Five Vital Questions To Answer Before You Develop Your New IT System
A new information technology system can be one of the best things you can do for your company. It can also be one of the worst. Avoiding that second possibility is simply a matter of asking yourself – and your software developer – a handful of simple, but very important questions:
The cost of developing software may seem high initially, but if the new system makes your company more productive, increases your market share, reduces labor costs, or all three, you'll be money ahead. Look beyond the initial cost to see what long-term benefits and profit potential there could be with a new system in place.
Because technology is moving ahead so rapidly, almost certainly any software you write will eventually need to run in multiple environments. Too often when software has to be moved to a Smartphone/Mobile, a web application, or a standard Windows application, it has to be rewritten from scratch. Make sure your developer can create code that can be moved to other environments with a minimum of changes.
The high rate of turnover in many software development firms makes it very likely that more than one programmer may create or modify your software. Accurate, easy-to-understand documentation is crucial to eliminating errors, keeping costs in line, and maintaining consistency in the code if and when programmers change.
The importance of this question is also related to the likelihood of more than one programmer being involved in your software development. Standardized architecture will help minimize the cost of changes and modifications, and maintain the integrity of the software program.
Testing and debugging software takes time, and time is money in the world of software development. And the cost of testing and debugging pales in comparison to the cost of getting a system back up and running if it's crashed by a program error.