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Which development path to take?


merilan

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I am creating a service company that is dependent on a web app. it was suggested to me to hire a company to create the initial web app and hire developers to maintain and upgrade it. Is it better to get a team together and create the app from scratch, or is it reasonable to start with something made to my approximate specs that is functional, and continuously update it with a smaller team.

 

 

The pros as I can see them are:

 

1. cutting development cost

2. eliminating part of the cycle

3. experience

 

The cons:

1. finding the correct firm to develop what i need/want

2. being charge excessively for the wrong product

3. limitation on desired software

 

What says you guys?

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I am creating a service company that is dependent on a web app. it was suggested to me to hire a company to create the initial web app and hire developers to maintain and upgrade it. Is it better to get a team together and create the app from scratch, or is it reasonable to start with something made to my approximate specs that is functional, and continuously update it with a smaller team.

 

 

The pros as I can see them are:

 

1. cutting development cost

2. eliminating part of the cycle

3. experience

 

The cons:

1. finding the correct firm to develop what i need/want

2. being charge excessively for the wrong product

3. limitation on desired software

 

What says you guys?

 

Another way would be to find a promising open source project being developed that meet a lot of the requirements here and go in as a partner company where you bring in additional boost to the project contributing with some in house solutions etc. This way you both could win on it. You get the base that you can try out and evaluate for free, and you contribute with some code that aids the developers sitting there in their spare time.

 

See it as an exchange. Another approach would be actually building your project with open source modules in connection with in house made bridges and realization, however here you would have to check the licenses very carefully for what stands if you would want to profit on application utilizing parts or whole modules of code. Maybe you could get the author or authors to release the same code under another license exclusively to your party for a small royaltee fee / sold application. Which should be a per centage of the asset their particular code brings to the whole product.

 

Otherwise you got two option basically:

Do it all from scratch, which means the developement, testing, error fixing, launching, maintance phase; equals a big investement. And the worst case scenario is you reach maintance phase and the application fails to penetrate the market effectively and you are standing there with a big ass negative balance.

 

I'd recommend you to treat it as a regular investment, do the regular investment calculations that'd you do with say buying a new machine versus a used one or leasing it. Make sure you scale it down as you must likely will get a different contribution profit when investigating each investement choice.

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Define 'app'? This is a term commonly used for tablets or iphone users.

 

Now if you mean programs (applications) like Content Management System (CMS) or javascripts such as gallery slideshow, menus, videos, etc. then you don't necessarily have to create them from scratch if it's already available free to the public.

 

For example, you may want a CMS to manage the content your site. There are a variety of programs you can choose from such as Wordpress, Joomla and CMS Made Simple to name just a few. For a photo gallery, Gallery2.

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Seems like the first step would be research -- is there an open source app available that has the core functionality you need? If so, I would suggest trying to find a development company that you would want to work with and getting some consultation. Perhaps they could do a review of the code and see how easy it would be to work with. Just since it is technically "open source" doesn't mean it will have quality code. You could then figure out how to proceed after that point.

 

Like Kraxy said above though, make sure that if you base your project off an existing code, you have the license needed to make money off of it.

 

If you can avoid writing something from complete scratch, do that. No sense in re-inventing the wheel.

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