Like purchasing a house, there are a number of other hidden costs that you will come across when you are outsourcing software development. These are costs that are not included in the original purchase price. When buying a house you need to consider stamp duty, legal fees, mortgage fees, and other extras. Today’s article covers some of the major hidden fees when embarking on software outsourcing - particularly for first time purchasers.
Contract consultant fees
If you are inexperienced in outsourcing software projects, then what may look perfectly fine to you in a contract for development may fall far short of what your expectations are in the end (or even a few weeks or months into the contract). You can check through Forrester’s Software Contract Review Checklist yourself beforehand to help guide contract negotiations.
However, when looking over a software development contract or agreement, it is important to have someone knowledgeable on your side.
To avoid a mismatch of expectations, this means engaging the services of an outside consultant to help go over the contract for you. Typically, this could be a software architect or consultancy firm. These people will be able to spot the holes in your contract agreement and continue negotiations until both parties are happy. An advocate in your corner will be critical for risk mitigation in the pre-development phase, and can also come in to assess whether your project is on track later down the line.
Even if you aren’t choosing CodeFirst for your software outsourcing, we would be happy to help out in determining whether another software development house is doing the right thing in your contract negotiations.
Ongoing maintenance
Software will always require ongoing maintenance, whether it’s bug fixing, or patching to ensure it isn’t vulnerable to new cyber attacks . Many people also find they’d like extra functionality built onto custom software later on down the line. While the Agile approach can help bring these maintenance tasks into the initial development lifecycle, it won’t ever be able to capture all of them. Like a house, software too requires maintenance over the years.
Even companies who buy a non-custom product like Salesforce, which is an out-of-the-box software with plenty of existing integrations, may find they need extra custom functionality built on top.
Ongoing support
Depending on how complex your software is, how good the documentation and training is, and how user friendly it is, you may require ongoing support. This may be in the form of call centre assistance or a ticketing-type system.
This type of support from your software provider will always cost money. It is better to have great user-friendliness, documentation, and training all built in as part of the software (and contract) initially. The less ongoing on-demand support required from your users, the better. The more money you’ll save and the less frustrated your users will be.
A new software house taking over the project
Unfortunately, there are plenty of custom outsourced software projects that end up going off the rails. Clients engaging software outsoucing companies will eventually tire of an incompetent or slow provider. In these cases, you may expect that handing over the reins to a better software house will be a good idea.
However mid-way project handovers are extremely difficult, with many outsourcing companies simply advising that you should start all over again. This is particularly true when the overall architecture of a project is the main issue.
Whether starting again, or a new development house building on the existing project, this can be a very expensive exercise.
Managing the hidden costs of software outsourcing
A professional, reliable, and reputable software outsourcing provider will ensure that you are aware of the hidden costs before embarking on any project. They will try and manage expectations and develop software that minimises any ongoing and hidden costs.
While you will still need small changes like patching along the way, and perhaps calls to fix something every now and again, this shouldn’t be a huge, costly ongoing exercise.
Trust CodeFirst with your software outsourcing projects. We know how to avoid the pitfalls that plague software development as we have years of experience creating bespoke software to please our clients. Get in touch today to learn how we can help with your project.