1. Lack of Technical Specifications.

Often, startups and some companies, after acquiring long awaited budget for their ideas, order development with burning eyes without agreeing on the Specification Document. It seems to them that everything needed to start is in place - video materials, slides, pdf files, perhaps even product screens drawn on a piece of paper. So in general, all info that is clear to them, but not clear to those who will have to implement it.

When they transfer this package of documents to the development department, their developers’ heads start to spin. They have to put together a puzzle without seeing an overall picture and with lost details left in your head leads to a something that terrifies you in the end. Despite that potential problems will arise for sure, the developers take on this project, put it in together (based on what is available) within their department and start working. And then a well-known story happens — " move this toilet a little to the left."

Long nights of testing are on your side. The agonizing days of fixing what you decided to redo, for developers turn into shifting deadlines and flying out of pre-agreed budgets. After all, otherwise your whole idea is down the drain, it will not bring money and you will be punished by the investor.

Do not save time and money on the preparation of Technical Specifications. Without a clear map, your ship will wander the seas for a long time at best. In the worst case, it simply will not start its sail at all.

2. Maintaining tasks in the task tracker and constantly updating them.

Don't forget, developers are humans. A single control center must exist, otherwise the trajectory of your project will be blurred and unpredictable. Tasks should be documented in lists accessible to the entire team (it is best to use the task management systems Jira, Trello, Asana, etc.), divided into sprints (1–4 weeks, depending on the project) and always kept up to date, otherwise you will not see progress on your project, and the whole team will move like electrons in the orbitals of atoms.

3. Lack of architecture in the project.

For the entire team, the beginning of the project is considered when the preparation and approval of the Technical Specifications has been done. However, the development department takes on the most difficult tasks during the creation of your product. You can say this is 80% of all the work that will have to be done. Such a voluminous and technically complex part of your product can't be without its own internal regulations, which should be thought out before you start all the work. Therefore, if developers do not spend time thinking through the architecture in the project, you can forget about scaling it in future, and new developers will refuse to maintain it, or will have a long time getting into your project. In general, again we return to the fact that the miser pays twice.

4. Lack of encryption.

Unfortunately, it is rare for developers to undertake such an interesting and useful task as data encryption. Some projects, it certainly can not hurt. But wherever there is authorization, the exchange of personal data or the implementation of money transfers - this can harm not only the product, but also all users.

Of course, the responsibility for data leakage and theft of funds will not be borne by the developers who have met their deadlines, but by the owner of this service - simply speaking, yourself.

We emphasize that these are not the only vulnerability your software will have. Therefore, listen to the advice of the developers regarding this point, especially if they say that it is necessary.

5. Lack of UnitTest.

As you know, no one likes to pay for something that they don't see with their own eyes, especially when the price tag increases by 1.5–2 times. In this regard, many teams exclude such an important item from the estimate as unit tests.

Unit tests are another software product that developers place next to your project to maintain the stability, clarity, and quality of your core IT product. They act as project documentation for developers, a tool that allows them to easily and quickly find errors in the code caused by non-trivial and non-planned behavior of users and the system, as well as ensure the stable operation of the project.

In the course of increasing the project, there are often errors that take not minutes or hours, but days and even weeks. This can also be avoided by using unit testing. Your order will certainly be executed by the team, but as a product it will be far from perfect — annoying bugs and scalability of the project will be a headache for you and the developers, which will be very difficult to get rid of.

6. Ill-conceived use of ready-made solutions.

Another way to save time and money — (re)use something ready-made. At the moment, there are a huge number of ready-made solutions in all sorts of areas and the temptation to use them is too great when it comes to small budgets and deadlines. Of course, there are quite a lot of useful tools that have been tested by a large number of people and they must be used for their intended purpose. But, for example, when a site, game, or mobile application requires access to a database, and the funds are only enough for the development of the front-end, often outsourcing companies or freelancers turn to ready-made server solutions. It leads to slow applications, complex, and sometimes not real scalable data store for your project depends on continued support and development of third-party tool by an independent company, the performance of which you are unlikely to influence in the event of its closure.

Finally, I can add that all of the above points always can be omitted and most likely you will get a working product, but it will be far from perfectly functioning product, and attempts to improve it, even if they will lead to the desired result, will entail significant costs.