Software development consulting is one of the most underrated services in the modern IT industry.
Many business owners simply don’t understand why they need such an “expensive” expert on board. We wrote this article to answer that and help you hire a software development consultant capable of bringing value to your company and project.
Understanding The Role Of A Software Development Consultant
First, we have to establish and explain some ground terms and learn the role of software consultants.
Software development consulting is a service where niche-experienced specialists advise businesses on software development and help them choose the best and most efficient software solutions, starting with basic technologies like a programming language or frameworks and ending with picking up third-party software solutions and integrations to achieve the best results.
To rephrase, a software consultant is a third-party expert on-demand who is familiar with software development processes, available technologies, and extensive tech expertise. The core benefits of such advisory are enhancing the development team’s performance, software efficiency, and final quality.
Why hire a software development consultant?
Software development consultancy is required only for businesses unfamiliar with software development. Still, this is only partly true.
Clearly, when you are new to software development, you will need an expert’s opinion on various processes to avoid some crucial mistakes. Still, even tech giants and IT veteran companies sometimes choose third-party software development and consulting services to achieve particular needs.
One of the most common cases when even experienced software development companies seek advice is integrating innovative technologies and features like artificial intelligence or blockchain. The explanation is simple: IT is rapidly changing, and new-era software solutions always emerge. So, regardless of your experience in software design and development, you will never have expertise in all software solutions and technologies.
Cooperating with a software development consulting company with proven experience in similar projects is the easiest and most efficient solution to cover demanded niche knowledge. Alternatively, businesses can hire a dedicated software development team that has worked on such projects. This team can also deliver the desired result, apart from consultation.
Nevertheless, before you hire a software development consultant, you must check their expertise. To ensure the reliability of your potential software development consultant, we created a shortlist of key qualities to look for.
Key Qualities To Look For In A Software Development Consulting Company
When you hire software consultants, you should pay attention to many factors. Still, certain soft and hard skills are essential and standard for most IT consultant levels.
For instance, even a new software consultant who is capable of self-organizing and has excellent time management and communication skills can bring even more value than a more experienced specialist without such “basic” abilities. On the other hand, people with poorly developed soft skills won’t last long enough in any industry, so it is doubtful that such examples will be met in reality.
Besides, each person’s list of valuable soft skills is always unique, and possible combinations are limitless. Thus, it will be more productive and valuable to consider them in combination with professional skills instead.
Technical expertise in software development
The first and most apparent must-have aspect to pay attention to when you hire a software consultant – is their technical expertise.
When looking for someone to consult you on software development or anything else, you need a candidate who has dealt with similar tasks and challenges. Apart from interviews, one of the easiest ways to check the technical expertise of a software development consultant is to check their portfolio and case studies.
The more projects candidates took part in – the more experience they had. Still, pay attention to the quality and complexity of performed jobs. In other words, a rich portfolio is always better than nothing, yet many projects don’t always guarantee high qualifications.
Examining their portfolios and preparing questions about each job performed for an interview is the best way to check whether candidates qualify. As a result, you can define whether it is a suitable partner during a conversation.
Proven track record in software development projects
There are two main ways to hire software consultants:
- Find individual specialists who work as freelancers and
- Find a consulting company that offers their employees a service
Working with software technology consulting firms offers several great benefits when checking a consultant’s portfolio: They offer a proven track record in projects they participated in. So, you, as a client, will be assured and provided with all required information related to the experience and expertise of the consulting specialist offered.
Still, these guarantees have their price: such cooperation will cost more due to the intermediary involvement (consulting company).
Alternatively, you can hire freelancers or look for software development consultants independently without interacting with other IT companies. This will be cheaper for you. Still, the end price is equal: you will sacrifice convenience and assurance instead.
While finding freelance consultants seems more beneficial, especially for small businesses and startups with limited resources, business owners should understand the potential risks and challenges while searching for a candidate. For example, while many freelance B2B platforms offer a certain level of assurance and guarantees, it is much harder to check the honesty of published experience.
So, if you are willing to try your luck, you must learn how to check the track record and its correctness. Once again, interviewing the candidate is one of the most efficient ways to check the actual expertise level. Still, if you are looking for a software development consultant, you may need more experience in this niche.
So, if you are totally new to the industry, we recommend working with a software technology consulting company to prioritize guarantees and avoid risks.
Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
Clearly, problem-solving and analytical skills are relatively soft skills. However, they are vital for any software development consulting services.
To make it simple, apart from knowing the insights and having the capacity to set up a highly efficient and performative working environment within the software project, as well as choosing the best software and technological solutions that will meet the business demands and requirements, software development consultants should know how to define the pitfalls and challenges and how to orchestrate and manage them on the go.
Frankly, such skills like no code ai can be trained and highly depend on the overall experience. To rephrase, each niche specialist will develop the required level of expertise by simply doing their job. So, more experienced IT consultants have more chances to develop such vital skills as problem-solving and analysis.
Nevertheless, while the experience of a hired specialist fully defines problem-solving, analytical skills also depend on technical and software-driven instruments. In other words, performing the analysis is a 50/50 job: it depends on individual software consultants and the tech stack they use to perform the analysis.
Business analysis and project management skills
Finally, software development consulting always includes business analysis and project management. The role of these approaches may vary from highly important to supplemental. Still, predicting the depth of business analysis and project management in advance takes a lot of work.
These skills are also significant markers of trustworthy partners: they can help define the exact expertise and reliability of software development and consulting specialists or agencies.
Finally, hiring consultants with such skills allows businesses to maximize IT advisory and software development consultancy services. In addition to getting a consultant to choose technologies and third-party software integrations, companies can rely on them for software development projects. For instance, this helps to ensure that offered technologies are integrated correctly.
Conclusion
To sum up, software development consulting services offer various benefits. Still, the most essential advantage of software consultancy is that it helps to:
- Define the core business needs and requirements, which highly depend on the software and technologies.
- Choose the most suited and efficient solutions to meet the business needs and demands.
- Ensure that software and technological solutions are integrated correctly.
Software development consultancy is most beneficial to startup companies and newcomers to the software market. It supplies them with software expertise and mentoring at their first steps.
However, this doesn’t mean that tech giants and software market veterans won’t benefit from software technology consulting. Such experts can advise businesses on new solutions or integrations, helping to benefit the most from innovative technologies or simply unfamiliar solutions.
The biggest challenge is finding reliable software development consultants with the required expertise. The easiest way to do so is to pay attention to crucial qualities like:
- Technical expertise
- Proven track record
- Problem-solving and analytical tools
- Business analysis and project management
Good luck with your choice!
