Engaging with a service firm isn’t like buying a product. It’s about hiring a set of people to do work on your behalf. Yes, the company as a whole matters, but you also need to be confident that the people there have the right set of skills for your project. Read more on Choosing the Right Software Partner, Part 2: Evaluating for Great People…
Choosing Your Team
Choosing the Right Software Development Partner (with or without an RFP), Part 1: Evaluating Longevity
Finding the right custom software development firm for your project is a tough job. Even a thorough RFP process won’t save you if you’re not looking for the right things.
Software projects are notorious for being late, over budget, and frustrating. Why? Making useful, valuable software products takes a lot more than technical know-how. Read more on Choosing the Right Software Development Partner (with or without an RFP), Part 1: Evaluating Longevity…
Facing Knowledge Asymmetry & Finding a Software Consultant
When looking for software consulting services, people unfamiliar with development often suffer from knowledge asymmetry—the situation where one party knows far more about the topic at hand than the other.
This situation causes feelings of uncertainty and fear of associated with caveat emptor (buyer beware). And the result can be a painful relationship that often has one side or the other feeling like they’re on the defensive.
Read more on Facing Knowledge Asymmetry & Finding a Software Consultant…
Creating Strong, Successful IoT Products with Holistic Development
Internet of Things devices are valuable because they bring together physical objects, apps, and the cloud. That’s also why they’re extremely difficult to build successfully. All the different pieces of an IoT system have to work seamlessly together, and they have to provide a smooth, successful user experience.
Read more on Creating Strong, Successful IoT Products with Holistic Development…
The True Cost of Hiring Your Own Developers
I recently caught up with a technology entrepreneur whose startup had succeeded in creating innovative technology. He was justly proud of what they achieved, and he’s now partnered with a much larger company to sell and support their product all over the world. One important thing he learned in their three-year run? Building a software team is not what he’s good at. Read more on The True Cost of Hiring Your Own Developers…
When to Call in the Consultants
The decision to contract with a software consulting team is an important one. Bringing in a consulting team like Atomic Object when you don’t need one can be a costly capital mistake. Understanding when to bring that team in and when to let them go is equally important. I’ve recently been using an analogy that I find especially effective in helping potential clients make that call.
Read more on When to Call in the Consultants…
When Should a Startup Hire a Software Consultant?
Atomic Object works with all sorts of companies, from technical startups to established traditional businesses to Fortune 500 companies. We engage each company differently, trying to structure the engagement to best meet the needs of the client.
Startups, in particular, have a number of cost/benefit questions to consider before engaging a consultancy like ours. Depending on the situation, working with a consultancy can be a smart move or a bad fit. Read more on When Should a Startup Hire a Software Consultant?…
Why Hire a Software Consultancy?
As any product company knows, software development can be difficult to wrangle. Huge buckets of features, short timelines, and fierce marketplace competition can make it a major challenge to handle a release in-house, prompting many companies to reach out to software consultancies for help.
Sometimes, this call for help comes a little too late, with only the threat of missing a release convincing a company to justify the cost of outsourcing the work. In this post, I’ll explain why it’s worth your while to work with a software consultancy right from the start.
Read more on Why Hire a Software Consultancy?…
Better Ideas & Better Team Fit with Pre-Project Consulting
Pre-project consulting. Sounds expensive, doesn’t it. Well… it is. But your project is worth the time investment, and Atomic is willing to pick up the consulting tab.
Getting to Know You & Your Project
When discussing your project with Atomic, you’ll meet with members of our Upfront Team — technical professionals with years of real project experience.
We’ll kick off pre-project consulting with a conversation that’s geared towards getting to know each other. We want to understand what your company does, your role in the organization, and the challenges you are facing. We also want you to be comfortable with Atomic and the our way of doing things. Read more on Better Ideas & Better Team Fit with Pre-Project Consulting…
3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ask Us to Sign your NDA
Nondisclosure agreements are legal contracts that limit one or both parties from disclosing information covered by the NDA. They can be used to protect trade secrets, business plans, customer lists, sources — in short, pretty much any aspect of business. They tend to be short and are readily understandable by non-lawyers.
You may be surprised to find that Atomic Object usually doesn’t sign NDAs at the first stage of a potential relationship. We don’t do this entirely from our self-interest, we just think that you don’t really need one, and you’re better off without one. Read more on 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ask Us to Sign your NDA…