It’s easy to see that we are surrounded by digital products today. While some of these products easily surpass the three-year mark, many of them fail before reaching that. There are countless reasons why a product succeeds or fails. If you are on a quest to develop an app or website or planning to work with IoT, you need to know all your options before proceeding.

When you are in a situation in which you don’t have sufficient help from your in-house (or you may be small enough that you don’t even have an in-house tech team), you may choose to take advice from the outside. But many people find it hard to decide on a potential partner. It is essential for you to ask them some questions to determine the right candidate for your unique project.

Question 1: What is the process that you follow when you create a product?

You have to first understand the objective of what you are planning to build and this is the first aspect that you need to consider. It is imperative for companies to give agencies all the required information, including business goals, that are necessary to build the product.

Agencies should know that their work is not 100% complete once the client launches the product. It shouldn’t be, as the users and data analysis team can only offer certain feedback after the product is rolled out on the market. Marketing, design and development teams should not be working without technical assistance. Organizations need to maintain fluid communication with each other. This way they can organize their tasks and objectives well.

It is quite common in the design phase to observe shifts in the product’s end goal. When this kind of situation arises, agencies should be ready to adapt to the changing needs. They should be able to restructure the whole process to get the best possible result.

Question 2: Who are previous clients?

One of the best ways to get to know the agencies you planning to work is to ask whom they have worked with before. You will know how they handled the challenges that they faced during the process and get a sense of how the final products turned out. Creating a great product is impossible without the agencies gaining experience and learning lessons from the mistakes that they made in the past. The reason why you need to do this is that you do not want the agencies to make any significant errors while they are working on your product. You also want assurance that the development team is competent in the expertise required for your product by comparing your plans with what they have accomplished.

Question 3: What do your clients think about you?

You definitely want to get references from clients to understand what their previous and existing clients have to say about the company. Choose to use review sites like Clutch to find out more about clients. You should consider conducting phone interviews with both previous and current clients to gain some knowledge of how the firm works, notable strengths and weaknesses.

Question 4: Are you working with User Research and User Testing?

User research and user testing are the two most important aspects of development for the product to become successful. When you are building any new product, it is essential for the designer and developer to offer the users experiences that are a great fit for the needs of the users. Getting into the user’s shoes by researching and testing is essential. It is necessary for you to polish usability and the whole UX experience if you want to add value to the product that you create.

Question 5: What Is Your technology stack and development process?

Since building a product requires you to invest money, you need to make sure that it is generating long-term revenue. Though the product you create will help you get started, you need to understand how the agency made it.

The first thing that you need to ensure is that the code is readily available for everyone on the team to check. Secondly, the development team needs to test the code before publishing it on a user-visible version. The agency needs to be open to feedback and make necessary changes. You need to find an agile company, which has a development process that they build around techniques that can provide business value in a short period of the time.

Question 6: What projects are you are working on now?

The product can only be successful when the agency has an interest in your company from the day you went and knocked on their door. They need to be eager to help you and your product to succeed. When you see that an agency has a lot of clients, it is an indication that they are in demand. But, if you find them interested in you even when they are busy with other’s work, it tells you that they are capable of handling more significant projects.

These are some questions that you need to ask when you are searching for a top software development agency.