All Pros and Cons of Software Product Development

Software product development is one of the most in-demand services in the modern IT industry.

It includes countless services and processes that are beneficial for different businesses. For instance, new software product development on demand offers a customized and personalized software solution to satisfy business needs and demands.

Still, end to end product development is not the only popular service offered by IT companies. Not to mention all the benefits and prosperities bespoke software product development offers.

To simplify the process of making a proper choice, we gathered all the pros and cons of software product development in this article.

Software Product Development Services Explained

Before discussing the advantages of software product development, let’s briefly define what it can include.

Long story short, software product development is the process of designing and building software solutions that serve certain business needs. However, it includes not only end-to-end development from scratch. Software product development services contain:

• Creating a full-fledged software application
• Helping to scale the existing software
• Designing and integrating new features
• Optimizing software systems
• Migrating to cloud
• Quality assurance and testing on demand

The above list is still limited and mainly includes the most common solutions. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that software product development is designed not only for startups or small businesses with no experience in software development.

For example, software outsourcing is a viral approach even among IT giants and enterprise-level companies. The reason is simple: hiring a dedicated team is commonly faster, easier, and cheaper than finding developers for in-house teams. Besides, it is an excellent solution for projects that require very niche or rare technology and software expertise.

However, these are just the most well-known and basic advantages of software product development.

Pros of Software Product Development

Software development is not always about hiring third parties and delegating them to the development process. It is commonly maintained by companies on-premises, i.e., without engaging outsiders.

Therefore, the list of software development pros and cons will contain general advantages and challenges, regardless of the software product development type you chose or the development cooperation approach. To rephrase, let’s discuss the benefits of software solutions for your business.

The main advantages of software product development for your business include:

• Online presence and bigger audience reach for business
• Better scalability and flexibility for your business growth
• Optimized and automated business processes
• Enhanced services and unique features raise your competition
• Improved customer and user experience
• Access to more business operations and complex tasks

Scalability and Flexibility for Business Growth

The vital reason for the popularity of various software solutions is their enhanced capabilities and services, as well as overall flexibility: you can always design and develop a service for any specific need.

In a nutshell, modern businesses MUST use various software solutions to succeed. It can include Software-as-a-Service solutions for process management, data mining and analysis, or other business-related aspects. The software helps to improve and handle countless undergoing processes and services. Besides, such solutions are already used by most companies, making them more competitive than traditional businesses that operate manually.

Aside from management software, businesses can build their applications to boost their online presence and provide customers with unique solutions and offers, making it easier to scale and grow.

Finally, integrating software solutions helps businesses better adjust to market trends and customer demands. For example, when you have your own software application, you can gather more data about your target audience and learn its behavior, needs, or preferences. To rephrase, software solutions help businesses become more flexible and meet market demands.

Optimized Business Processes

Once again, integrating or building software products significantly boosts the efficiency of your business operations and helps to optimize them.

Software solutions can help streamline and automate many operations, in addition to offering useful tools and services like advanced data mining and analysis or providing customers with user-friendly applications.

For example, many business processes require routine procedures commonly performed manually. However, custom software product integration can automate them, saving time and effort and also avoiding mistakes or human factors.

Competitive Advantage through Unique Features

Once again, software solutions help businesses expand their services and offer new or unique solutions.

Therefore, developing a software product makes companies more competitive in the market. It helps them better manage and maintain business processes and provides their customers with better experiences and services. Moreover, having business-oriented software gives access to insights and advanced user analysis.

So, companies with software solutions have a much deeper and informed understanding of the client’s needs and demands. Combined with a better online presence, this creates true prosperity for further business scaling.

Before scaling your business, you should ensure that you have efficient software under the hood: increasing online presence and streamlining processes using various code-based solutions is the first step to improving your business.

Reliable Product Support and Maintenance

One of the software product development best practices is finding a reliable technology partner.

To cut a long story short, hiring an IT company and delegating the software development, support, and maintenance allows to:

• Reduce software expenses by hiring dedicated developers from Ukraine or other popular outsourcing destinations.
• Save time required to find demanded software product developers, check their background and expertise, interview, etc.
• Easily find experts with a very unique set of skills or technology expertise.
• Concentrate on core business operations and management by delegating software-related aspects to tech partners.

If you hire a proper outsourced software development company, you will benefit much more than maintaining your team, at least at the beginning of your software product integration. We also recommend choosing custom software development over conventional apps or integrating SaaS solutions.

End-to-End Implementation

Designing and developing a bespoke software product covers countless aspects and processes.

Cooperation with software companies can happen in multiple ways. Still, end to end product development is the most beneficial and proper approach. Choosing end-to-end software implementation gives your business more flexibility and certainty.

Finding and hiring a software product developer capable of building an app from scratch makes it much easier to plan the development and execution, avoid risks, and accurately estimate a project's scale and budget.

End to end product development seems complex and expensive. However, multiple methods exist to fit a limited budget and project terms. For instance, one of the most popular methodologies for developing a software product is a minimum viable product, or simply MVP.

MVP development aims to reduce development time and expenses by building the most basic version of a desired app. Simply put, in terms of MVP projects, you must postpone the implementation of various extra features and services. You aim to define and integrate only the most essential functional features first.

As a result, you can noticeably cut the budget and roadmap, saving time and resources to ensure the core application's efficiency. Eventually, after delivering the application, your team can analyze user behavior and learn more about the target audience's demands and requirements, making creating a more user-oriented and competitive application easier.

Seamless Integration with Existing Systems

Another significant advantage of new software product development is its flexibility and customization.

Developing a new software product means starting from scratch. On the one hand, it brings many challenges. Yet, it also has no limitations in terms of planning. Sometimes, developing new software is much easier than adjusting and redesigning an existing solution, especially regarding compatibility with other existing systems.

So, building software products from scratch makes it easier to get the most out of them by planning and implementing scaling and compatibility options and using more advanced and innovative solutions and technologies.

Complete Control Over the Development Process

Eventually, a bespoke software product is a unique solution on demand, i.e., the business company owns it.

While SaaS or other ready-made solutions are distributed as a service, the client maintains custom-made software. On the one hand, this assumes additional spending for support, maintenance, and upgrades. Still, having complete control over an app also gives the business more flexibility and options.

For instance, having complete control over technology makes it possible to scale or upgrade your IT system whenever possible: you have direct access to code, so you can operate and change an app, whatever you want. This gives more abilities to compete. Plus, it becomes easier to integrate desired features and services or implement new innovative technologies as fast as possible.

Moreover, it highly simplifies many code-related processes. To illustrate, even QA software testing in such cases becomes more urgent and efficient:

While SaaS allows only reporting issues and bugs, making you wait until their resolution, maintaining your software product enables you to fix the bugs immediately.

Cons of Software Product Development

Despite all the advantages of new software product development, it is also accompanied by some challenges worth considering before starting your project.

High Initial and Ongoing Costs

First, developing a new software product is always more expensive than using a ready-made solution.

Nevertheless, this statement is only partly true. Developing a software product requires a high initial budget and certain costs for further software maintenance after product delivery. Still, from a long-term perspective, creating and maintaining software is much cheaper than using SaaS. Besides, it is cheaper for big businesses or companies that rapidly scale.

So, on the one hand, it requires having a big budget at the start, which can be challenging for startups or small businesses. On the flip side, however, it is more affordable in the long run, especially if you plan to scale your business and upgrade software.

Long and Time-Consuming Development Process

New software product development is a complex and resource-intensive task regadless of project specifics.

Even the most basic MVP development will require at least a few months to implement. This seems like an eternity compared to ready-made software integrations, which take a maximum of a few weeks to integrate, adapt, and learn.

Also, don’t forget that software does not bring value or income while under development. This drawback of developing a software product is one of the rare challenges that other benefits can’t compensate for: while most software development pros and cons balance each other, certain practices, like MVP creation, can reduce development time.

Nonetheless, any development project demands more time and effort than ready-made solutions. This is a deal-breaker for some urgent cases that require immediate solutions. In such circumstances, you should use SaaS and postpone bespoke development.

Managing the Complexity of Custom Software Projects

Apart from appropriate tech expertise, building software products demands specific management skills. Without a proper project manager, your development might face more difficulties or even collapse.

So, it is worth adding additional expenses for qualified project management to overall development costs. Fortunately, many experienced companies like Incora include project management in custom software product development services, simplifying the management process and ensuring its efficiency. They offer a full-fledged software development lifecycle with barely any client responsibilities.

Risk of Project Failure and Unrealized Expectations

Sadly, we must also mention that not all projects are destined for success.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to predict potential failure until it is faced. Thus, it is better to be prepared even for such undesired outcomes. Many development methods and approaches can help to avoid unwanted risks or reduce potential failure. For example, MVP development is a great way to spend minimum time and resources as well as avoid planning mistakes.

However, even building a minimum viable product can’t guarantee 100% success; it only helps to reduce potential losses and avoid certain mistakes or risks.

How to Mitigate the Challenges of Software Product Development

Knowing the most crucial drawbacks of developing a software product, you might ask: “So, how to mitigate or even avoid them?” To do so, we offer to apply some of the best modern practices.

Shortening Development Time Through Agile and Iterative Approaches

First of all, you need to shorten your development time.

Cutting the time for software creation helps you save costs and operate within a limited budget. To simplify it, development time directly impacts two important factors:

1. Developers’ salaries (cost per hour)
2. Product delivery (no income during development)

If you manage to shorten the development to delivery period, you can start monetizing and making profits from your software app. Moreover, most development teams are paid for working hours. As a result, the shorter the development is, the less you must pay to developers.

However, be ready to spend some money optimizing your development: it is impossible to cut half of the functionality. The best way to find an optimal approach to developing software faster is to use IT consulting services. These services involve an expert estimating your goal and project scope, helping to eliminate unimportant tasks and processes. In fact, this also engages the following advice.

Simplifying Project Complexity with Clear Planning

Simplifying your work is always an advantage. Proper project planning before development helps to achieve the best efficiency possible.

Creating a clear plan for building software products helps to simplify your project. Apart from helping shorten the development time and save costs by hiring less experienced developers, a clear development plan enables the streamlining of project management.

Besides, with a proper planning approach, you can predict potential failure risks or other challenges and prepare you for such scenarios.

One of the best ways to create a detailed and proper plan for your project is to consider CTO consulting on demand.

Partnering with Skilled Teams and Outsourcing When Necessary

Once again, delegating to professionals is one of the most efficient ways to ensure success and achieve any goal.

This should probably have been the first piece of advice on this list. However, we shouldn’t forget about post-launch support and maintenance when discussing new software product development from scratch.

Outsourcing software development is an excellent solution for scaling or optimizing software products, covering various extra aspects, etc. However, if you are targeting developing your software, you must ensure your team can maintain it.

In such cases, it is better to combine approaches and teams: You need a core development team engaged in creating essential functionality while partnering with skilled teams for development process optimization, software planning, scaling, extra feature development, etc.

Mitigating Risk Through Proper Testing and Quality Assurance

Don’t underestimate quality assurance and testing.

Businesses commonly prioritize constant software scaling and extension. Undoubtedly, providing your users with new and unique features or services is important. However, you should consider such improvements only after ensuring your current software works seamlessly.

To rephrase, you must maintain existing software and ensure the best user experience possible. Many users can forgive startups' lack of functionality and understand the limitations of new businesses and products. However, this works only if the services and software solutions are efficient and seamless.

Yet, you will most likely fail if you provide countless features and services with poor user experience. The only way such a strategy works - is that your business is the only one on the market offering unique and essential features. Still, even in such cases, you will most likely be forced to adapt: the modern services market is highly adaptive, and the emergence of your competitors is just a matter of time.

So, developing quality-first software must be your first-ever business goal.

Ensuring Continuous Support and Maintenance Plans

Finally, continuous support and maintenance is this list's most important strategy and most valuable advice.

You can consider any further steps only after ensuring constant support and maintenance of your software. Otherwise, you risk losing everything, starting with all the spending on software development and ending with all the efforts and steps you have already made.

While users may initially forgive you for poor software quality or limited services, if you do not take action to improve the situation, you will eventually lose their trust. Regaining trust in your business among the disappointed target audience is much harder than fulfilling its wishes.

If you have any other questions or want to discuss your plans for software product development, contact us. We will gladly discuss your ideas and ensure your success!