BUYER’S GUIDE

TO HIRING AN

APP
DEVELOPMENT

TEAM by

The Ultimate Guide for Non-Technical

Founders Hiring an App Development Firm

As seen on:
Appster

Introduction

To succeed in launching a startup, there are three

key factors that come into play. Cost, timing and the
product itself.

A mistake that most non-technical founders make

is that they end up hiring the wrong team due to
their lack of technical knowledge.

They are unable to assess the risk in a project and

ultimate pick a team that is not able to properly
execute on their idea.

We’ve seen many founders fail and waste 100s of

thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars in the
process.

Our goal in writing this brief guide is to introduce

you to the things that REALLY matter when hiring
software developers.

In the following pages, we’ll show you what the

world of app development looks like and how to
choose the right partner.

You’ll be armed with the right knowledge to pick

the perfect developer for your project.

GOOD LUCK!

Josiah & Mark, Appster co-founders

 Appster

The Big Picture

When evaluating and vetting your software

development partner, there are a few things to look at.

While there are tons of developers competing for your business, there aren’t that many new
products one can consider great. Most, in fact, are market failures.

When a product fails, the reason for it typically falls into one of the following categories: poor
execution, failure to solve a problem, failure to ‘hook’ and retain users, lack of a product market
fit, and usability and quality issues.

Your developers have direct impacts on every one of these reasons. So, vetting your
development company is incredibly important. When doing so, there are a few areas of
competence to look at.

Methodology Design Process Development Process

The right approach to product
development can save you the
time, money and help you need
to build a product that can
actually succeed in the market.
Design is how you solve users’
problems and communicate the
features of an app. Thus, it’s
critical to look at your
developer’s design process.
To build successful products
repeatedly, you need an
established process. What
process your dev follows
determines your product’s
chance to succeed.

Team Cost, Location, etc. Credentials

Great products are built by
great teams. A good company
will offer an experienced team
with all the key members.
Onshore vs. offshore. Where
your developer is based affects
not only pricing but also the
service you’ll get too.
A track record plays a big role.
And big name clients aren’t all.
Diving deeper in your due
diligence is paramount to
making the right choice.

2.
 Appster

Make Something People Want

Paul Graham, Y Combinator

1. Methodology
Some companies only care about building whatever
the specs are. In rare cases, it might be a good thing,
but the company you want to work with is the one
who cares about building a commercially successful
product.
A good developer isn’t afraid to say no to a client.
They care about building products that succeed and
will likely tell you to get rid of some features so they
can get your product built faster and on the market
sooner.

That requires a completely different approach and
methodology. While this varies from developer to
developer, those who build successful products
have one thing in common: they place customer
feedback over your specs.
Traditional “Methodology”
Dreams, Guesstimates Let’s pray it works
IDEA BUILD
Months of work, feature rich,
expensive product
They understand that 99% of ideas fail and that,
ultimately, it’s the market that decides what products
succeed. Therefore, they’ll want to get some kind of
version in the hands of the user as soon as possible.
Because there are numerous things that can be
wrong with your business idea, a good developer will
build several versions of your product to uncover
those variables. They may include:
➡ Sketches: Sketches are hand drawings on a piece of
paper to visualize ideas. They’re used for
LAUNCH
brainstorming and figuring out how to go about
designing and developing an idea into a product.
➡ Wireframes: These are simple structures of a design
scheme that answer critical UX, layout and feature set
questions before you get to the next steps.

➡ Mock-ups: A mock-up is a visual representation of an

Bad developers will try to sell you on building a
feature-rich, complex product that will take a lot of
time and money to build.This road leads you to
spend all your resources on your first shot with
minimal chance to succeed, making the developer
rich in the process.
app that includes branding, logo, typography, color
scheme and so on.
➡ Proof of Concept (POC): Proof of concepts are small
internal projects that verify something (a feature or
technology) can be built. It doesn’t care about the
market or usability.

➡ Prototypes: While POCs validate something can be

Lean/Agile Approach done, prototypes show how it will be done. They’re
interactive representations of the product, not market
ready yet. The point is to capture the user flows and
Iterate BUILD Fast and cheap eliminate errors.

IDEA LAUNCH ➡ Minimum Viable Product (MVP): MVP is a market-

ready product that will validate your original business
Eliminate risk, hypothesis. It’s basically a core feature set designed
improve on LEARN Launch early to get feedback from the actual market.
feedback
➡ Product: There’s never a final version of a product,
but after one (or a few) successful MVPs, you’ll get to
For a startup, it is absolutely important to work with an Agile a version that users love and are willing to pay for,
developer, to allow changes and adjustments based on market and shows some serious growth potential.
feedback and new learnings

3.
 Appster
To design is to plan, to order, to
relate, and to control.
2. Design Process
Most people confuse design with art. The difference
is that design is functional. It solves a problem and
fulfills a certain function.
In other words, a pretty app is not the same as a
well-designed app. And while in art you have many
different styles and movements, in design the
functionality rules over the style.
To get a good understanding of what good design
is, read the10 Commandments of Good Design by
Dieter Rams. This will help you better evaluate your
app developer’s past work and get a good idea of
what questions to ask.
A solid design process involves a lot of
brainstorming, research, testing and validating of
the formed hypotheses. It studies the market, the
competition, the user behavior and so on.
Design Sprint
BUILD
Design 2
IDEAS 1 3 LAUNCH
4
LEARN
A good app developer will have a solid design
process in place. While the process may vary, every
reliable design process involves the same elements.
In practice, that means it’s an iterative process with
the objective being to understand the product and
the market, validate initial assumptions, and remove
variables, such as potential features users don’t have
a need for.
Emil Ruder
The best industry practices are influenced by
methodologies such as Agile, Design Thinking at
IDEO and the Stanford D.School’s behavior science
and business strategy.
As an example, we’ll use Appster’s own
VentureSprint, a methodology we employ to
prototype apps and get ready for development.
A sprint is a process that lasts 2-5 days and aims to
answer critical questions about the MVP and create
a setup for development.
It involves all the key stakeholders (entrepreneur/
client, product manager, designers, etc.) and follows
a six-step process of Design Thinking. Here are the
objectives of a typical sprint:
Reduce Costs: The purpose is to prevent
a. failure by ‘failing’ fast and cheap in a
controlled environment (e.g. user testing
and interviews) and to cut out unnecessary
features.
Product Strategy: Use knowledge gained
b. from the market research, user interviews,
brainstorming sessions and prototyping, the
team comes up with an initial strategy so
everyone is aligned in the following sprints.
Speed: Get an in-depth understanding of
c. the idea in the shortest time possible. Doing
the market research and prototyping and
MVP.  With new products, time is critical, so
you don’t want to waste it.
Limit the Market Risk: Identify a product’s
d. weaknesses so the team doesn’t spend time
on building something users won’t be
willing to download or pay for.
4.
 Appster

Anatomy of a Typical Appster VentureSprint™

SPRINT #2: Product SPRINT #3: Technical Risk,

SPRINT #1: Product & SPRINT #4: Final Iteration
Documentation & Audit & Architecture
Strategy & Sign-off
Roadmap Design

Technical specialists get

Structured discussions Sketch ideas, emphasizes
involved and workout the
about the product and critical thinking over artistry.
proof-of-concept i.e. that the
market strategy, mapping Test ideas, then turn winning Final iteration, preparations
solution can be built and
the challenge, discussions sketches into a storyboard: a for the development phase.
what will it involve
with the experts and key step-by-step plan for your
(technology, architecture,
stakeholders. prototype.
etc.)

SPRINT #1 SPRINT #2 SPRINT #3 SPRINT #4

Product & Strategy

Product Documentation & Roadmap

Technical Audit, etc.

Final Iteration

3 Weeks

Appster’s own Design Process

5.
 Appster
First, solve the problem. Then,
3. Development Process
The two predominant software development
methodologies today are called Waterfall and Agile.
They’re both viable alternatives, depending on the
project you’re working on.
➡ Waterfall: The Waterfall model is one in which each
phase of a product’s life cycle takes place in sequence,
so that progress flows steadily downwards through
these phases like a waterfall.
➡ Agile: Agile takes an iterative approach to software
development. Instead of handling all the planning
upfront, Agile focuses on being lean and producing
minimum viable products (MVPs) over set periods of
time while improving with each iteration.
Waterfall believes that change is costly and,
therefore, should be minimized. Agile, on the other
hand, believes change is inevitable and should be
made cheap (fail fast, fail cheap).
Waterfall Development
REQUIREMENTS
DESIGN
DEVELOPMENT
LAUNCH: SURPRISE
If you’re a company like Walmart and you’re building
some internal software, Waterfall may be the way to
go. However, if you’re building an innovative
product, you’ll have to accept that change is
inevitable and it’s safe to say Agile is the only logical
option.
In other words, if you’re a startup, you want to work
with a developer that follows Agile. Here’s what it is
all about.
write the code.
John Johnson
Agile was born in 2001 with the simple objective to
build better software. You can (and should) read the
original manifesto here, with its 12 core principles
here.
In practice, Agile is about building products
iteratively, shipping fast and often to get a feedback,
and using feedback to make improvements. It aims
to eliminate all the unknown variables that may lead
to failure before the product is launched.
As a result, it saves the client’s time and money, and
dramatically improves their product’s chance to
succeed in the market.
There are several implementations of Agile
methodology. The most popular in software
development is SCRUM framework. It follows these
steps:
Initiation: At this stage, key roles and
stakeholders are identified, and a product
a. backlog is created. This backlog consists of
product features that should be implemented
during the sprint, ranked by importance.
Planning: Includes sprint preparations, time
b. and cost estimates and sprint backlog
creation.
Sprint: The actual execution of a sprint. A
board, usually kanban style or a software like
c. JIRA, is used to track tasks. Daily standup
meetings are held to keep things on the right
track.
Testing and Product Demo: The result of
d. every sprint is product demonstration. Before
that, an intense QA testing takes place.
Retrospective and Next Sprint Planning:
Results and the ways to improve the
e.
development process on the next sprint are
discussed and determined here.
6.
 Appster

Agile Development (SCRUM)

Daily SCRUM
Meeting

SPRINT

Product Sprint Sprint Shippable

Backlog Planning Backlog Increment

Agile is quite synergistic with lean methodology. It
takes the process further by shipping the product
(MVP) and getting it to the hands of customer so you
get the feedback that matters the most, as
customers determine the commercial success.
Testing is a key part of delivering high-quality
products. While most testing should happen in the
hands of users, there are several types of testing that
should occur during each sprint. They include:

Lean methodology matters, as when building

something innovative it’s impossible to reliably
predict the product/market fit. It’s also about
building the right kind of MVP so you not only build
products fast but build the right kind of products
➡ Functional Testing: Test to ensure the feature works
as desired.
➡ Usability Testing: Ensures the feature is user-
friendly and is intuitive.

fast and cheap. ➡ Performance Testing: Designed to ensure the app

is fast. It’s more important in the later sprints but
should be kept in mind.
Waterfall vs, Agile vs. Lean
➡ Fit and Finish Testing: Make sure everything
corresponds with initial designs and that the vision is
Waterfall
implemented properly.

➡ Regression Testing: Just because the feature from a

Agile
previous sprint was tested already, it doesn’t mean it
works the same. Regression testing ensures it does.
Lean
➡ Device-Specific Testing: Ensures the app works the
same on the many devices available today (e.g.
Android fragmentation).
Development Shipping Market ➡ Acceptance Testing: Testing performed by the
client to ensures it meets their expectations.

7.
 Appster

Architectural Process

When it comes to the development process, it’s also a responsible choice to have a deeper look into the
developer’s architectural process. The main reason is that’s where the performance and security come from,
so they should know what they’re talking about. Most notably, you want to discuss the following areas:

➡ Proof of Concept (PoC): That means the process to
validate the technical feasibility of the design/
solution and mitigate any gaps/risks.
➡ Architecture design: Do they follow industry
standard best practices like TOGAF and produce the
following artifacts - Conceptual Solution/Application
Architecture, Logical Technology Integration
Architecture, Security Architecture and Physical
Infrastructure Architecture, and so on?
➡ Performance and Scalability: Is the architecture
scalable from both an application architecture and
physical infrastructure perspective? What does their
performance testing plan look like?
➡ Continuous Integration (CI) and Automated and
Manual Code Review: The manual code review is to
ensure code written matches best industry practices,
security and performance guidelines and
benchmarks.

➡ Security: How do they address/reduce security risks ➡ Physical Infrastructure: Includes infrastructure
and vulnerabilities? Does the developer cover roadmap and business case, platform design,
OWASP vulnerabilities, perform security testing using disaster recovery design, and cloud infrastructure
Zap Proxy and VisualCodeGrepper, and so on? design.

Security Reference Architecture

Data Identity,
Security Infrastructure Access
Protection Management

Secure data storage. Access control, port blocking, Role based

Encrypt all sensitive data. patch management, etc. authentification

Transport
Security Application Compliance,
Security Governance, Risk

SSL based communication, Secure coding practices, logging e.g. HIPAA compliance, PCI
data encryption, etc. control, threat reporting, etc. compliance.

8.
 Appster
A great team finds a way to win
4. Team
Probably the greatest value of hiring a software
development firm comes from having an
experienced, established team work on your project.
When building an MVP, this can save you months of
hiring and costs related with salaries. But not all
teams are equal, and, in some cases, there is no
team at all.
Hiring a company that only provides you with
developers means you’ll have to hire external
designers, a UX company and so on, and these
teams, being new to each other, will have to find a
consensus on a daily basis.
A solid team is like a well-oiled machine with
everything in the right place and working together
seamlessly. Here’s what such a team looks like:
DNA of a Great Team
Business/
Great Team
Product
Design Technology
Vince Lombardi
➡ Design Team: This includes UX designers who
will work on building interfaces and making
sure the app is intuitive and loved by users.
Graphic designers who take care of making it
look great, and someone like a creative director
to provide direction and oversee the entire
project, including creating the brand book.
➡ Developers: Front and backend developers,
QA engineers, architects, security specialists,
data scientists and so on. Depending on what
the project requires.
➡ Product Manager: Product managers are
specialists working at the intersection of design,
technology, marketing and business strategy.
Their job is to push the project forward, make
sure everyone sticks to the deadlines and
budget, and provide the direction for building a
commercially successful application.
➡ Other Stakeholders: This can be an account
manager that takes care of keeping the client
happy and informed, company management,
admin people, marketing and so on.
Overall, the standard for top teams in the tech world
is the mix of well-aligned technologists, designers
and business/product people who know what
they’re doing.
However, the most important thing to verify is the
company’s hiring process. Best technical talent is
extremely scarce at the moment.
Top developers and designers are very selective
about who they work for, so you should absolutely
asses the company’s culture and hiring process.
Each company has a different culture and hiring
process. At Appster, for example, we’re known for
interviews that can last up to 22 hours.
9.
 Appster
Cost is more important than quality but
quality is the best way to reduce cost.
5. Cost & Location
WWhen finding the right software development
company, a few more things come into play.
Location, cost and tech/platform focus are the the
main ones to look at.
Depending on the character of your project, a factor
like location can make a big difference to your
business objectives. In general, you can divide your
options into two categories:
➡ Onshore: Onshore companies are those that are
based in your home country. That means face-to-face
collaboration, personal approach, same time zone.
➡ Offshore: These are companies based outside your
country in different time zones, usually East Europe,
Asia, etc. That means less control and more difficult
communication but probably better rates.
Cost is probably one of the top deciding factors that
most clients/entrepreneurs care about the most. The
price you’ll pay directly relates to where your
developer is based.
Obviously, there’s always a trade-off between the
price and the quality you get. But it all depends on
what your needs are.
Difference for a US based client
ONSHORE
OFFSHORE
Genichi Taguchi
If you’re an established company with your own
CTO to supervise and only need some offshore help
with a feature or so, getting it built cheap is
preferable.
However, let’s say you’re an entrepreneur launching
a company and you’re investing $150,000 seed
capital into it. In this case, you may want to be
careful, as saving $20k by going with someone
cheaper may result in the loss of the other $130k if
your project ends up a failure.
A big thing to consider about location is that there
are places like NYC, London, and SF with dominant
tech hubs, where it’s all happening.
Local community matters a lot. In other words, a
highly respected company in a competitive place
like NYC will probably beat most companies based
anywhere else, in terms of skill and creativity.
So, as previously stated, the pros and cons vary. It’s
hard to get the best of both worlds. Some
companies, however, have multiple offices around
the globe and international teams, which often lead
to a great advantage.
OFFSHORE
10.
 Appster

You can't buy good reputation;

you must earn it
6. Credentials Harvey MacKay

Lastly, you want to be sure you’ve made the right

decision. That’s where checking the track record and
credentials comes in.

Many companies pride themselves with displayed

logos of past clients and media mentions. That,
however, is not enough. If you want to be thorough,
you must do your due diligence in the following
areas:

➡ Past Clients: Past clients doesn’t just mean big

names. Find out who they worked with, and ask for
testimonials and reviews. Get contact details and
reach out to those whose projects were most similar
to yours, and ask for references.

➡ Portfolio: Have a look at their past projects. Not only

quality but also how successful they’ve become as
products. See where they are now. Most importantly,
have a close look at the technologies they’ve used
and whether the type of projects they’ve worked on
are related to your market/idea.

➡ Team: Of course you want to meet the team,

interview them and find out about their experience,
domains of expertise and track record, but take a
look at their portfolios too and what their reputation
is. A great designer/agency will most likely have a
solid portfolio on Dribbble.

11.
Appster

Thank You!

Want to work with Appster?

Talk with us!

USA:

AppsterHQ.com

Call: 844 2777 837

Australia:

Appster.com.au

Call: 1800 709 291

This guide is published by Appster (Pty) Ltd. Although the greatest care has been taken
in the preparation and compilation of this material. No liability or responsibility of any
kind (to extent permitted by law), including responsibility for negligence is accepted by
Appster (Pty) Ltd, its servants or agents.

All information gathered is believed correct at November 2017. All corrections should be
sent to Appster (Pty) Ltd for future editions.