I can recall several times when we were approached by clients as the second, third, or fourth developer to work on the project because the previous ones didn’t have the skill (or reliability) to finish a job. This wastes time and costs thousands of dollars for nothing. How do you identify the skills needed to complete your project, and how can you ensure that the developer you choose can handle your needs?
Web development is so unique in its makeup that it is difficult to create a detailed plan for implementing a new idea without a significant amount of experience already. Here is a basic outline to follow when going through the process of choosing a developer with the right skills to get your project with as little stress and waste as possible.
1. Flesh out your idea
Once you get an idea of the general features that you will include on your site, it’s a good idea to research your features online. See what similar sites have, and make sure that you cover at least the necessary features of your type of site (e.g., eCommerce sites should have a shopping cart, product pages, search).
Learn what systems are good for creating your site, or even find websites that do some of your features the way you like as an example. You need to know if any of your features will require customization.
The goal of the research is to identify the skills needed to complete your project. What level of customization will be needed to create the features you want?
2. Get your features on paper and decide what is important to you
Create your list of features based on order of priority. Make your list with the features that are most important to you ranked higher, so you are sure to communicate what you want to developers.
It is also valuable to separate this list into major and minor features. This will ensure that major features are included in initial development and given priority in your budget. In addition, if you can’t get all your features done at first, this list will represent what can and cannot wait for future development.
Note that if the features beyond the initial development require other skills, you’ll need to make sure your developer can handle those as well.
3. Talk to developers
When you post an ad, look at what developers are saying about your list of features. Look at the solutions they recommend, if they appear to be knowledgeable when discussing your features, and if they give worthwhile advice. In order to do this, you may go back to your web research and see what you find.
Make sure they are knowledgeable with the components of your site that need to be custom. The goal of your research is to educate yourself on the skills needed to complete your project. Developers will be able to direct your search for the right skills.
4. Research their responses online
After using the responses you get from potential developers, go back to the internet and research some more. Research any solutions developers recommend using for your project.
You can gain a basic understanding of the options you have for your project, and then you can identify the skills your developer will need.
5. Choose a developer that has those skills you need
Finally, it’s time to choose a developer. The biggest advantage to your research is to be aware of the skills you will need in order to narrow the search for your developer. Once you’ve found somebody you feel meets your criteria of experience and skills, go with the developer that you are comfortable with and whose expertise you trust. After all, expertise is why you’re paying them to help you.
Web resources aren’t always good
One simple thing I want to warn you about. When researching online, blogs and forums can be deceiving. Anyone can post anything and it may not be factual. The other caution I would offer is to make sure your resources are current. There are a lot of old, inaccurate posts that appear helpful, but really stopped being so a while ago.
To illustrate this point, I searched for “Drupal vs Joomla” on Google and the top result was a blog post comparing the two. It’s informative and offers a great comparison. But it was written in 2006, and contains several inaccuracies just because things have changed so much in the past 3 years.
There will probably be more than one developer that meets your criteria for skills; keep in mind that the key element that separates these developers is customization. If you don’t need much custom work, you can go with a developer that can handle more basic configuration (and probably charge less). If you know you will need any level of customization, you should be confident that the developer you choose can handle any custom work you might need.