1. Introduction
  2. Why bother with choosing a developer company?
  3. Key features you should look for

    3.1 Website and portfolio

        3.1.1 Portfolio

        3.1.2 Specialization and skillset

    3.2 Agile Methodology

        3.2.1 What is agile methodology?

    3.3 Communication

  1. Functional Programming 

    4.1 What is functional programming and how it differs from OOP?

    4.2 What implications of functional programming are especially suitable for business?

    4.3 What are the downsides of FP?

  1. Conclusion

Introduction

Choosing a good developer team is essential for the company, thus providing the consumer with a reliable and user-friendly product and overall making an elaborate project possible in the first place. However, choosing a development company that would suit your particular needs is a hassle and a half, which is why we would like to provide you with a piece of advice on how to choose the developer wisely and, apart from that, talk a bit about the job of functional programming.

Why bother with choosing a developer company?

If you do not have enough tech experts and software developers to make your dreams of a successful application come true, you might want to leave the stuff to the professionals. When choosing a team, you should be particularly careful and consider a ton of things. Moreover, you are better off not choosing the cheapest offer out there on the market, as it may result in poor communication, inexperienced team members, and the overall defectiveness of the code, resulting in you having to pay for its “revival” in the long run.

So what are the key features you should look for when searching for a reliable development company?

Key features you should look for

Website and Portfolio 

After you’ve done your research, you might want to take a look at the company’s website to collect every piece of the essential information you need, and that is:

Portfolio

Check the number of years the company has been working in software development to get a clearer picture of its experience in the field. Apart from the mentioned, don’t hesitate to ask the company for its client history to see all of the company’s successful cases and the industries it has been working with, so you could look for specific skills required for your project. If needed, you can always contact the company’s previous clients to ask them about their experience with the development team.

Specialization and skillset

Having an experienced developer team is sadly not enough. You always have to keep in mind your particular needs for the project, meaning paying attention to the skills the company possesses is vital. Furthermore, you better look for companies with a bunch of business skills, so the team could be more agile to your enterprise needs. Speaking of agility… 

Agile Methodology

Agile Methodology is getting increasingly popular in the last few years, crowding out traditional methods of development. But what is Agile Methodology and what does it imply?

What is Agile Methodology?

Agile implies following certain requirements and solutions through collaboration and evolutionary development. The key values of Agile are:

  • Interaction over tools
  • Software over documentation
  • Collaboration over negotiation
  • Responsiveness over a plan

Simply put, Agile implies constant changing and development evolution, consistency, close team communication, and the quality of the software as the primary goal and provides a great deal of flexibility. More about it here.

Communication 

Communication is of utmost importance in the development process, as it helps with planning, financial management, clarifying, and prioritizing. You might want to get a good grip on the communicational part of your enterprise for things to work out the way they should. 

Apart from that, integration is quite important as well, as if you cannot provide a common ground for some of your employees to work on, you want to make sure you share management tools, use the full potential of Agile, and contact the team daily.

Functional Programming

When choosing a trustworthy development team, you might want to consider paying attention to functional programmers rather than object-orientated. Not to say OOP languages are bad by any means, but with some complicated tasks FP might suit your needs better. But why so, and what is functional programming even?

What is functional programming and how it differs from OOP?

Functional programming is constructed by creating and implementing functions, thus mapping values and certain rules and restrictions for the program. In more familiar terms now, the key difference here is that the FP is programmed to solve the problem like mathematicians do. It use pure math functions to calculate trends, or verify data. FP logic is more direct, while in an object-oriented approach there are some artificial objects, which are introduced to create the solution. So, the code looks more complicated. The functional programming languages are Haskell, Erlang, F#, etc.

What implications of functional programming are especially suitable for business?

Functional Programming Languages offer much more flexibility in the fields of blockchain, biotech, and finance, thus being a perfect choice for these industries. Moreover, FP languages have proven themselves to be of great use in banking, advertisement, etc. 

FP languages provide code far superior to that of an OOP language, with much more diversity and division. The amount of code is vastly reduced, which means fewer bugs, and less operating time and resources spent on its development. With the code being shorter and more comprehensible, it is much easier for new members to dive into it, meaning teaching new team members will be less of a hassle.

That is not to mention all the new features FP poses which OOP does not. Scala, being a relatively young programming language, has loads of interesting features that you won’t find in any other OOP language. 

What are the downsides of FP?

Nothing is perfect, and functional programming is no exception. The main issue with FP is that it requires a great deal of mental effort to put up with, as every programmer and human being is more used to thinking in object-oriented terms. 

The second issue is due to the first, and that is a lack of companies that specialize in FP and a lack of information on the topic.

Conclusion

Choosing a development team is a big responsibility, but following the previously mentioned rules should make it a little less of a trouble for you. Whether you choose OOP or FP is only up to you, but the general idea behind being successful in your choice and business is always the same – open mind and creativity. 

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].