How to Lose the Most Money When Buying Software Development Services

Here’s a fun one. How can one waste as much money as possible when buying software development services?

Not the type of question you expected, right? You may know someone who decided to invest in a digital project, and the whole project turned out to be a complete dumpster fire.

Don’t worry! This article will show you the exact steps to achieve the same results.  This guide applies to any digital product you want to build: websites, mobile apps, custom software, and even routine tech consulting meetings. Are you ready? Let’s go!

The first aspect you want to pay attention to is the SPECIFICATIONS WRITING

You should want to skip this step altogether and be firm about it during the first meeting. Your team will try to convince you otherwise, but you must keep strong. Otherwise, you will not waste money. 

If you still decide to write specs, be as vague as possible. Don’t listen to anyone is probably good advice whenever you want to fail. So don’t listen to partners and users or mention any scope. After all, you want to change it later on, right? 

Oh, and instead of detailing the features of your product, tell the developers you wish to copy the “X” application. DO NOT further elaborate on how it would apply to your product. Keep your team guessing and tell them you read that in Sun Tzu’s “Art Of War”.

The second step is the FIRST AGENCY MEETING

If you want to lose the most money, your main priority should be ignoring any feature-related issues and squeezing the tightest deadline possible. Moreover, withhold some critical information about your idea for fear the devs will steal your idea. Sure, you could make them sign an NDA, just like every sane entrepreneur out there. But that takes away from your overall mystique.

When it comes to meetings, don’t come prepared. Be a free spirit and come up with ideas as we go.

The next step is PROPOSAL ANALYSIS

Take as much time as possible to analyze the proposal. Two to three months is a decent amount of time. After not communicating with the developers for all of this time, contact them and ask them to start working on your project ASAP. Presume ASAP is right away. 

You get bonus points if you insist on maintaining the initial deadline even though you ghosted them for three months. Moreover, try to renegotiate the fee. Point out that you know some junior freelancers capable of doing it much cheaper. This will motivate the premium developers to reduce their fees.

Now it’s time for tips on interacting with your developers during the actual DEVELOPMENT time

Ignore the project manager and ask for your developers’ phone numbers so you can directly communicate with them. Don’t worry about the time of day you text them or during office hours. Devs are light sleepers, anyway. Don’t use email! Instead, ask your dev to install and use your favorite messaging app. They have one for each client; that’s how communication stays streamlined. 

Ask the developer to add or remove features regardless of their impact on the overall costs while keeping the project manager in the dark. Be as inflexible as possible regarding the deadlines and always refuse to pay for additional expenses. Schedule as many essential activities on release day and ask for changes to be made a few days before. 

Do not tell your devs about the press release where you promised things they can’t deliver. After all, programmers and devs might as well get their brief straight out of the news outlet. “But we’ve already told the press” is a great way to get your devs to instantly deliver faster and with more features than agreed upon.

The final step is POST-LAUNCH

Don’t plan any maintenance with your developers. If something comes up, call them. You have their phone number, remember? Stress out the urgency of the matter and expect it to be fixed overnight.

Ideally, you should have a second team of developers, or your in-house developer, working on the project simultaneously. If anything happens, you will have two resources working independently to solve your problems.

The final-final step

It’s time to be honest. All these things happened to us at one point, and we’re not the only ones. There’s no point in passing blame around, but these things happen. In the end, we both lost time and money. Most importantly, we get our teams through the grind or put their work through the shredder, which is how people get burned out.

Don’t put yourself in this situation. Avoid being “that client” if you wish to obtain the best outcome for your project. Find an agency you can trust and work together to build successful digital products.

If you relate to anything I said above, start looking for those behaviors during your next big project and avoid them as much as possible.

If you want our input on your digital products, feel free to book a free strategy call with Adi, Neo Vision’s CEO.

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