If you are looking for a customized software solution, the choice between a software development agency and a long-term development partner is crucial. In our guide, you will learn about the advantages of both approaches and how to find the right service provider for your requirements.
Are you considering having an individual software solution developed for your company, but you don’t have the in-house capacity or expertise to implement the project? In this case, choosing the right external service provider is essential – after all, they should competently implement and support the development of your individual software solution from start to finish.
But what exactly is the right kind of service provider? In such a case, many companies first think of a software development agency that can hopefully offer them a customized, all-round carefree package. And that’s not a bad idea in itself if the software agency really addresses your specific needs.
In this guide, we will show you how to find the optimal software development partner and which questions you should ask yourself before working with them.
What is a software agency?
A software development agency develops individual software solutions for companies. The range of services extends from conception and creation to implementation and maintenance. Working with a software agency is usually short or medium term.
Software agency or software development partner?
However, software development agencies are not the only service providers that develop individual software solutions. In addition to the agency model, there are also software development partners. The two concepts differ in a number of ways:
A software agency tends to work on a project-by-project basis, while software development partners are often more closely integrated into a company’s processes. A regular software development agency takes on more the role of an external service provider, whereas a software development partner becomes an extension of your team.
Comparison | Software Agency | Software Development Partner |
Collaboration | Project-based, short to medium term | Possible in the short to medium term, usually long-term collaboration, even across multiple projects |
Integration in Processes | Low, focused on delivery | Delivery focus, but integration as needed, from team extension to software department as-a-service |
Flexibility | Adjustment depending on provider, possibly deliberately limited | High adaptability |
Sustainability | Collaboration often ends after project completion | Continuous support (if desired), high integration and development of specialist know-how |
Services & competencies:
What you need vs. what you get
As mentioned earlier, custom software development agencies often take a more project-based approach. For example, there are all-rounders who cover everything from mobile apps to SaaS solutions, as well as specialists who only focus on web apps.
As a software development partner, we at Riwers take a different approach. Instead of focusing only on the product or project, we first ask ourselves how we can support you most efficiently. Then we either…
- set up a software team to support your team,
- set up a software department or
- take over the development work completely for you.
Depending on the scope, we then put together a development team with all the roles and experts needed to provide the specific know-how for your software solution. In any case, it is crucial that the service provider of your choice offers all the services and has mastered the technologies that are important for your project.
Specialist or different services?
In principle, it is advantageous if software development agencies or partners can offer different services. These may include, for example:
- Web applications & mobile apps
- SaaS products
- Modernization of legacy systems
- Management of data and databases
- AI tools & applications
We sometimes hear the objection that a company already knows exactly what it wants – and whether it wouldn’t make more sense in this case to contact a specialist directly. In some cases this is indeed the case. However, companies often either have no clear idea of what they really need when they want software developed.
Or they have a concept in mind that could be implemented much more efficiently and cost-effectively (with the same result) in a different way. The more expertise the service provider you choose has, the better they can advise you and adapt their services accordingly.
Technologies & methods at a glance
Before you hire a software development agency or partner, you should ask whether they use the right technologies and methods in combination with the services to make your project efficient and future-proof.
It is also important that a software development agency uses industry trends and new technologies such as generative AI, which will become a decisive success factor in the future. Another criterion is that the agency or partner works with agile software development methods.
For example, Riwers relies on Scrum, which enables us to make constant optimizations during the development process, to react flexibly to changing requirements and to significantly shorten the time to market. In addition, we never lose sight of scope, budget and schedule and can ensure that these goals are achieved.
Top 5 Questions:
How do I find the right software development partner?
Software development agency or partner, all-rounder or specialist – to help you make an informed decision, we recommend that you consider the following five questions in advance:
- How long and intensive should the collaboration be? Consider in advance whether your project requires long-term or short-term support and find out whether the selected partner offers appropriate models.
- What technical skills and expertise does the partner bring to the table? Make sure that your software development partner has the skills and knowledge that are relevant for your project.
- How flexibly and efficiently does the potential partner work? Make sure that your software development partner uses agile methods such as Scrum to be able to react flexibly to new requirements. Equally important, however, is that they still have a lot of experience in achieving the set business goals (scope, budget, time).
- What is the management overhead? Find out exactly how your development partner works: for example, how much effort is required for coordination, and do they also have the capacity to do this?
- Where is your software development partner located? Many software agencies recruit internationally to counteract the shortage of skilled workers and save costs. However, this can have an impact on your project, especially if the location for software development has significant differences in work culture or time zone.
The partner should be locally trusted and approachable, yet able to deliver and be reliable, e.g. with its own development team in nearshoring. For example, Riwers’ headquarters are in Switzerland and we work with development teams close to our home country, in our case from Slovakia.
Why nearshoring?
Nearshore software development is a flexible and economical solution that can save you up to 40 percent of the cost of an in-house team without compromising on the quality of training or alignment of cultural values. Other advantages of nearshoring include high scalability and short-term availability without additional HR costs.
Procedure & cooperation:
a possible roadmap at a glance
The procedure during the cooperation also plays an important role. You may already have guessed: the more structured it is, the more efficient it is. A software development agency or partner should be able to provide you with a clear roadmap in advance, showing you the individual steps to the finished product. This way, you can plan better in advance, even if changes are still made during the process.
Even if there are individual differences, the basic framework for a reliable software development partner always looks similar. For example, we follow these steps:
- Requirement analysis (technical and functional) & workshop to clarify the project scope
- Software development concept & detailed process planning (from the first release to the finished product)
- Assembling the development team (so-called onboarding) & starting iterative software development using the MVP approach for early feedback
- Testing & QA (quality assurance) during development & continuous integration until the final roll-out
- Sustainable approach and long-term partnership with maintenance & continuous development of your software
In our experience, the last point in particular is a crucial factor if you want to use your individual software successfully and efficiently in the long term. Depending on the industry, the demands on your tool can change dynamically – you should have a software development partner at your side to support you, so that you not only benefit from a short-term competitive advantage, but also tomorrow.
Software development: agency or development partner?
It depends on your goals!
Do you need high-quality custom software that is precisely tailored to the needs of your company? When choosing a service provider, you should first find out exactly what services, technical know-how and structured approach they offer.
If you are faced with the choice between a software development agency and a software development partner, the most important thing is how much value you place on long-term, collaborative partnership and flexible support.