It can be difficult for managers to determine how much they should spend on a mobile initiative. The price of a project is an important factor in every business case and determines the ROI of a mobile investment. An hourly rate is just an indication, but is all too often unrelated to the skills or knowledge of developers.
Many app developers create beautiful apps, but lack the expertise to make the app future proof and maintenance friendly; two important factors in the longer term total cost of ownership. Experience in integrating data backends, the APIs, is another aspect to pay attention to. Often an API needs to serve multiple mobile platforms and needs to connect to third party services as well. And what about the performance and security of an app? How do you tackle maintenance and upgrades once the app and API are live?
How long does it take to build an app or an HTML5 site? A developer can charge € 50,- per hour, but need three hours to write a piece of code. Another developer charges € 100,– per hour but writes the same code in an hour, with a much higher quality.
Egeniq understands that this is something that companies struggle with, and makes an effort to tackle these issues together with our customers. The answer to the questions above is full transparency! Let’s look at how we typically achieve this.
Estimates
Out transparency is visible right from the bid process. we always create detailed estimates for a project, our rates are well thought through, so you are not just at the mercy of a sales executive. We always provide our project estimates for review.
Skills
Openness in skills: we are brilliant engineers, but no graphical designers! We work together with renowned interaction and graphical designers, who create great user experiences, in close cooperation with our engineers. Egeniq often works ‘under the hood’ of a project, and we leave esthetics and interaction design to the experts. That’s not a weakness, because we are convinced that focusing on the things we are good at and cooperating with brilliant minds in other fields leads to great results.
Development Methodology
We typically work via an agile/scrum approach. Our clients are involved directly in the development process. Required features are divided into short development phases, called ‘sprints’. After each sprint we expect solid feedback from our client, which we take into account for the next sprint. This allows the client to control the project, which ultimately means he gets a product that matches his expectations, is delivered on time, within budget and with the right quality level. We realize that throughout a project a client may have a reason to make changes in the requirements, for example when changing market circumstances provide new insights. We accept that this is a fact of life, and embrace this with our ‘design for change’ approach.
Continuous Integration
Using a process called ‘Continuous Integration’ we allow our customers to track our progress throughout the project. We provide a download link that at any moment installs the latest ‘build’ of the app. With this tool we allow our clients to keep an eye on progress whenever they choose.
Ownership
If a client asks Egeniq to build an app, he will become the owner of the app and will get a copy of the app’s source code. We also transfer intellectual property rights to the client. Furthermore, an app will always be submitted to the app stores with the client’s account and name, to avoid vendor lock.
When a project is completed the client can evaluate our performance and decides whether or not maintenance of the app (in the form of a Service Level Agreement) and future versions will be granted to Egeniq. We appreciate if our customers choose our services based on our performance, and not because contracts oblige them.
Feel free to contact us for more information! And have a look at our clients list to see some of the clients we have developed apps for.