- While this may seem like a no-brainer, we often come in contact with softwares that have no thought about the multiple psychologies of users or user maturity models
- Thus this creates learning hurdles and ultimately slows adoption down
- Getting dialed in and understanding the psychology of each user can ultimately really help guide your marketability and reduce the cost of support effort you need in place
- Have you done fair, holistic, and complete market research?
- Too often developers build and only get feedback from other developers
- Building in soiled environments can damage your infrastructure later down the road when users bring multiple different business use cases and your platform is not built for those considerations
- What is your development team’s background?
- Who is on your team? We anticipate that you choose your team for specific strengths. It is also crucial to think about their individual career backgrounds as this will inform what they believe is.
- Be realistic about the assumptions of your team. Yes, you will find industry experts. No, they will often not have all the answers, even as a team. How do you mitigate team bias and echo chambers?
- Does your software address best business practices in the industry it is serving?
- This is related to the above. Best practices in businesses aren’t always best practices. Many assume that because they haven’t seen a better way that it means it is the best way and that is not true. Same with user feedback down the line- just because their are high requests for a workflow doesn’t always indicate best practice and arguably should not be developed against.
- Is your code Open Source ?
- We love software teams that leave their code open source. We get why many teams don’t but believe leaving your code open source builds public trust, it allows for better feedback, and quicker iterations on development building stronger software by the weeks instead of years.
- Open API documentation is a close second. If you plan to publish the API, it needs to be well documented and open for developers to develop against. At a minimum, work with a data exchange team who can support some “secret APIs” to develop your internal APIs before they become publicly available. This will ensure you develop an API that makes sense to the outside world, if only just slightly more so!
Clearinity Partnerships
Our top five considerations hopefully guide your not only in your development, but also in your conversations with partnerships. We hope this article has encouraged you to reach out to those business consultants and industry leaders so you can gain critical feedback saving you time and money!
Here at Clearinity we are building a partner network that includes software developers like you.
We want to provide high level feedback and test your software in environments that it’s meant to thrive in. We also are looking forward to having our clients’ needs more readily addressed by building these critical relationships with platforms like yours. If you are interested in speaking with our partner manager and founder, click here.