6 Key Considerations for Hiring the Best .NET Software Development Company

Software development is a standalone answer to most businesses’ efficiency issues. Whether the goal is to streamline your existing complexities or to scale up your business, with the right software development practices most of such issues can be taken care of.

However, software development is a challenging task that requires a reliable partner. As per a study, around 37% of IT projects fail every year due to a lack of innovation and capacity of a software development partner. Many businesses are hence shifting their focus to technologies like .NET, and RPG which is known for its better and efficient product development.

Hence selecting a reliable .NET Development Company saves the business from exceeding project costs, delays, and other worries. Below are some of the important considerations for shortlisting a software development partner.

Important Considerations for Choosing the Right Software Development Partner

1.  Identify your Project Requirements

Building custom software requires a lot of brainstorming on defining what exactly your business needs. It is seen that company officials abstain from discussing the ideas in detail with their team which can otherwise result in better solutions and helps in defining the requirements precisely.

Once you have set your project requirements precisely it would be much easier to outsource it to a reliable .NET Development Company based on a company’s reputation, previous works, and ROI.

2. Put a cap on Budget

Companies often have a limited budget and it is advisable to stick to that as it can affect a company’s work and efficiency. Hence as a business, it should be your priority to find the best software development companies that can deliver quality work at a budget price.

However, there can be added costs when it comes to building a product like software. The additional costs can come in the form of set-up, hosting, support, training charges, etc. So, as a business, it's better to focus on getting higher ROI on your development works, keeping budget restrictions on the check.

3. Check Company’s Technical Expertise

As mentioned above, software development projects have a low success rate and the reason for that lies in the average capabilities of a software development agency. So the best way to outsource your project is to gauge the development team’s technical know-how, their expertise on the latest technologies like .NE, RPG, etc.

Setting up meetings with your software development partner or Dot NET Development Company opens up a lot of opportunities to understand not only the project scope but also exposes the technical knowledge of a development team. Overall, companies that work on agile and hybrid methodologies with a proven record are a good choice to go with.

4. Think of Building a Prototype

Unless your development partner hands over the final build of your software, you cannot be sure of its efficiency and ROI. However, investing a little in prototype development can help in understanding how close your dot net software development partner is compared to your exact requirements.

Moreover, with prototype development, one can know how efficiently the functions and features of the software are developed which can be further improved at later stages.

5. Post Development Support is Crucial

Once the software is deployed, post-development support becomes crucial. This is where a leading .NET Development Company helps you in major areas of troubleshooting, training, providing timely upgrades and taking care of maintenance activities.

If your software is hosted on cloud-like is the case with technologies like Dot NET Software Development and others, not only your data security is ensured but also data backup issues can be resolved with ease.

6. Project Communication and Timeline for Delivery

After setting foot with your software vendor, frequent change in deliverable's quality like navigation, User interface, and graphics, etc. might be required.  A sound project communication ensures you get what has been pre-decided while signing agreements on project delivery and quality. Also, it aligns both stakeholders on the same page which in the long run also ensures there is no need to make all of a sudden change.

Setting up milestones is a great way to ensure projects are delivered on time. This makes it possible for businesses to launch their product on time as planned previously.

Conclusion

Investing in the right software development technologies and choosing the right development partner goes a long way in building the most precise software. Moreover, sticking to the project scope, and budget backed by sound project communication and post-development support ensures the final build is as per a business’s expectations.

Plan upgrading to Python 3 if you have not already

Python.org decided to sunset Python 2 on January 1, 2020. This means that the community who maintains the beloved programming language will not be improving Python 2, even if a security issue is found out. Python 2 had a great life span of 20 years. While Python 3 was rolled out quite early, in 2006, developers kept working with Python 2 and the community therefore duly maintained both the versions. The last version of the Python 2,  2.7.18, would be rolled in April 2020, and that would be the final version.

If you are still in a state of flux and meaning to wait until 2.7.18 releases, as an experienced Python development company, we offer 5 reasons to convince you otherwise.

Python 3 has proven its mettle already

Python 3 community patted its back when Instagram reported close to 12% improvement in CPU performance and a 30% improvement in the usage of memory resources after it migrated to Python 3 and updated to Django 2.0. When companies of such prominence as Instagram have affirmed the efficiency gains through migration, it is high time that the rest of the Python 2 projects follow suit.

Python 2 Software will get increasingly prone to Security Breaches

It is a well-known fact that the legacy software are vulnerable to breach incidences as they are closed systems with little support from the developing community. Since Python community won’t be supporting the Python 2 version and also because most of the developers are already invested in Python 3, the Python 2 projects will keep on getting prone to security breaches. Though securing a Python interpreter won’t be much difficult, but if you plan to maintain the project with the 2.7.18 version, any security patch now onward would be unofficial. You might even end up patching manually if you are not using a long-support distribution like Linux. Gradually, around mid-2019, third-party dependencies began shedding support for Python 2 and this also adds to Python 2 woes.

Third-Party Python libraries will not roll updates for Python 2

Being an open-source programming language and having been on the development block for almost three decades now, Python has a rich stack of third-party libraries. The collection is vast, inexpensive, and fairly easy to use. Ready-made solutions for basic functionalities have helped developers in accelerating SDLC. After the official sunset of Python 2, almost all the popular libraries will discontinue rolling its updates. Integrating obsolete libraries would make the software prone to security breaches and may attract an additional cost of development in rectifying the same. Since Python is open source, you might get new fixes for even obsolete libraries but the authenticity of these fixes would be doubtful.

Python 2 Projects will incur incremental maintenance costs

In the not-so-distant future, talent with proficiency or interest in Python 2 will plummet. It will be difficult to hire Python developers for maintaining the project built on the relic version, not-to-mention that sticking to obsolete technologies leads to employee attrition. Even if you happen to find Python 2 experts, it will be costlier to loop them in for fixing an obsolete technology because not only they would be fewer, your increasing dependency will make them quote a higher price. Some organizations are still pondering that upfront investment in migration to Python 3 and restructuring the entire IT ecosystem would be costlier, but as an experienced Python development services provider, we know that it is far from the ground truth. The latest technology proves to be more economic in the long run when you consider the cost of inefficiency, troubleshooting, and distrust with end-users.

With added features, Python 3 is way better

Python 3 was released in 2006, and in a decade-plus of its existence, it has gained all the advantages of Python 3–  the easy availability of third party libraries, strong developer community for debugging and troubleshooting. Besides, Python 3 is unarguably the better version. Whether it is strings that are Unicode by default or type annotations that improve static code analysis or the best part-chained exceptions; Python 3 undoubtedly eases a developer’s job.

Summing Up

Python 2 has lingered a bit too long. And as a Python web development company, invested in Python projects with different industries, we see no reason for the Python community to recall the sunset that was announced some five years ago. We speculate that maybe Linux distributions will offer critical security fixes for popular libraries this year, but then they would have to stop doing it for the future. While some developers have been able to funnel some of the Python 3 features in Python 2 through forks and back-ports, still it is not a safe way to maintain the project.