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Category: Software Development

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All You Need to Know When Hiring Full Stack Developers

The demand for hiring full stack developers is rising every day.

In LinkedIn top emerging jobs of 2020, full stack developer is featured in the 4th position. The role of full stack developers has grown 35 percent every year, compared to 2015.

Many companies are now viewing full stack developers as a critical asset for the company’s core operations. Such companies include software developers, IT and related services, and financial services.

Full stack developers can write both front and back-end code. They know how to create a minimal viable product with little to no support from others. Hiring Full Stack developers can provide a high-level specialty in a variety of technologies. Hiring a full stack developer instead of hiring a team of developers helps you save investment, managerial cost and other indirect costs like benefits and taxes.

What is a full stack software developer?

There is a general disagreement over the definition of full stack. It is somewhat a controversial subject in the technological field. Various organizations have different definition for who is a full stack developer and what kind of skills they should possess.

But all the definitions have something in common.

As per general sentiment, a full stack software developer is someone who knows how to create a fully functioning web application, and their knowledge of both the back end and front end is valuable to the organization. One of the best qualities of full stack developers is the amount of help they need from outside, which is very little.

This is because generally applications would have two major components; back end and front end (also called server side and client side).

While it is the backend that “powers” the applications, it is the front end that helps users to interact with an application. Since the approach, methodologies and technologies varies from front end to back end, their developments parts are assigned to different teams who are experts in their own fields (front end or back end). As a result, a single application would need at least two developers hypothetically.

But, if the same company hires a full stack developer, it can save up cost on human resources since a full stack developer would be an expert in both front end and back-end development.

MEAN stack developer vs. Full stack developer

A MEAN stack developer is someone who has knowledge in a specific technology. The term MEAN in MEAN stack developers refers to MongoDB, Expressjs, AngularJs, NodeJS.

Since these technologies are based on JavaScript a good MEAN stack developer should have extensive JS knowledge. Using these technologies together, a MEAN stack developer can develop a full stack application just like full stack developers. However, the knowledge and exposure of a MEAN stack developer will be limited to these four technologies unlike a full stack developer.

Similarities between MEAN stack and full stack developers

Both MEAN stack developers and full stack developers can create full stack applications. Both will be able to tackle client side and server-side development using their own knowledge and expertise.

Differences between MEAN stack and full stack developers

Area of expertise

A MEAN stack developer and full stack developer will have different set of expertise.

A MEAN stack developer will have knowledge on MongoDB, Expressjs, AngularJS, and Node.js.

Whereas a full stack developer will be an expert on technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular JS, PHP, ASP, Python, Node.js, and databases such as MySQL, SQLite or MongoDB, etc.

Framework

A MEAN stack developer uses AngularJS to accept requests and display results to end-user. They use NodeJS to handle client and server requests.

On the other hand, a full stack developer may be using HTML and CSS to power the front end and PHP to power the backend.

Database

Mean stack developers use MongoDB to store data. A full stack developer may use SQL MySQL, or Oracle, etc. to store data.

Scalability and flexibility

MEAN stack development is limited in a sense that it leverages only JavaScript based technologies. So, scalability becomes an issue since to upgrade an application, we must totally depend on JavaScript based frameworks.

On the other hand, full stack development offers better scalability and more flexibility as the developers will have the options to choose from several frameworks.

Popularity

MEAN stack development is less popular compared to full stack development. It is mainly due to the limited flexibility and scalability offered by MEAN stack.

Pros and cons of hiring full stack developers

At first, we will go through all the pros of hiring a full stack engineer.

Pros of hiring full stack developers

Scope of development

A full stack developer can take care of client side and server-side development. Since he has knowledge of both the front end and back end, the application will be simple, less buggy and offer better experience.

Range of skills

A full stack developer will have a variety of skills under his belt. It is mainly due to what the position demands in terms of technology expertise and product planning. Since the same person will be responsible for both front end and back end, he must have variety of skills to complete the application and have a better understanding of the user case and development roadmap to avoid development conflict.

Experience

Full stack software engineers are well versed in multiple phases of software development, covering fields such as front end, back end, testing, QA, and coding. The knowledge in all the areas comes over time, and full stack developers have the experience under their belt, making them more appealing to the companies. They can use the occasion to face challenges quicker without any hesitation.

Framework

Since full stack web developers know multiple technological stacks, they can be put to work on several frameworks instead of hiring different developers for different frameworks.

Cost

Since a good full stack developer can take care of front end and back-end development and even unit testing, hiring them over technology experts are more economical for companies. Hiring full stack developers helps companies to save up cost on infrastructure investment, office space, taxes and benefits and on managerial tasks since the size of the companies can be kept small.

Performance

Hiring Full stack engineers ensures better performance since the responsibilities are well defined. There is less dependability between team members and the complexities due to misunderstanding and lack of teamwork is also less. The project progress can be easily monitored and the performance to progress ratio can be calculated more easily.

Trouble solver

Experienced full stack engineers will adapt to the changes at any stages of the project development. They can easily identify problems and easily overcome them due to their familiarity with different development stacks and programming methodologies. So, by hiring full stack developers, companies can mitigate uncertainty and incorporate more flexibility to their development process.

Cons of hiring Full stack developers

Keeping up with technologies

Full stack engineers have expertise in multiple technologies. However, it become a hassle to be kept updated on all these technologies due to the rapid advancement happening in the software development industry.

Less performance

Being a jack of all trades comes with its disadvantages. A developer who works or specializes in a single technology or platform will perform better than a developer who doesn’t spend too much time on a single stack. Full stack developers have a large area of expertise to justify their profile. Still, a developer who has experience in only one specific field will have better output than a full stack developer.

Switching languages

Suppose a project demands the developer to work with multiple languages. It can be cumbersome for the full stack engineer, as they will constantly have to change the programming language on the fly. They can change the field, but they will need some time to brush up on the small things to get a grip on the language.

Transitioning between programming languages can slow down the process; hiring a specific individual who knows their way around one language will help smooth the transition from one language to another faster, requiring hiring another developer to fasten the process.

Types of Full stack developers

Having expertise in various programming languages makes full stack engineers heavy-on-demand in the market. But the demand and supply vary depending on what type of full stack developer you are looking for. Depending on the use case, we can categories full stack developers into different groups.

Full stack web developer

A full stack web developer is someone who can develop the front end and back end for a web application. The person will be an expert in web related stacks such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, Vue, PHP, ASP, Python, Node, SQL, SQLite, or MongoDB.

Full stack Android developer

If you’re planning to develop a mobile app for the Android platform, a full stack android developer will help you complete the project. Android development focuses on Java, React, Python, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Full stack Python developer

A full stack python developer has the expertise in the python suite of language to develop various applications. Python is become popular day by day and a lot of AI and data science related applications are made using Pythons.

Full stack Java developer

Most mobile apps and computer software heavily depend on the Java programming language. Java is a popular server-side programming language for AI development. It is also the native programming language for the Android platform. A full stack Java developer will be able to write codes in Java and help you with developing applications for different use cases. 

Full stack JavaScript developer

A full stack JavaScript developer can use programming languages such as JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, or Vue to program the front end and then use languages such as Node.js to create the server side.

When it comes to JavaScript full stack development, you have several options such as you can hire a MEAN stack developer (MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node.js), MERN stack developer (MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js) or MEVN stack developer (MongoDB, Express, VueJS and Node.js).

Full stack cloud developer

Full stack cloud developers uses HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Python etc. to developer cloud applications. He is most likely to be familiar with DevOps practices, containerization, microservices etc. A good full stack cloud developer uses various Cloud Native tools and technologies to develop, deploy, run, and update applications on cloud platforms.

Full stack PHP developer

PHP alone can’t be used to develop full stack application. It must be used with front end languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, or Vue etc. to create a complete application. A full stack developer can also use Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) to accomplish this task.

Full stack mobile developer

A full stack mobile developer uses several programming languages such as Swift, ObjectiveC, Java, Kotlin, Node, JavaScript, TypeScript etc. They also use software like Android Studio, XCode, Ionic and APIs to complete the development.

Full stack AI developer

A full stack AI developer has extensive knowledge of various technologies related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Programming languages such as Python, Java, Nodejs, etc., will come in very handy, connecting the machine learning model.

How to hire a full stack software developer?

It has more to do with the qualities than anything else. A full stack software engineer must have an interest or passion for new things, and they should understand different technologies and their best-case scenarios. Their decision-making abilities will also come into play as they must develop complete applications for different use cases and industries.

Depending on nature of employment, we can divide full stack developers to below categories.

Freelance full stack developer

A freelance full stack developer is someone who is self-employed. She creates applications for different clients and get paid based on hours worked, tasks completed, or projects finished. The scope of work, estimate, roadmap, and delivery terms are usually finalized before starting the project.

Pros of hiring freelance full stack developer

  • Low investment: You don’t have to invest on infrastructure, tools, and training
  • Fixed pay: Pay only the negotiated amount
  • Flexibility: You can hire multiple developers to shorten the development time. You can also terminate the agreement once the tasks are completed.
  • Large pool: Freelance full stack developers are available globally making it easier to hire them.

Cons hiring freelance full stack developer

  • Limited scope: The resource may not be available once the project is completed.
  • Compatibility: Not the right choice for huge projects.
  • Hard to find a quality developer
  • They will not share the same enthusiasm for the project as the organization.

Hiring in house/full-time developer

A full-time developer is someone who works at a specific role permanently for the company. Along with salary, she also gets other benefits and allowances that is borne by the employer.

Pros of hiring in house full stack developer

  • They are more likely tool invest time and effort in your idea and work for a better product to ensure a permanent role and better appraisal.
  • Less likely to bail out
  • Act as a long-term player
  • Availability

Cons of hiring in house full stack developer

  • Tiresome hiring process
  • Limited pool of talent if you are hiring locally
  • The time it will take to find the right developers
  • A lot of indirect cost related to hiring and maintaining talent
  • Difficult to upsize and downsize the team
  • You must invest on infrastructure and tools

Outsourcing full stack development

Outsourcing full stack development is the act of hiring an outside party, preferability an agency, to perform the development of an application.

Pros of outsourcing full stack development

  • Saving money. Outsourcing always leads to a cheaper method to get the work done for a quarter of the cost or less compared to hiring a permanent team.
  • Short-term commitment.
  • Away from office noise can help them to work better.
  • Access to expert talent pool
  • No need to invest on infrastructure
  • No indirect cost involved

Cons of outsourcing full stack development

  • Quality may dwindle
  • Trouble in communication can hinder the performance
  • Sometimes it is harder to monitor the progress of the project
  • The outsourcing agency may be working on other projects at the same time

Outstaffing full stack development

Outstaffing full stack development is the act of hiring remote developers to take up the development. Usually, organizations approach outstaffing agencies to outstaff the work. Such agencies will already have a pool of pre-vetted developers with them. The salary and benefits are paid by the agency to the developers and the organization must make a one time or task-based payment to the agency.

Pros of outstaffing full stack development

  • Work can get done at a faster rate
  • The outstaffing agency will be responsible for the quality of the final product
  • Training is provided by the agency
  • Pre vetted developers means you are getting the right person for the role
  • No indirect costs
  • Affordable
  • Easy to monitor the progress of the progress
  • You get dedicated resources

Cons of outstaffing full stack development

  • Miscommunication
  • Adding remote employees may slow down your team
  • It will take time for the developer to fully understand the project

Conclusion

The demand for full stack developers is on rise due to companies seeking an all-in-one solution for their software development requirement. Instead of hiring individual developers for different roles, companies are hiring people with variety of skills and knowledge to take up multiple roles.

AlignMinds has a wide pool of expert full stack developers. We make sure that all our developers have the right expertise, have high exposure to industry standards and ensure best outcomes for simple to complex projects.  If you are looking for pre-vetted full stack developers for your next project, contact us now.

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Benefits of Microservices Architecture

Microservices architecture has become the new trend in the software development industry. Big companies like Amazon and Netflix are also favouring microservices architecture as it offers several benefits like improved scalability, better data security and compliance, future-proofing, business agility and faster development.

According to research, 73% of firms are using or planning to use microservices as it helps them build next-generation services and applications. Around 63% of organizations surveyed are already building some or all of their applications using microservices.

According to Allied Market Research, the microservices architecture market is projected to reach $8,073 million by 2026 from an estimated market size of $2073 million in 2018. That is a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 18.6% from 2019 to 2026.

All these statistics are pointing to one thing; microservices are the future. However, if you are a business that is yet to adopt the new trend, trying to understand the benefits of microservices will convince you to do so.

But before listing out the benefits of microservices architecture, let’s start with understanding what is microservice architecture.

What is microservices architecture?

Microservices architecture, commonly known as “microservices”, is an architectural style for developing applications. It allows a large application to be separated into smaller independent parts, with each part having its own realm of responsibility. As a result, a microservices-based application can call on many internal microservices to compose a response to a single user request.

Google defines microservices architecture as

“A microservices architecture is a type of application architecture where the application is developed as a collection of services. It provides the framework to develop, deploy, and maintain microservices architecture diagrams and services independently.”

Microservices are typically used to speed up application development. Website migration, data processing, transactions and invoices, media content storage and retrieval etc. are the other usages of microservices.

Microservices vs Monolith

Traditionally developers followed a monolithic design approach. In a monolithic architecture, components share a common memory space and work together as one cohesive unit. As a result, such applications are self-contained, and their components are interdependent. To make changes to a single component, developers must rebuild and redeploy the entire software altogether. This is a big drawback for businesses who want to add new features to their applications frequently. The monolithic architecture limited their rate of technology advancement, took away their competitive edge and constrained their growth opportunities.

On the other hand, the microservices architecture allows an application to be divided into a set of individual and autonomous services. Each of these services can be implemented in a different language on a different platform. Yet, it won’t affect the quality of the application as a whole. Moreover, each service is robust, flexible and complete on its own. So, adding a new feature to the application or removing an outdated feature is no more a difficult task. Since you can make changes to a particular feature without affecting the remaining part of the application, the cost of development and maintenance also went down.

Overall, microservices architecture offers more benefits than monolithic architecture to businesses that want to be competitive in the industry.

What are the benefits of microservices architecture?

Scalability

Microservices run independently. That means each microservice can be added, removed, updated, and scaled without affecting other microservices that comprise the application. During an increase in demand, you only have to allocate more resources to the concerned microservice(s) to meet the demand. As a result, an organization can save costs on server resources.

In 2008, Netflix had to ditch their monolithic design and adopt microservices after a three-day service failure caused by a major database corruption. The migration helped them to serve a wider audience in 2016 as the numbers of streaming members went up by eight times and the overall viewership tripled in those eight years! Their viewership is growing ever since and moving to microservices architecture became one of the best decisions they have ever made as a business.

Data security

Microservices architecture supports secure APIs. Developers can use them to connect with microservices without security concerns as APIs ensure that the data is accessible only to authorized parties.

iPaas (Integration Platform as a Service) providers like DreamFactory can help you build secure APIs in minutes using their automatic API generation tools.

Legal compliance

Since APIs provide a secure way for developers to handle and safeguard the application data, following legal policies and data and privacy rules are no more an issue. Microservices along with secure APIs help developers to meet various legal compliance including HIPAA, GDPR and other security standards.

Future-proofing

One of the main advantages of microservices architecture is that it supports CI/CD/CD (Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Deployment). It enables you to quickly deploy core microservices as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and continuously update it with additional microservices to make it a full fetched product in the future.

Also, as technology advances, new features may be introduced in the market and it is much easier to add them as microservices. Besides, a higher level of application security can be maintained all the time by adding a new security feature to the application as new security threats arise.

Conflict free

Compatibility and conflict are two major nightmares for every developer. Compatibility issues can lead to service outages and bring down the quality of the user experience. However, if you are using microservices, you don’t have to worry about such issues.

Due to its pluggability, microservices architecture offers faster and easier application development and updates. Since each microservices in an application will be functioning autonomously, making changes to a microservice or adding/removing a microservice to the application will not conflict with other microservices. As a result, there are fewer chances for coding conflicts and server outages due to the compatibility of codes.

Fault isolation

Along with being conflict-free, microservices architecture also offers circuit breakers that prevent cascading failure and server resource depletion. As a result, dependency related shutdowns are least to nil in a microservices architecture-based application.

Developers can also avoid using Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) between microservices to prevent cascading failures. Furthermore, fault tolerance libraries like Hystrix help you to build fault-tolerant microservices so that you can totally avoid cascading failure and enable resilience in your complex application.

Business agility

The market is ever-changing. Businesses need to cater to different demands that may not be permanent in the market. However, making changes to their applications frequently to fulfil user’ demands was always a difficult task for businesses. New features had to be designed, developed and tested before they are integrated into a live application. The whole process cost them time and money and even then the results were not promising.

With the introduction of microservices, agility became no longer an issue for businesses. An application that is based on microservices architecture is comprised of several microservices that work independently and enable certain feature sets in the application. To enable a new feature, you just have to integrate a new microservice into the system, and thanks to its autonomous nature, you don’t have to worry about any dependency failures. Thence, businesses can now easily integrate new features to an existing application and roll back to the previous version if the new feature doesn’t work out.

Focused teams

A microservice is small enough for a single team to build, test and deploy it. In Amazon’s terms, a team that is small enough to be fed by two pizzas can manage everything related to a microservice.  By keeping the size of the team small, they noticed that the work efficiency improved, there was more ownership, teams were easier to manage, they achieved their goals faster and the quality of the end results were often better.

Since the teams are working independently and there is a good rapport between the team members, fostering creative thinking and innovative ideas becomes spontaneous. Moreover, there will be a positive relationship and trust between the team members and the teams will be highly motivated.

How to implement microservices architecture?

Decentralize

Microservices replaces monolithic design thinking. In a microservices based application, everything from code to teams is decentralized. Small autonomous teams shall be responsible for designing, developing, testing and deploying services and there should be no sharing of code or data schemes.

Business-focused design

Microservices should be designed around the business domain. Each business microservice should have a single cohesive domain model. Depending on the scenario, a business microservice can be composed of several physical services that share a single domain model. However, the domain model must capture the business language, rules, behaviours and constraints of the business microservice it represents.

Ownership of data

A microservice should be totally independent. This rule is applicable in the case of data storage too.  In a microservice-based application, data ownership lies with the service that handles the data; so the data storage should be private to that particular service.

Use APIs

All service communications should be handled using secure APIs. The APIs should be modelled around the domain not the internal implementation of the services.

Use gateways

Simplify application development by offloading cross-cutting services such as SSL certificates and authentication etc. to a gateway.

Decouple

Coupling between services should be avoided to make each service independent. So that any changes you make to one service will not affect any other services that comprise the application. This is applicable to communication protocols and even shared database schemas.

Functional cohesion

Functions that are serving a single purpose should be packaged and deployed together to avoid tight coupling.

Tight coupling is a sign of low cohesion. When there is low cohesion, a change in one service will affect other services in an application. Therefore, you will be forced to make changes to other services when updating a particular service. So, the focus should be to create services that are loose coupled and have high functional cohesion.

Fault isolation

The purpose of microservices architecture is to design reliable applications. You should implement fault isolation along with a resilience strategy to avoid cascading failure and dependency related shutdowns.

Adopting microservices: The Netflix and Amazon stories

Netflix and Amazon identified the potential of microservices and leveraged it to their business advantages earlier than any other in the industry.

Netflix

In the beginning, Netflix was using monolithic architecture for their application. In 2008, due to a major database corruption in their servers, the services of Netflix were unavailable to their customers for three days. Around the same time, the company also realized that the vertically scaled model was hampering its growth. They were not able to meet the demand of their growing customer base with the then-existing model.

Around 2009, Netflix started moving their services to microservices architecture. They began by moving to distributed cloud systems that are highly reliable and horizontally scalable. In 2016, Netflix expanded their services to more than 130 countries and became a global service provider. Their API gateway handled more than 2 billion requests daily around the same year. Now Netflix has more than hundreds of microservices instead of a single monolithic application.

Amazon

The growth of Amazon started in the early 2000s. As they were growing, more issues related to scaling started to interrupt their operations. The company quickly recognized that a single model that acts as a master product will not help them in the long run. So, they started to create independent teams that are small enough to be fed by two pizzas and assigned them the responsibility to develop autonomous services that are complete on their own.

The idea was to use microservices to power every feature of their platform and the term “microservices” didn’t even exist at that time! These microservices together would give the impression of a big, single application and communicate with each other via secure APIs. The developers would be fully responsible for the services they build and that includes coding, testing and deployment.

However, a lot of operational work became repetitive, and it slowed down the process. With the introduction of AWS (Amazon Web Services), Amazon was able to automate these operational processes and it helped them to scale the services depending on the demand and business needs.

Conclusion

It is true that moving to microservices architecture requires a paradigm shift. But the benefits of it will depend on the nature of the business and its long-term goals. For large enterprises, adopting microservices is a necessity due to the complexity arising from their large-scale operations and the magnitude of demands they must fulfil.  For startups and small-scale businesses, microservices architecture may not seem attractive now. However, if you are a growth-oriented business, choosing microservices architecture will benefit you in long run.

N.B.: AlignMinds has more than 12 years of experience in developing trendsetting yet cost effective solutions for startups and enterprises alike. If you are looking for a microservices developer for your next project, contact us now!

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Technology Trends to Watch Out for in 2022

2021 saw many technology trends as a continuous response to the COVID pandemic that emerged in 2020. Industries were in shock during the first quarter of 2020. But towards the end of the year, most of the industries were able to take control of the situation and we saw somewhat an accelerated growth during the year 2021.

In 2021, most industries optioned for technology adoption and it helped them tremendously. The industries that took advantage of digital transformation included manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, education, financial services, media, and retail. Since customers were mostly confined within their homes, we saw some big jumps in emerging technologies in industries like education, media, retail, and healthcare.

2021 is already over and we are now in 2022. Most of us will be wondering what to expect this year especially in technology industry since it was the driving force behind all emerging trends for past couple of years. To help the curious minds, we have curated a list of emerging technology trends for the current year, 2022.

Major technology trends to watch out for in 2022

Automation

The word “automation” is not new to any of us. We have been hearing about automation and how different industries are adopting it to improve their productivity, efficiency, cut costs and boost profit margin. However, as different industries are seeking out more ways to adopt automation, automation is also seeing a diversification.

In the beginning, it was the manufacturing industry that recognized the benefits of automation. Later, the service industry also adopted automation in the form of CRMs, inventory management software, payroll software, invoicing software and so on. These days automation has reached every nook and cranny of a business. People have become familiar with terms like self-driving vehicles, autopilots, smart wearables, smart home notifications etc. We are also seeing an increase in consumer numbers for IoT devices as they are becoming more affordable and convenient.

According to McKinsey,

“By 2025, more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), generating 79.4 zettabytes of data yearly.”

We can expect more growth in the field of automation and IoT in coming years as the potential is limitless and we have only touched the tip of the iceberg.

Metaverse

Facebook renamed itself to Meta in October last year. The tech giant rebranding itself after a decade and a half reflects the potential of metaverse.  While AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) are not a new trend in 2022, the coming together of physical, augmented, and virtual world to form a single and seamless entity, where people can hang out with friends, meet new people and places, do shopping, participate in entertainment and professional activities alike, is something new and yet to experience. Of course, the idea has been lingering around for a while and we even had a chance to see few demos and experimentation, the Metaverse was still in its conception stage. But we can expect some breakthroughs soon especially since trillion-dollar companies like “Meta” have recognized that it is the future.

Enhanced Search Optimization

The pandemic forced so many physical stores to close down. Businesses around the globe, irrespective of their industry, discovered that it is difficult to find customers in traditional ways since movement of the people are mostly restricted. It forced businesses to migrate from offline business model to an online business model with a focus on websites and apps to connect with their customers.

However, the results were not promising since most businesses were out of reach for the customers. Their websites and apps failed to show up in search results and were undiscoverable for potential clients. It forced businesses to put more focus on search optimization and become discoverable for their customers.

Due to the comfort and convenience it offers, people are still preferring online shopping even after the restrictions are lifted. We can expect the trend to stay the same for a while at least until there is some incentives for customers to prefer the traditional way for shopping. So, currently businesses are forced to find new search and discoverability strategies to attract sales.

Decision intelligence

Decision intelligence is a new discipline that can help such organizations with their organizational decision-making process. It can support and enhance human decision-making using intelligence and analytics to inform, learn from and create a set of processes to find the right decision. It combines various disciplines like data science, engineering, social science, decision theory and managerial science. We will be seeing decision intelligence in action more often in the coming years.

Distributed business

A distributed business or distributed company is a business that has a remote workforce and consumers connected via digital technologies. It is a digital-first, remote-first business model that encourages hybrid workforce and virtual services to improve employee and consumer experience. Ever since the pandemic there is an apparent shift in employee and consumer preferences and distributed business model can help companies to meet the expectations of both.

Cyber AI

Hacking, breaches, data theft etc. are becoming widespread despite technological advancements. Hackers are leveraging the advancement in technology to find loopholes in systems and create novel ways to get access to them. In 2022, businesses need to be proactive than ever to counter such cyber threats.

Thankfully, artificial intelligence and machine learning help to build models that can learn their own and detect novel patterns in a system. Processes like “Anomaly detection” etc. are a big step towards achieving this goal. Such models can not only detect an unusual pattern, but they can also contain them, notify about such events to concerned parties and use the data to improve themselves.

Distributed ledger and Blockchain

Decentralization is happening in all fields. Data storage and processing are also undergoing a major transformation. The traditional, centralized databases are giving way for distributed ledger (shared ledger or DLT) and blockchain models that are more secure and safe.

Industries like finance and banking are taking full advantage of these technologies as they offer more efficient transactions. The transactions and their details are recorded in multiple places at the same time making them impossible to be lost.

DLT is still an emerging technology if we compare its potential to the current rate of adoption. Since it can help to deter issues like hacking, unauthorized access, data theft etc., we can expect it to become an emerging trend in 2022.

Cloud

Businesses are moving from legacy environments to the cloud at a faster rate. The necessity to go virtual and remote forced most businesses to ditch legacy models and find alternative solutions.

Since the tech industry foresaw the rise of cloud a long time ago, most of the new solutions like productivity tools, businesses suits, even games and media services are already cloud-based. Along with the necessity to go for a decentralized and distributed model, the potential for much better compatibility and integration are forcing companies to build their infrastructure and solution using cloud tech.

Wordless Passwords

Are you someone who always click on the “forgot password” button every time you try to log in to a platform? If yes, here is good news. The traditional, character-based passwords are giving way to more sophisticated biometric passwords. The use of fingerprint, face recognition, iris scan and voice authentication etc. are becoming popular as an authentication mode. They are not only secure but also convenient compared to traditional passwords that are based on alphabets, numbers, and special characters that we always manage to forget.

Also, service providers like Google etc. are moving towards more convenient authentication methods like signing in with your phone or authenticator app where you do not have to remember any password or code but to tap on the matching code that appears on your device/app.

Fewer keys

The introduction of the Apple Pencil was revolutionary. Even though stencils were in use for a long time, Apple Pencil offers something more than a pencil. They are integrated very well with the devices and designed in a way that is convenient to users. It can undertake different functions based on pressure, tilt, the application that is currently open, double-tap, or for navigation and everything else including notetaking and drawing.

In short, we are moving from an era of keyboards and input tools to a new era that enables us to interact with devices just like how we interact with other human beings.

Immersion

Technology is moving its focus from experience to immersion. Until now each component in a system had its own set of functions that focused on delivering a specific experience to users. However, the recent technology trends are moving towards immersive experience where each component is designed in a way to offer a realistic, more enjoyable and wholistic experience and eliminate any chances for interruptions. The vision is to narrow the border between the virtual and real world and deliver the experience the users want rather than they need.

The two industries that are more focused on this emerging trend are gaming and media. It is because these industries were always struggling to deliver “the right experience” to their users especially when the users’ interests span across history, science, and fantasy. For example, it always was a challenge for game developers to offer the experience of living in space or a treasure hunt in ancient times to its users even though the storyline and models were of the best quality. The fault was not in the quality of the design but the delivery of the experience.

Ever since AR and VR became more mature and there are significant improvements in rendering, physics, display and audio technology, the experience has become much better for the users. In 2022, we can expect this trend to become widespread and more industries adopting it to improve customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

There are some exciting technology trends we can expect in 2022. Some of the names associated with these tech trends may seem familiar to you. Even if they are familiar, we are yet to see the adoption of such technologies on a scale that is large enough to make an impact on our day-to-day life. 2022 seems like to be the year we are going to experience them in our regular life.

AlignMinds is an award-winning technology consulting company that specializes in product engineering in mobility and cloud platforms. We offer best in class consulting in web and mobile app development, AI, AR, IoT, cloud, blockchain and cybersecurity. Are you looking for a technology partner for your next project? Contact us now!

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Why Choose Application Maintenance Services?

Imagine one day you discovered an app called “MobileApp”.

The app helps its users to find rides that are economical by letting you share the occupancy with other users who want to travel in the same direction. You were not sure about the practicality of what it offers, so you tested it on a weekend night when you were not in a hurry. Fortunately, the app worked perfectly. You were able to find a ride quick enough and save some money too.

You have been using the app for a while now. All your rides, including the one to your office, are handled by the “MobileApp”. Like on any other morning, you woke up, got ready, took your mobile and opened the app to book your ride today too. To your horror, the map is not loading, and the app keeps on freezing even after several reboots.

You open Play Store to see whether there is an update pending.  But alas, you found nothing! However, you notice that most of the recent comments are about the similar issue and seems like it is happening for a while for most users.

But you got no time at least enough time to read all those comments. You must hurry now or be prepared to reach your office at the wrong time. luckily, you discover one of your colleagues lives just nearby and he will be able to offer you a lift for the day. Now you are feeling ashamed of yourself for trusting a mobile app and depending on it too much enough to bring you trouble. You lost trust in the whole technology thing itself.

This is what happens when app developers don’t take care of application maintenance. The trust and image that built over time is just lost within a minute. The existing users are lost mostly forever, so are most of the potential users who see those feedbacks on Play Store. Revenue, hard work, development, and everything else went into vain.

What is application maintenance?

Application maintenance is the process of continuously monitoring, analyzing, evaluating, updating, and upgrading part of an application or application as a whole to offer the functions and features as intended without any interruption or lack of usability for the end-user.

Application maintenance comes at later stages of app development. But it plays a vital role in deciding the success of an application.

Due to evolving market needs, competition, new technologies and technology adoption, change in business strategies, and other external factors like government policies and latest events in the industry, an application need regular modification to maintain its relevancy among customers. It is irrelevant whether you are developing the app in one go or the development is scheduled in several stages, maintenance and technical support are very crucial from the moment the app goes live.

Why is application maintenance important?

There are several reasons why application maintenance is so important.

Ensure application functions

An application’s functions and features are what make it unique. They offer an advantage over its competitors and play a crucial role in whether the app is going to be successful in the market.

However, due to technology advancement and some of the existing technologies getting outdated, the app needs to be modified and updated in regular intervals to ensure that all its functions and features are still available to the users. Otherwise, the app will lose its functionalities and its place in the market. It will become obsolete within a short span due to how fast technology is evolving.

Technology adoption

Technology is evolving at a fast pace. Existing ones are replaced by faster, modern, and safer technologies. Businesses and applications that leverage the latest technologies will have the upper hand in competition because it will help them offer an enhanced experience to their customers.

However, most applications are not able to leverage upon latest technologies due to the wide gap between the existing one used in the application and the latest technology. Either they must recreate the whole application once again or compromise on what they can improve to offer a better experience to their users. This often happens when an application missed maintenance for a while increasing compatibility issues.

New features

Since applications that are devoid of maintenance for a while will have compatibility issues, such applications are more likely to be at a disadvantage when it comes to integrating new features. Most of the new, trending features are powered by the latest technologies. It is due to the lack of these technologies earlier applications failed to include these features during their launch. So, it is clear that to integrate any new features that depend on the latest technology, application maintenance is a must.

Security

As technology evolves, more and more vulnerabilities and security threats are surfacing. Hackers try to exploit loopholes in an application to get access to sensitive data. These loopholes are the product of outdated codes and technologies the application still uses. Also, there are other threats like malware, ransomware, data breach, etc. because the application is not up to date and has not deployed the latest security measures. To ensure security alone, application maintenance is critical for any application.

Legal compliance

Governments across the world are identifying more user rights like the right to privacy, right to option out, right to accessibility, right to request for the removal of information etc. They are not only identifying but also legalizing them to ensure that these rights are respected by tech companies. For example, new policies like GDPR forced most tech companies to change their way of collecting data or withdraw from the market. So, to become compatible with ever-changing market needs and legal obligations, application maintenance is a must to follow.

User satisfaction

User satisfaction is a critical factor in deciding the success of an application. However, there are many factors, like the ones stated above, that are contributing to user satisfaction. In other words, to ensure user satisfaction, an app should take care of security, its functions and features, legal compatibility, user experience, the addition of new features version wise etc., which are not possible without application maintenance.

Trust and brand image

Remember the story at the beginning of this article? Trust is hard to build but easy to lose!

Nowadays applications are focusing on certain niches. They are trying to help the users with one specific action. It can be booking a ride, booking a table in their favorite restaurant, trading in the stock market or trying their luck in online dating. Whatever it may be, once a user becomes familiar with the application and its usage, it is more likely that he or she is going to use it on a regular basis making the app a part of their day-to-day life.

When you are interacting with something on a regular basis, there will always be some emotional bonding. In other words, applications are taking over the place of other human beings in one’s life. Not a long time ago, you used to book tickets from travel agencies. If you are one who is frequently travelling, you mostly have an emotional connection or even friendship with the ticket agent. However, these days such positions are slowly replaced by mobile applications.

But the point is that, due to the same emotional connection, when an application fails to do its job or totally mess up, the user feels like they are being cheated and the trust is broken forever. And often they share their experience with friends and family circles just like how they used to recommend the ticket agent when everything was going well. And when something goes wrong? The negative news spread faster!

Application maintenance services

Now you might have understood why application maintenance is so critical. It is as important as application development and can solely decide the future of the application.

Thankfully when it comes to application maintenance, there are several options available to you. Most of the application development companies offer app maintenance as a standalone service or as part of their application development service.

Approaching a single company that offers both app development and app maintenance has its own benefits.

  • It is easier to create a solid and comprehensive roadmap if you are approaching the same agency for app development and maintenance.
  • When maintenance and support are included as part of the whole package, it becomes more economical.
  • Since application maintenance is a long-term service by nature, it is more likely that the agency and you will have a long-term relationship, which in turn offer you the opportunity to negotiate.
  • When the app development company is also responsible for maintenance and support, the probability of bugs and errors will be less since they understand the system very well. Also, they will be able to resolve issues faster if in case one arises, and the application development will be futureproof.
  • You will have more control over the budget due to the opportunity for negotiation. Also, companies that offer both development and maintenance services mostly have flexible pricing plans.
  • You have more control over the future of the application. For example, since it is the same agency that developed the application, they will already have a team that is familiar with the architecture and infrastructure of your application, the strength, and weaknesses of the system, and how to migrate to an upgraded environment in future to integrate more features to the existing system.

Whether you are looking for an agency that offers both development and maintenance services or planning to purchase app maintenance services from another company, the important thing is that you must plan and create a roadmap for application maintenance at the beginning stage of product development itself. It will help you allocate enough resources for the maintenance part and play the long game.

Cost of app maintenance

The cost of app maintenance depends on so many factors like how the pricing is calculated, the location of the team, nature of the work, the complexity of the work, technologies to work with etc.

Pricing model

There are different pricing models available. For example, some companies charge per hour, some others charge per new version release or as a monthly retention plan.

Location

If you are from a developed country and looking for application development or app maintenance services within a minimum price range, hiring an offshore company from geographies like Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe will be the best choice. Tech companies from these parts of world have a more affordable rate compared to companies from developed countries like the US.

Nature of the work

  • Are you approaching a different company for application maintenance or are you planning to purchase both development and maintenance services as a package from a single company?
  • Are you also looking for technical support from the same team?
  • Do you want them to just fix the bugs or release a new version with more features periodically?
  • Do you want to migrate the application to a better environment when there is a better opportunity available?

As you see, the nature of the work can vary from project to project. So, it is important that the nature of the work is well identified in advance to calculate the cost of app maintenance.

The complexity of the work

The cost of maintenance will change depending on how complex the work is. More complex work demands more resources and the involvement of an expert team. A complex work also demands more time unless more resources are invested. These factors will increase the cost of maintenance to a certain level.

Technologies involved

Even though there is a team involved in the development and maintenance of applications, each team will have members who are an expert in specific fields or technologies. Some technologies are easier to work with and there is a lack of experts in some fields. In other words, when more technologies are involved and it is difficult to find the right expert for the project, the cost of maintenance will be on the higher side.

Usually, an experienced developer or a developer from a developed country like the US may charge $30 and above per hour for their services. Whereas in a developing country like India, the price starts from $15. However, these prices will vary depending on the above factors mentioned.

Conclusion

Application maintenance plays a vital role in deciding the success of an application. So, it is important to plan and allocate enough resources for the maintenance services at the beginning stage of product development. AlignMinds has more than 12 years of experience in developing trendsetting yet cost-effective applications for various verticals. We have successfully implemented application maintenance and app management for thousands of projects throughout these years. If you are looking for an expert team to take care of app development or maintenance for you, Contact us now!

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How to Hire the Best Enterprise App Development Company?

Ever since companies and businesses identified the strength of enterprise applications to achieve their corporate goals, the enterprise software market has experienced tremendous growth. The market revenue has doubled within the last decade and it is expected to reach $429 billion in 2021. It is a 7.2% growth from last year. As more businesses are adopting technology at a faster pace than ever, due to COVID and the change it caused in work culture and market, this number may reach double digits this year.

Usually, a wide range of applications is considered under the term “enterprise applications”. It includes ERP software(Enterprise Resource Planning software), accounting software, Human Resource Management(HRM) software,  Office suits, Customer Relationship Management(CRM) software, Supply Chain Management(SCM) Software, Business Process Management(BPM) software, Business Intelligence(BI) software, etc.

The main difference between enterprise applications (also known as Enterprise Application Software (EAS)) and other applications is that the former is mainly used by organizations rather than individual users. A collection of such software applications is known as an enterprise system. Such systems can undertake a large number of organizational operations with the purpose to maximize the quality of business and management reporting tasks. The ability to process data at a high speed and the advantage of being deployed across a variety of networks help enterprise applications meet their purposes.

What are enterprise applications?

Enterprise applications are computer software that are integrated with all phases of an enterprise’s operations to facilitate cooperation and coordination of work across all levels.

An ideal enterprise application should,

  • Control all major business processes in real-time.
  • Make complex operations easy and simple.
  • Save time and human resources.
  • Can be easily integrated into a variety of networks.

Advantages of enterprise applications

Sharing of data

Enterprise application software increases interoperability between the departments of an organization. It integrates a variety of operations and their respective applications with IT structure, making data sharing fast and efficient. Based on their user level, all the employees of the organization will have access to all these data and applications.

Easy management

As information exchange and management are improved, the management will have better data and control over the business processes. Enterprise applications make it easier for them to analyze where they stand as a business, and what improvements they can make to achieve their corporate goals.

Easy workflow

As information is readily available, and enterprise applications make technology integration a lot easier, most of the workflow within an organization can be automated. For example, the employee database can be integrated with attendance and payroll software to help the HR department. As most CRM applications store and update customer data in real-time, they can be integrated with marketing tools to automate promotional campaigns.

Increasing efficiency

The availability of information in real-time and the opportunity to automate most of the workflow improve an organization’s overall efficiency. More tasks can be executed with comparatively fewer resources and the margin of error can be reduced to a bare minimum. Since a common workflow can be implemented across the organization, there will be better interoperability between departments.

Competitive edge

Increased efficiency and reduced operating costs due to the introduction of enterprise applications offer an organization with competitive advantages.

Simplify business processes

Normally an organization has two major processes it has to take care of internally. They are day-to-day operations and achieving their long-term goals.

As stated earlier, with the help of enterprise applications, you can automate most of the day-to-day operations and backend work. The recording of all the information by the enterprise software enables the organization with real-time data that they can use to achieve their long-term goals.

Save up cost

Since enterprise applications enable automation and most of the tasks are performed electronically, an organization can save up on their operating costs by a big margin. The demand for fewer human interventions combined with information being recorded and exchanged electronically brings down the cost to optimum level without compromising on efficiency.

Lower time and efforts

By enabling automation of operations, enterprise applications help with reducing the time needed to complete tasks. Also, there is less human intervention needed comparing to a traditional business.

Increase opportunities

A reduced operational cost will help with investment opportunities. It enables funding needed for scaling the business and since most of the operations are now automated, an expansion for the business will be much easier.

Easy adoption

An organization that utilizes the benefits of enterprise applications will have a strong IT structure. As such organizations are technologically strong, adopting new technologies will be easier for them. Also, since information is stored and processed electronically, more tools and applications can be integrated into the existing system to boost productivity and efficiency.

Adopt enterprise applications for your business

The ever-growing challenges in the business world are forcing companies to adopt technology at a faster pace. Moving away from traditional methods and adopting leveraging technology has helped companies to not only cut down the competition but also save up on their operating cost. The increasing demand for technology solutions by such future realistic companies has driven up the growth of enterprise applications development. Nowadays the demand is equally or more than equally met by enterprise application development companies whose services are available across the globe.

The improved availability of supply has benefited the technology industry and companies alike. However, due to the same reason, some companies are feeling it difficult to choose the best enterprise application development company for themselves.

So, how do you choose the best enterprise app development company for your organization?

Hire the best enterprise app development company

There are a few important points to consider while choosing an enterprise app development company. They are

Nature of the requirement

You can be looking for enterprise application development services for internal purposes or you may be a part of an organization that wants to develop a product to later sell it in the market. Most of the time, just like how different the nature of the requirement is, the approach and parameters for choosing a technology partner should also be different.

When you are developing an enterprise application for your organization’s internal purposes, you have to consider things like what would be the objective of the solution, what are your organization long term goals, what growth and changes you are expecting in the future, the company culture, the size of the organization, the internal policies of your organization, organization hierarchy, and communication flow, etc.

However, when you are developing a product to sell in the market, you must consider the demand in the market, existing and future competition, features of the products competitors are offering, development cost and sale value, revenue potential, data collection, and privacy policy and many other things which are totally different from the above one.

Usually, it is difficult to find an enterprise application developer who has expertise in both these fields. So, the first step you need to take when you are looking for enterprise application development services is to identify your requirements.

Organization goals

Consider what are your future goals, both long term and short term.

Is it cutting down the operating cost with the help of technology? Or is it to expand your operations to a global scale within the next 5 or 10 years? What is your expansion plan? Have you considered the peculiarities of new geographies and whether the solution can meet the special requirement of the same?

These questions are important because when you are looking for enterprise application development services, the company you are going to hire should analyze and understand all these aspects of your business and help you with achieving your goals. In fact, the company and the solution they are going to develop for you should help you with achieving your goal faster and more efficiently.

Organization growth

When you are hiring an enterprise application development company, you should consider your organization’s growth over time. The service provider should have a good understanding and prior experience in developing large-scale enterprise applications. The solution should be easy to scale and futureproof. Additionally, it is better to choose an app development company that can offer you long-term support.

Data policy

Always choose an enterprise application developer who understands different data policies and their benefits. Protection of data and privacy is a major concern for individuals and corporates alike. You should partner with an agency that can use data effectively to maximize the benefits of the product and at the same time protect it from intrusion, misuse, and legal suits.

Technology expertise

The development company should have expert knowledge on all the aspects of technology and where the industry is heading. They should be able to suggest the best solution after evaluating your requirements, business nature, and market trends.

Choosing the right platform is most important in any type of application development. The right choice will improve efficiency, save up cost and avoid any bottleneck that otherwise would arise in the future due to some technology being outdated or replaced.

Another reason why you should choose an expert technology partner is that enterprise applications are required to be compatible with many other modules/applications that are already used by an organization or will be used in the future. Technology expertise is much needed when it comes to optimizing a product for cross-compatibility. Furthermore, if you are looking to migrate from legacy applications, their expertise will make it easy to do so.

Experience

Let us acknowledge that great ideas bring no benefits if they are executed poorly. Faultless executions are the result of practice and experience. Even though the stages of enterprise application development look simple and familiar, it may be challenging for a new app development agency to execute them. It is mainly due to each business being different, their objectives and goals being different, and the varying micro and macro variables that affect the business.

If we are going to develop an enterprise application to sell in the market, the development company should understand the market first. Each market will be different from one other. A developer who has already worked for a similar company or the same market will have a huge advantage over an app development company with no prior experience. The former one can understand the challenges much easier and they can incorporate countermeasures in the initial stages of product design itself.

Conclusion

Moving from legacy applications to enterprise applications will bring you so many benefits. However, the expertise of an experienced enterprise application developer is much needed to reap the full benefits. AlignMinds has more than 12 years of experience in developing technology solutions for startups to enterprises. If you are looking for a renowned technology partner for your next project, contact us now!

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Hiring Dedicated Development Team: A Complete Guide

We all are living in a world which is constantly evolving and adapting to needs.

In this fast-moving world, where everyone and everything is connected, there is absolutely no need for hiring regular staff for your company. Discovering and adapting to new approaches of working ensures a better workforce and work culture.

Technological advancement has helped in hiring employees from all around the world belonging to different cultural backgrounds who are an expert in their field of work. The dedicated development team is the newest entry into this segment.

Hiring a dedicated development team has become one of the best approaches for both cost reduction and quality maintenance. You can hire a dedicated development team and obtain the best skill set out there. ​Surveys ​show that many companies hire dedicated development teams from countries that offer the best services and quality at a very low cost.

Now, what is a dedicated development team and how to hire dedicated development teams?

Let’s look into the details.

What is a dedicated development team?

What will you do if your company doesn’t have the required expertise in developing your project?

Do you want to get involved in every stage of planning a software or an app and also want to work with a reputed and professional team?

All these questions lead to the concept of ‘dedicated development team’.

Dedicated development teams are another system or establishment different from your company that are hired to work for you. Hiring a dedicated development team helps you find talents from many parts of the world.

You will get a team of professionals who have the required expertise and experience in the domain while hiring a dedicated development team. Hiring a dedicated development team also helps you greatly in your cost-cutting strategies.

As the term suggests, dedicated development teams are fully committed to you and the work you offer. The team directly reaches out to you for updates on the projects and you can directly communicate with the team, control and monitor progress from any part of the world.

Advancements in cloud-based technologies have also led to the development of various working models. The dedicated development team is one such working model that came into prominence by using cloud-based technologies.

Now, why should you hire a dedicated app development team?

Why hire a dedicated development team?

Are you confused between hiring a dedicated development team or building your own in-house team?

If you find these points relevant based on your requirements, hiring a dedicated development team is your best choice.

  • If your team is not having the required expertise in the development of your project, you need to hire a team of experts. By hiring a dedicated development team, you can ensure that your project is developed by an expert team in the field.
  • If you do not want to spend on hiring employees and infrastructure and consistently reduce budget; hire a dedicated development team. As the dedicated development team has all the infrastructure facilities and a full-fledged team to support your project, you only need to pay for the services they offer.
  • If the project is a large scale one, and if your team cannot complete the project under the specified timeline, hiring a dedicated development team will definitely help you in reducing the project delivery time to a great extent.
  • Dedicated development teams regularly update themselves with the latest technological advancements and infrastructures. So you don’t need to spend on upgrades when hiring a dedicated development team.
  • If you want to develop a quality project with the insights from experts in the industry, hire dedicated development teams. This will also help you to combine your innovations with that of the team enabling in the development of a better product.
  • If you are looking for an easily manageable team of experts, hiring dedicated development teams can help you. ​Most likely they will be a team of professionals with the required skills and communication quality and a ​dedicated development team is directly controlled by the client.
  • If you want to start a project immediately and is looking for the best professionals in the field of work, hiring a dedicated development team makes sure that the project begins the next moment after the requirements are made clear.
  • You can also hire a dedicated development team if your company doesn’t have the necessary resources to ​support the development of a product.

There are certain factors to look into while hiring a dedicated development team.

Hiring a dedicated development team

You should have a good understanding of the factors that help in hiring the best one among the many dedicated development teams out there.

The main points to look into while hiring a dedicated development team include:

  • Requirements of your projects
  • Experience and expertise of the dedicated development company
  • Flexibility
  • Infrastructure and technological advancements

Analyse and evaluate the requirements of your project based on the targeted customer. Cost and project completion time will vary depending on the requirements.​Calculate the cost, project completion time and accordingly hire a dedicated development team that best suits the requirements.

Experience and expertise is another important factor to look into while hiring a dedicated development company. Before hiring a dedicated development company of your choice, contacting past clients will help in getting an overall picture of the firm ​and evaluate whether the team has the skills and knowledge to complete the project on time without compromising on quality.

Gaining more and more experience ​in their craft​ makes a company perfect. Hiring a dedicated development team with many years of experience helps you in launching the ultimate product according to the ​demand in the market and which will be loved by the users.

Flexibility is another factor to consider while looking for a good dedicated development team in foreign countries.

While hiring a dedicated development team, you should check how the team is adapting to technological advancements in the industry. An ideal dedicated development team should have the latest technologies incorporated into their workflow along with necessary resources and high-end infrastructure.

Analysing the pros and cons of hiring a dedicated development team ​will help you in deciding whether to go with a dedicated development team or not.

Let’s have a deeper look.

What are the benefits and cons of hiring a dedicated development team?

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. Hiring a dedicated development team helps you in many ways. You also face some problems while hiring a dedicated development team.

First, let’s discuss the benefits of hiring a dedicated development team.

Advantages of hiring a dedicated development team

The main advantages of hiring a dedicated development team is a significant reduction in cost and time. Some of the other benefits are:

  • There is no need to invest in infrastructure as everything is already available with the dedicated development team.
  • There are no daily management issues as in an in-house model of development.
  • You get a team of professionals and experts who are hired after multiple ​stages of tests, interviews and evaluation.
  • You can employ cost-cutting strategies very efficiently while hiring a dedicated development team. You can cut or increase the number of members in the team at any stage of the development cycle.
  • All the stages of development are directly controlled by you. You can also make changes or bring innovations at any stages of development of the project.
  • You can carefully plan and assign tasks to each member of the team if needed.
  • You can access real-time updates on the project progress.
  • Hiring dedicated development teams is the best choice if your project is complex and long-term.
  • When you hire dedicated development teams, you will get to work with a more coordinated and affordable workforce that does not compromise on quality.
  • A replacement is always available if you think that anyone in the dedicated development team is not up to the mark.
  • Another important advantage of hiring a dedicated development team is, you can hire the team on an ​hourly, weekly, monthly or project basis.
  • Risk of a data breach is minimum while hiring a dedicated development team as ​most of them promise intellectual property protection and data security and will legally sign any related agreement along with a non-disclosure agreement.

There are also some cons to look into while hiring a dedicated development team.

Cons of hiring a dedicated development team

You should also consider some of the cons of hiring a dedicated development team. Some of the possible cons include the following:

  • This team model is ineffective for short-term projects, as the members need to adapt to the project requirements and this consumes time. Efficiency is also low for short term projects.
  • If you are hiring a dedicated development team from another country, communication barrier may be a problem.
  • The initial stage of hiring a dedicated development team takes time and multiple evaluations as you will need to search for the best team, compare price, reviews and ratings.
  • If you have changing project requirements, financial planning is difficult due to variations in cost estimates.

Now, another question remains:

How to hire a dedicated development team?

How to hire a dedicated development team?

The process of hiring an excellent dedicated development team is time-consuming. There are two stages of hiring a dedicated development team.

The first stage

  • The first stage is to have a thorough analysis of the requirements of your project before hiring a dedicated development team. Set priorities to your needs of the project.
  • Make an estimate of your budget.
  • Search the internet for the most rated dedicated development teams. Make acquaintance with past clients to know ​about the quality of their work and make a detailed​ analysis of the ones you have shortlisted.
  • Compare the rates of the dedicated development team you have selected.
  • Give priorities to the dedicated development teams with awards and recognition and that is flexible to work with.
  • Look out for the latest tech and infrastructural facilities, expertise in a variety of platforms and uninterrupted power supply and high-speed internet while hiring a dedicated development team.
  • Hire dedicated development teams with good project management skills such as prompt delivery time, focussed and adaptive to sudden changes in the requirements.
  • Hire a dedicated development team which is having secure encryption protocols for data protection.
  • Clutch and GoodFirms are a few examples of platforms that help you in searching for the best dedicated app developers. Conducting a search in these platforms helps you in finding the best dedicated development teams.

According to ​the project requirement, your quality expectations, budget and the timeline of product delivery,​ hire the right dedicated development team.

The second stage

After shortlisting a dedicated development team, there are some points to consider to ensure a good workflow.

  • Check the number of team members and analyse the skill set and field of expertise of each member.
  • The team members should be able to design engaging content to the users.
  • Look out for the team members who are focussed, reliable and experienced.
  • If time permits, you can ask the selected team members to show some past work or check whether they are fit for the project by asking questions related to the implementation of the project​.
  • Good communication skills are also an important part of hiring a dedicated development team. Members with adequate communication skills are a plus point of an excellent dedicated development team.

Now let’s discuss ​the cost of hiring a dedicated team.

How the cost of hiring a dedicated development team is determined?

Cost is always a deciding factor while hiring a dedicated development team. There are many dedicated development teams with varying rates.

The number of team members is a determining factor in the cost of hiring a dedicated development team. You can change the number of members at any time in a dedicated development team based on your agreement.

As stated in earlier sections, you can hire dedicated development teams on an hourly/ weekly or monthly basis. Cost of hiring is different for each method. According to your requirements and financial estimates you can evaluate which of these methods is a better option for your project.

The cost will also depend on the level of involvement of the team. There are various stages of product development. Product conceptualization, product design, product development, QA (Quality Assurance) and testing, product deployment etc. As the team gets involved in more stages, the cost will also increase​.

All these factors have an influence on the overall cost of hiring a dedicated development team.

What is the cost of hiring a dedicated development team?

The cost of hiring a dedicated development team is determined by the geographical location. Surveys ​show that the cost of hiring dedicated development teams from Asian countries such as India is low as compared to the USA.

Dedicated development teams from the USA charge a higher rate of about $150-$195 per hour, but South Asian countries such as India charge between $26-$35 dollars per hour.

The following table shows the estimated cost of hiring a dedicated development team.

Source: Clutch.co

Hiring the right dedicated development team is the first step towards the success of your product. ​AlignMinds Technologies is an award-winning product engineering company with a decade of success stories. We can help ​your ​businesses ​to get an edge on the competition and​ bring more revenue and recognition through innovative solutions. ​Contact us now!

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Want Your MVP to be Successful? 5 Most Important Considerations

Erik Ries who wrote the bestseller The Lean Startup says that the best strategy to dive into the Product-Market fit is by rolling out a Minimum Viable Product(MVP) and continuously iterating the same based on user’s feedback. This is the exact opposite to what we do today which is to release with what we think is our final and perfect product to the public.

This is not a wise idea!

“If you are not embarrassed by your first release, you probably spent too much time on it”

Here are the 5 most important rules for building a successful Minimum Viable Product(MVP).

5 Most important rules of building a successful MVP

1. Learning must be your goal!

MVP is the version of a new product which allows the team to gather a maximum amount of validated learning about the customers with the least amount of time and money. Your concept must be genuine. If you cannot explain it clearly and simply, don’t expect that your customers will understand it.

The important point is that you must have a clear idea about what you want to learn from this feedback. What problem your MVP is going to be addressed? Are your customers really like your idea or not? What is the important feature you would like to have on your product to solve the problem which you are planning to address? The problem you are choosing to get answers is the most important thing and chose it smartly to validate the results in build, measure and learn product building ecosystem.

2. Do not waste too much money

The whole idea behind building a minimum viable product is that you get a chance to review and improve your product before you are pouring a lot of money into it. So, you don’t need to release a full-fledged version of your product and instead, please concentrate on the main problem you are planning to get resolved or your core idea. It must be a cheap and not time-consuming solution to get feedback from your customers. You can choose the best-suited one from the different types of MVP.

3. Choose your target customers wisely

You will face more difficulty in finding the right customers if your proposed solution is more innovative. It’s not necessary that your proposed solution must be for everyone! You can share your MVP with the same people from your professional network who find passion in new ideas, give honest and constructive feedback. I am sure that they will give you an impartial opinion about the questions you are asking and will be the entry point to a wider section of your targeted customers.

4. Test, test, test and more test

If your assumptions are not correct, then there is a great chance that your MVP is going to be a disaster. Avoid it at any cost. The best way to get it is to test our MVP more and more. Your thinking will not always be the same as what the customers are actually looking for. Instead of assumptions, it’s always better to find an answer and validate every hypothesis even if it looks good. The more feedback you get through testing, the more you are closer to your customers’ needs and goals.

5. Changes make your product fantastic

“ Everybody has ideas, however, what really matters is having ideas to solve real problems”
– Orkun Ozbatur

Our ideas and views are so dear to us so much so that we always have a tendency to avoid the actual feedback from the customers. Most of their feedback might not be in align our ideas. This is the prime reason that many products are ended up by using very fewer people apart from us. The thumb rule is that if your product needs to be successful in the market, it must be liked and used by the real customers not us. It’s anytime a good idea to develop one which the customers love and are ready to spend their hard-earned money on it.

This article is written by Manoj Pillai, Head of Delivery at AlignMinds Technologies

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Building Social Networking Apps for Communities: Tips from Experience

Are you one among the lucky people who have spent their childhood in the 90’s?

If your answer is Yes, then you have all the reason to consider yourself lucky.

We are part of a generation which has transformed tremendously over a period of 2 decades. The magnitude of this transformation has touched almost all aspects of our lives. One of the most crucial aspects that underwent mutation was “communication and networking”. During my childhood, there were days when we had to wait for weeks for a person’s letter to reach you from abroad. The times have changed and so did the means of communication.

Starting with the mobile phone revolution, people started getting addicted to the concept of Mobility and Social networking. Interestingly, these are two of many domains that AlignMinds Technologies has expertise on.

I am sure you would be remembering the legendary “Orkut” which sparked the Social networking concepts worldwide. Then came Facebook which overthrew all existing social networking platforms and service.

Have you ever imagined what is the core concept of Social networking?

Undoubtedly, it is the users and the user communities that the networking platform caters to. Every social networking platform has a focus group who would utilize the platform to its entirety. The success of any social networking platform lies in identifying and customizing the services to satisfy this focus group.

Now that we have discussed about social networks in general, let’s dwell more into the types and peculiarity of each type of social networks.

Type of social networks

Social networks can be broadly divided as Open and Closed networking platforms.

As an example, let’s consider Facebook since it’s the most successful social networking platform in the IT industry now. Facebook is an open networking platform where users from all demographics ( location, language, culture etc.) connect, communicate and contribute to each other. This openness has been one of the key reasons for the success of Facebook. On the other hand, we have closed networking platforms which is aimed at a restricted set of users who are particularly interested in a domain of activity.

Not a long time ago, we built a social networking application called “TieIn” which is a closed community network that caters to the Sports community. The application creates an excellent platform for sports fans, teams, coaches, players and enthusiasts to create private or public communities. The app provides the ability to these users to share information inside these private or public communities. Information is shared in the form of a normal text post, video or image. This privacy and closed nature are considered to be the success mantra of TieIn application.

In fact, there is no specific thumb rule which ascertains the success of a social network. But from the experience of dealing with clients in the social networking industry, here are a few tips that may come in handy during the conceptualization and development of social networking applications:

How to conceptualize and develop a social networking app?

  • Analyze well and be sure about the focus group that the social networking application is being built for!
  • Make sure that you know the real “problem” that the application is solving – It may be connecting families or people in the same field of interest!
  • Make sure the application is not “overloaded”. Be simple and straightforward in the initial launch. Ramping up may be considered once the focus group has accepted the app.
  • Figure out what is that “extra thing” that can be gifted to your focus group. This extra concept should be something that is tough or practically impossible without using the application.
  • Trust your inner self – Evaluate the application by putting yourself in the shoes of the end-user and make sure you are overwhelmed!

Applications are built for a global audience and hence, nothing lesser than the best gets the chance to survive. So, it’s the responsibility of each team member to think out of the box and built apps that will make users fall in love.

– Anand Krishnan