Some of Aventique’s clients have had the experience of developing a mobile application with a low-cost agency, only to face the hard truth and opt for a full redevelopment of their app in order to finally succeed with their project.

Over the years, I have compiled a list of all the possible reasons why a mobile app project with an agency — very often a low-cost one — ends in failure.

Application Delivery Timelines

The first reason clients lose patience is not only that the service provider fails to meet the agreed deadline, but more importantly that the project seems to never end. Here are all the possible causes:

• Due to a lack of skills and/or experience, the estimation of the number of days needed to complete the project is inaccurate. This applies to both the mobile front-end and the back-end: poor mastery of technologies such as .NET or Django can significantly extend delivery timelines. The team is therefore not sized appropriately, and the agency only realizes this difficulty in the middle of the project — by which point it is already too late. Accurately estimating a mobile app project requires a great deal of experience, rigor, and the ability to identify key details.
• Some agencies charge low-cost prices when they have no projects at a given time, but quickly lose motivation for that same project as soon as their order book fills up, prioritizing the most profitable work. It is certainly not very serious or professional, but this kind of practice happens quite regularly.
• Poor internal human resource management: bad management, poor compensation leading to high staff turnover, for example.
• Another cause related to poor management of project resources is the outsourcing by your provider of the project to freelancers or even cheaper agencies, combined with poor contractual arrangements or a relationship based solely on cost — causing your provider to lose control of the project at the first sign of trouble. There is often a lack of transparency on this subject with the client, who may not even know the project has been subcontracted.

Quality

The signs of poor quality from an agency show up at multiple stages of the project, which does little to reassure the client:

• As early as the initial project phase and the very first meetings, the client realizes that their provider does not truly understand them — that they are not speaking the same language. Our article on how to properly frame a mobile app project.
• The provider fails to grasp the business stakes of the client’s project. A project starts from business objectives, and a mobile development agency must be aware of its client’s strategy.
• The UI and UX quality does not seem to measure up to successful applications; the client notices a lack of digital and mobile culture, and therefore a lack of knowledge of the most popular apps, similar apps, or competitors — which directly impacts the provider’s ability to propose ideas and bring creativity to the table.
• The first versions of the application, or the final version, do not match your initial requirements — either functionally (failing to meet the client’s needs) or technically (containing too many bugs). The causes are multiple:
  • Standards that are not high enough.
  • A poor understanding of requirements due to an inadequate scoping phase (lack of functional maturity).
  • The skill level of the developers hired.
  • A flawed project methodology and absence of clear internal processes.

Why You Should Think Twice Before Choosing a Cheap Mobile Development Agency

Those who have been through similar situations will recognize which cases apply to their own project. As a conclusion, here are a few points that should give pause to clients who make their choice based solely on cost:

• Trying to save budget on mobile app development can turn out to be a poor calculation. A failed project will very often mean starting from scratch, which ends up costing more in the long run.
• The loss of time can seriously undermine an entire business plan at a time when everything moves very fast.

Interested in this topic? Do you have a mobile app development project and are looking above all for a quality development agency? Contact us via the form below — responsiveness is one of our greatest strengths.