Be Wise About Custom Software Development

1. What is Custom Software?

Custom development of web-based, distributed and standalone applications is designed to meet organization's specific requirements and business needs. Custom software (also known as Bespoke software) is computer programs, procedures and documentation that is not targeted to the mass market (e.g. commercially available off-the-shelf software) but provides a tailored and unique business automation solution for a specific business.

Custom Software Development are carried out by expert technical teams that understand the client application requirements thoroughly, prepare architecture, develop, test and finally implement the software. Custom software development teams rely on industry-standard software development practices and rigorously test the applications to ensure defect-free delivery.

Custom application development of a business integration system provides the IT backbone for businesses and is designed in exactly with the way that you operate your business and provide you with a significant advantage over your competitors.

2. Advantages of Custom Software Development

• Custom software solutions enable you to:
  • Develop a software solution that maps your unique business processes rather than changing your business processes to conform to what a "packaged software" provides.
  • Efficient data processing and obtain customized reports matching your business requirements.
  • Automate processes the way you feel is best for your business meeting the unique needs of your business and those that you currently do manually.
  • Monitor and control your business processes the way you feel right for your business.
• Connect/integrate/interface with multiple software solutions/off-the-shelf software products that you operate providing a fully integrated IT platform across your whole business.
• User-friendly and intuitive since it is programmed the way that they are used to working.
• The software development company can add value to business by recommending alternatives, changes and improvements in your business processes especially during the requirement and design phase of the project.
• No licensing fees and can make as many copies of the software as you want or need.
• Provide flexible to upgrade over time as your business processes, requirements and practices change.

3. Disadvantages of Custom Software Development

• Significant time and effort is required to establish what you want to achieve and to find a reliable and trusted software developer that is in it for the long haul.
• Planning and specification effort is high and long project cycles can be expected.
• Up-front development costs are high and a support contact is desirable to adapt, maintain and upgrade software. Financial considerations are usually reason for deciding against custom software development.
• Make sure that you own the source code otherwise you are extremely vulnerable and entirely reliant upon the developers continuing existence and goodwill.
• The software may be unstable, unreliable and full of bugs if not developed by professional software developers following best practices in software development.

4. Is Custom Software Right for my Business?

• Having to re-enter the same or similar data into multiple software applications.
• Producing large amount of printed material, where supply of data could be substituted with electronic means.
• Sending regular notifications to your clients manually.
• Keeping your website up-to-date by hand with data obtained from software applications or documents.
• Doing tedious calculations on regular intervals to get information out of your business activities.
• Cannot find a suitable off-the-shelf alternative that satisfy most of your needs.
• Have the time and resources to devote to custom software development.
• Can afford it
• Software development costs are offset by the planned resources savings as well as potential new business.

5. Combination of Custom and Off-the-Shelf Software

If you manage to find a trusted “packaged” software solution that is a good fit for your business that satisfies most of your needs, it would be wise to evaluate if it could be used as a base. Establish how easy it would be to build onto and integrate with the off-the-shelf modules. This could be extremely beneficial to you since you are not starting from scratch and are not reinventing the wheel. It should significantly lower your overall software cost structure and drastically shorten development/testing/implementation cycles.

6. Determine Custom Software Requirements and Appoint Custom Developing Company

The custom software development lifecycle (SDLC) of a business integration system is performed in stages. The exact details and the nature and timing of deliverables produced in each stage may vary according to the organization that is performing the implementation. However, viewed at a high level, there are several broad stages that are used in any implementation of a custom application.

• Establish the Scope of Project Internally - The software development lifecycle (SDLC) starts by establishing the scope of the software development project internally within your company by having internal meetings and obtaining consensus on objectives, functionality, budget, timescale, etc.
• Meet with Software Developers - Your company then meets with different software developing companies to discuss the technologies, requirements and development strategy in detail to ensure the software company knows what you want.
• Formalize requirements definition – The software engineer/business analysts of the software companies then clean up your incomplete/contradictory user requirements and clearly define the objectives, key assumptions, business processes covered, timeline and resource constraints of the planned application.
• System/Information Engineering and Modeling - Identifying the software interfaces with other elements such as hardware infrastructure, users and other resources.
• Scope of Work document - The document produced by the software developing company is the key to the future success of the project and must be clearly understood by you to avoid future controversy. The Scope of Work document forms the baseline for what is promised and what will be developed.
• Proposal – Based on the scope of work detailed proposals including the estimations of the workload, the cost and the timeframe are submitted by the Software Companies. These are evaluated and a developer is contacted.

7. Development and Implementation of Business Integration System

• Requirement Specification - Significant time is spent to listen and study the application scope of the software, your business needs, and business process and a development blueprint (Requirement Specification) is compiled.
  
• System Design and Configuration - Systems design converts the requirements into unified design specifications that developers use to script programs. Detailed business requirements are gathered through meetings with the key stake holders, supervisors/managers and users. Who is going to use the system and how?; what data input/output of the system?; what functions should the system perform?; what is the business process logic etc. Detailed software documentation / functional specifications should be maintained for each module for future support and to maintain the software; as well as for you to understand functional, security and control features.
• Code Generation. Led by the project manager, the development team will start the software development according to the development plan and time schedule. It involves converting design specifications into executable code/programs and depending on the system a high level programming languages is chosen. Software development standards should be followed to ensure that the application is professionally developed, supportable, stable and bug free.
• Validation Business Integration System - During the validation stage, rigorous system testing is performed in a controlled test environment to ensure that all requirements identified during discovery (requirements determination) have been met by the system design. Different testing methodologies are available to unravel the bugs and system testing during the validation phase includes functional, performance and regression testing (as required).
  • Functional Testing - Ensures that all functional requirements of the system are met. A requirements matrix should be used to ensure that requirements are tested and acceptable.
  • Performance Testing - Ensures that timing requirements such as throughput, response time, and latency are met through design or optimization.
  • Regression Testing - As modifications are made to system design or configuration parameters during the validation phase, regression testing must be performed to ensue that other system functions and throughput capabilities have not been degraded.

8. Deploying and Maintenance of Business Integration System

• Deploying the business integration system - Implementation is part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and involves installing approved system components into production environments in an iterative way according to business priorities. Implementation and integration of the software into the workplace includes software deployment/connections with servers, further minor system testing, training of users and information seminars to communicate the implementation program. The objective of the deployment stage is to ensure that the developed and tested business integration system is implemented in the client production environment, optimized as required, and is production ready at the client site.
• Delivery of System - The system is delivered to you for user acceptance testing UAR (beta test deployment). On completion of UAR users are trained, the system is put into production and follow-up sessions are held with the development team.
• Maintenance and support involve making changes to hardware, software and system documentation to cope with newly discovered problems, address new user requirements, improve a system’s performance and improve security according to change management standards and procedures.

9. Issues that need to be resolved with Custom Software Development

• Who has copyright?
• Will the system be built on top of any other platform or system?
• Will the system use or depend on third-party libraries or systems?
• Who has, controls and owns the source code?
• Who collects requirements from the customer?
• Will they assist with system deployment and firewall configuration?
• How long have they been in business?
• How many developers are employed?
• What programming languages are used?
• Will any form of logging be incorporated into the software to report bugs?
  Who has copyright?
• Does custom application rely on other third-party libraries or systems?

10 Success factors for Custom Software Development

• Clearly defined project scope - stay within your project scope, timeframe and budget.
• How well the target software requirements are defined and documented - ensure complete project documentation package.
• Small to medium size companies - Do not bite off more that you can chew - rather have small successes than a big failure. Use a phased approach if the scope is large and the resources that your business can devote to requirement specification, user acceptance testing, system implementation is limited.
• Extremely high level of customer involvement to ensure an immediately usable software product at the end of our contract.
• Ensure that stability of software developing company (years in business) and that they have sufficient resources (number of analysts, project managers, developers, etc.
• Use a phased approach if the scope is large and the resources that your business can devote to requirement specification, user acceptance testing, system implementation is limited.