I've got a few ideas for iPhone applications and just have a few questions re: the outsourcing of development. I've got a background in project management, marketing and branding but very little knowledge of programming so need to hire someone. Any advice on the following would be great!
1. What should I look for when choosing a developer? I'm guessing success in submitting applications to the app store would be a must.
2. Is it okay to hire someone from overseas (currently live in Australia) or is it better to find someone local?
3. Is there anyway to protect my ideas? Due to the fast paced, changing nature of the app store I'm guessing patenting is slow/unsuitable. I guess a developer witha proven track record would negate this.
4. Can I dictate that payment will only be made once the App is live on app store or is that unreasonable?
5. I've seen on sites like this and getafreelancer that development cost ranges from about $200 to $2000. Is that a true indication of pricing? I realise there are additional costs in branding/marketing outside of this.
6. How do you get your applications featured in the What's New section of the appstore, or does this happen by default?
7. Is there a set of guidlines anywhere about what Apple will accept/not accept? I've seen lists of rejection criteria but nothing officialy from Apple.
I know this is a big list and thank you in advance for any advice you can give!
1. I have done several project though site like you mention. You really have to watch for people overstating their abilities. Look for people with a good reputation on the site you are using. Of course, they need to be able to show experience in the area you are looking for. In your case, if they can't point to apps they have on the app store, skip them.
2. Of course it is okay to work with people from overseas. In fact, I am in the US and am working with two clients from Australia. Just keep the time zone difference in mind, and things go just fine. Plan for everything to take a little longer. The clearer your specs are up front, the better things will go.
3. Nothing practical.
4. Yes, you can. In fact I would insist on that. There are guys out there that demand early partial payment then slow way down on development if they ever finish at all. State upfront that payment is made only once the project is complete and set time lines. The key to outsourcing is over communication.
5. Depends on the app, but I would say this is a fair range for the typical project on these kinds of sites. Sure, dev can run much higher for complex apps, but a lot of the work I see out there is fairly straight forward. For 200, I would not expect a working program. Figure 500 as a bare minimum.
6. You get lucky.
7. That is a black box far as I can tell. There are some rough guidelines we have learned, like don't try and compete with an Apple app, but beyond that, who knows. If you look around the app store, it is pretty clear the standards are not that high.
My concern with outsourcing is the protection of IP. It doesn't take much to sign up iPhone development membership. Although most developers are honest, you have to ask what if the developer keeps your code, improve it, and sell it or publish under his own name?
This truly happens. I remember many years ago, Apple contracted some company for the early version of QuickTime. That contractor then got hired by Microsoft for V4W, and used the QuickTime code. There was a lawsuit and Apple won. So, this happens to big companies too.
Since I am a developer myself, the solution is simple. I never outsource the complete project. Instead, I break down the project into several smaller ones, outsource to different parties, then do the integration myself.
I do that to both my desktop apps and iphone apps.
That involves a fair amount of brain exercise on how to break the project into smaller independent pieces.
It is difficult to protect your ideas already. There are copycat apps everywhere, whenever a new idea shows up. At least, I want to make sure my competitors have to go through the same amount of work, instead of buying code from my contractors.
I have been working with a team in the Ukraine for the last 2 months and our project has been going very well. My advice would be to:
1) Know exactly what you are looking for, ie have your application completely thought through. if you are not a programmer by background odds are you are not used to really thinking through every single feature of your application. If you do decide to outsource development, you will have to do this anyways so might as well do it now.
3) Create specifications for what you are looking for and get multiple quotes divided by amount, hours and time required for each step of the process. this will give you a clear idea of who knows what
4) Definitely make sure they have prior app experience, preferably related to what you are doing
5) Pay by milestone, not by project. You want to be able to control quality from their end.
I am documenting the entire outsourcing process and lessons learned so you can find out more like legal and contractual tips here
1. Must is the developer should have posted app to AppStore, if not by himself. Coz many people work for clients and the client take care of code review and the legalities to have it on AppStore. If you want end-to-end solution then best is to with someone who has an app in AppStore developed and published by himself.
2. if the developer is not in same city or say personal meeting is an issue, then their is less difference between local and remote. Both works, local with an advantage communication could happen within same timezone. However, the developer could agree to overlap couple of hours in your timezone.
3. I believe, if you have thought of some idea, then surely someone else too. Difference is, you are doing something about it, others might just talk or have already done it. No offense intended and neither trying to discourage, but this is just my opinion.
I suggest put down your comprehensive requirement and keep it with you. Break it in couple or more phases (versions). Share your entire requirement and business need at "highlevel" with the developer. This should give the developer what your are looking for. On getting a comfort level after first or second round of discussion, share complete spec of requirement only for 1st phase. Keep 2nd/3rd/4th phase with you. Do not disclose everything.
This way your app size would be smaller, cheaper and will get on AppStore quickly. You'll get to know the complex process involved. Once app is there on AppStore, subsequent phases could be developed and released as diff version of same app on AppStore.
If the app is non-free, then by the time the 2nd and 3rd phase gets developed, your already start getting some revenue generated. Basically, ROI and that should able to fund the future development.
4. Yes, you have all the rights to work on your terms. However, there is a huge difference between a ready app (working per your requirements) and getting it up on AppStore. There are still so many hidden reasons for which Apple "could" reject your app unless you are ready to accomodate the suggestions the describe.
5. Per "shan" - bare minimum 500 and rest on the app.
6. I believe your app should show up in the "what's new section" if there are not too many apps approved around the same time, and lastly you should be lucky :-)
7. Read blogs and collect info from other people experience.
I myself a iPhone developer, recently started hence have less knowledge on most of the things. Though I work for an organisation based out of US though development centres both in US and India, the primary business is based on OutSourcing, dealing with NDA, protecting the Idea and IP is taken by the contracts and agreements. Within a couple of month, I should have couple or more apps on AppStore and then should be able to contribute more to the community and forums.
I suggest if you prefer to protect your idea go with an organisation which is well established and has presence in the OutSourcing world for quite a few years and most important get a know-how of its clients. Such a thing should talk about the credtibility of the organisation and developers you work with.
Long time app developer here with tons of successful apps in the app store.
1. Add to the list Mac / Cocoa development experience. If the dev has never touched the iPhone, but has a few quality Cocoa apps under his belt, I would pick him in a heartbeat. Cocoa is very similar to iPhone development, for all practical purposes.
2. Depends on what you're doing. For a small project that you've thought through really well and have written a great spec, you can go overseas. If you, instead, want someone to think through the design issues with you--make good decisions without being told what to do, etc., stay within the English-speaking world at least.
3. Idea is nothing. Execution is everything. A simple NDA clause is pretty standard in my contract, but I prefer to work with non-paranoid people.
4. I would NEVER get involved in a project with all payment at the end, unless it was VERY short (<20 hours). Let's say you offer me $5k to develop a midsized app, payment at the end. From my perspective, that's a risk (I don't know you're actually going to pay me $5k; I don't know you from anyone). Should I spend that hundred hours working for you, who may or may not pay me, or for myself, who gets the whole cut from Apple? This is a no-brainer.
Remember, lots of people want to write iPhone apps. Very few people can. And the people that can are busy writing their own apps. The ONLY way to get their attention is to reduce their risk. Any iPhone developer who agrees to payment at the end is either desperate or stupid, and neither is a very good quality in the person making your app.
Standard clause in my contracts is 4-5 milestones, with payment due after you accept each milestone. You get to see the work in progress, and I get to see that yes, you actually are going to pay me. Worst case is I'm out 10-15 hours at the first milestone, and then I halt work until we settle up. Worked great so far. Nothing wrong with having a milestone after the app passes Apple's review, if you feel so lead. I just want to make sure you're not some vagrant.
5. iPhone development is pretty hard. Anyone charging below ~$30/hr is either desperate or stupid. The top-100 developers can charge whatever they want and still have a line of people around the block to pay them. The mediocre guys who still get it can bill anywhere from $40-$100 an hour and have plenty of work. Any less than that and you're going to end up with someone really underqualified who has no idea what they're doing. You don't want that guy coding your app, if only because it costs the next guy twice as much to clean up after him.
Remember, you've got to offer people more than what they (think they'll) make from the app store. Otherwise, they'll go write apps for the app store.
6. This happens by default. There's some amount of science to releasing at the right time; anyone who's got successful apps in the app store can probably give you some advice on this.
7. Again, any developer worth his salt knows (both from experience and from Apple's secret guidelines) what is / isn't allowed. There's a lot of gray area here, but... Unfortunately, you have to sign up as a developer to even find out. Most of it's UI-related, but there's a lot happening on the technical end as well (often: there's simply no API to do something, so it can't be done). Typically in any project there's at least one or two things you want to do that simply can't be done and still pass the review process. Your developer should identify one or two of these prior to the quote stage. If you've gotten that far without any inkling of trouble--watch out! You're going to find out only at the end of the project that we can't actually access the mail database, or vibration can't be used in a game, or the toolbar can't be at the bottom, or... Not to mention that your developer is an idiot because he should have thought this through five months ago--what does that say about the rest of his code?
this is related to the outsourcing question, do the companies that are paying to have their apps outsourced, usually share their distribution profiles/certificates. the reason I ask is b/c I'm beginning to have potential clients and am trying to figure out the best way for letting them upload the application in iTunes connect w/o ever having to deal with building and codesigning.
for those of you who develop, do you install multiple certificates on your computer and/or those of you who outsource apps, do you willingly give your distribution certificates to developers?
this is related to the outsourcing question, do the companies that are paying to have their apps outsourced, usually share their distribution profiles/certificates. the reason I ask is b/c I'm beginning to have potential clients and am trying to figure out the best way for letting them upload the application in iTunes connect w/o ever having to deal with building and codesigning.
for those of you who develop, do you install multiple certificates on your computer and/or those of you who outsource apps, do you willingly give your distribution certificates to developers?
For smaller, one-off apps, sometimes I'll release the app myself and pay the client a cut.
For larger apps (or when the client just wants control), I walk them through signing up with Apple (I've got 5+ page PDF that walks them through how to sign up, who to call to move things along, etc). If they want to sign the code themselves, they certainly can, although most people aren't tech-savvy and just want me to do it.
For smaller, one-off apps, sometimes I'll release the app myself and pay the client a cut.
For larger apps (or when the client just wants control), I walk them through signing up with Apple (I've got 5+ page PDF that walks them through how to sign up, who to call to move things along, etc). If they want to sign the code themselves, they certainly can, although most people aren't tech-savvy and just want me to do it.
Two questions to follow up...1) are you willing to share that PDF that you have and 2) for the people who don't want to do the codesigning, do they give you their keychain certificates and distribution profiles?
5) Pay by milestone, not by project. You want to be able to control quality from their end.
To this I would add, make sure you are creating automated tests for each of the requirements. Especially for outsourced work, test driven development is a good automated way to stay on top of quality and requirements.
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Mobile Applications Development Services - iPhone, Android and BlackBerry
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4) I can share you how I find few valueable developers and designers:
Post description of your project on some freelancing sites, describe enough that any quite experienced developer can figure how much time should it takes but not enough that someone can easily steal your idea. If you made it clear lot of offers should be received. I usually receive 15-30.
Price range is often huge eg. from $500 to $5000 so I pick up few in the middle $1000-$1500 and contact them with much more detailed specification. Usually I make some mistakes in that (not on purpose) and something is always unclear. Good developer will immediately catch that and ask more question, so you will eliminate those who didn't find that.
Than I have 4-5 ones who I agree to start with. They all are informed that they are paid only by milestones BUT I can quit after first one so they will not feel surprised or cheated. Sometimes one or two don't agree for that and its totally understable for me.
After first milestone you will definitely see who is going to create your app in best way (comunication, speed, quality, overall approach etc.). Of course you need to spend few hundred $ more to pay for all first milestones but its really worth it.
Of course build minimum viable product but is obvious for every one without huge budget I guess.
I know finding good developer for affordable price is very difficult, especially for people who has no coding or designing skills, so I presented my way, hope it will help someone.
Help with outsourcing iPhone development
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