What Separates the Great From the Good in Today’s Software Development World?

Practice shows that while many IT companies are focusing on both boosting their IT capacity and know-how and increasing process efficiency, the end-user is somehow usually left on the sidelines. How and, most importantly, why does this happen? 

Here’s my take on the ever-growing competition amongst tailored-software companies and what actually separates the great from the good.

The Holy Basics of Communication

1. Level your vocabulary so that the client can truly understand you.

Have you ever been in a room with a topic-passionate person and had no clue what one sentence had to do with another? Discussing IT products can lead to this situation more often than you’d think. It's a good reminder for all of the specialists out there to make sure that the room can understand you. A "click" in both tone and lingo is often an underestimated factor in client satisfaction and improved overall business results.

2. Keep your clients in the loop during progress and setbacks.

Custom software projects can sometimes go sideways, require additional resources and/or functionalities (additional internal wishes, customer demands, you name it…). To complete a project successfully, you and your client need to have trust in each other. To establish that: communicate, communicate, and communicate things that are going great as well as the ones that have taken unexpected turns.

3. Step into your client's shoes, establish what is important for them, their stakeholders and communicate that to your internal team accordingly. 

A priority list always exists in terms of functionality as well as timelines. After all, software is a people-business. The holy basics are key to minimizing the risks through trusted partnership and ease of communication.

ROI & Business First

Take advantage of the Minimum Viable Product (hereafter: MVP) concept. Look for the MVP point where ROI starts to decline and all the nice-to-have features simply implode the cost. Vocabulary-wise, this may seem too basic to be shared. However, this is the #1 objective to discuss with your client, who is already close to drowning in visions way beyond useful functionality. Once you establish the goals in a tangible version, you're off to a good start.

I’m not saying "business first" lightly. Too often, I hear clients say: "Let me guess, you're gonna say that everything's crap and we need to rewrite the whole thing." Thinking about software from the business perspective means building a solid roadmap focused on the following:

• system performance during max loads;
• upkeep costs;
• <and perhaps most importantly> scalability for whatever may come in the future.

 If planned out properly, solid architectures can easily stand the test of time and future technology.

Putting a Spotlight on the Client vs. Drawing Roadmaps and Sharing Expertise

Software companies often feature a solid tech stack and get dazzled by the ample capabilities that come with it. Unfortunately, this often translates to phrases like "just tell us what you need, we can do whatever you like". This approach leads to clients getting cold feet. After all, they come to you looking for expertise and solid advice, right?

On the contrary, by sharing success stories, suggesting strategies, and interpreting the client's vision, spark a discussion by putting the spotlight on common understanding. Before you know, a conversation starts unfolding and gives both sides food for thought and next steps together.

To sum things up, while competent in IT, suppliers tend to forget to focus on communication. While everybody's looking for a partner which will walk the talk; it's the clarity of the talk that wins the hearts and minds of the clients.

I have the pleasure to work at FrontIT, where we strive to be all of these things and even more. As always, happy to have a chat whether it's IT partnership or thoughts on the article!