Tips To Get Started With Custom Software Development

4 min readJun 7, 2022

What is Custom Software Development? It unifies designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining software that is customized for users, functions or organizations. It defines the set of requirements like field service equipment for a manufacturer, an online booking app, an on-demand delivery app, an on-demand tutor, an on-demand handyman, banking application for the customers.

Alias Custom Software Development (CSD)

Custom software development is also called tailor-made software development or bespoke software development. In-house development teams outsource third-party plugins and third-party APIs. All the processes and technologies, programming methodologies, and technologies applicable to general software development are the same as custom software development.

Custom Software Development vs. commercial off-the-shelf software

In contrast to this, the commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) aims to narrow down the service requirements like in Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Photoshop, Windows 10 Operating System, Norton Antivirus, TurboTax, SAP, Oracle, Integraph SmartPlant etc. Therefore, while starting with a new project, the organizations must look into the cost, the security, the developer, and the business processes that they need to perform.

Custom Software Development vs. General Software Development

Custom software paces with the same momentum as a normal project — requirement gathering, designing wireframes/mockups/prototypes/blueprints, constructing code, quality assurance (testing), code deployment (maintenance). All this is wrapped in a procedure (programming methodology) like (1) Agile Software Development, (2) Lean Software Development, (3) Kanban, (4) Rapid Application Development (RAD), (5) Test-Driven Development (TDD), (6) Extreme Programming, (7) Spiral Model, (8) Rational Unified Process, (9) Spiral Model, or (10) Waterfall Model, as any other software project.

What does CSD include?

Custom software development includes:

Customizing Applications — Curating custom off-the-shelf applications to suit individual requirements.
Modernizing Applications — Maintaining the viability of business according to market demands.
Managing Applications — Making software more effective and efficient by implementing installation, updating, optimizing, and performance and service desk functions.

What is the need for Custom Software Development?

It is pertinent to consider technological necessities, the development and maintenance process, the return on investment, and all the considerations to manage organizational change irrespective of your development journey. A tailor-made solution (Mobile App/Website) can act as a strategic internal business tool.

It might happen that during your development process, you require third-party application programming interfaces and a logical approach to integrating it with your inherent application. You will require documentation to understand how it works, its challenges, possibilities, and related investigation. Often delayed response and support requests follow.

You will need to understand the effect of the return on investment (ROI), the development and maintenance process, the impact on staff and the demand for technologies.

Why is Custom Software Development important?

Custom Software Development is important as it helps meet organizations (or individuals’) unique requirements at a competitive price. The cost to create a custom software comes out to be less than the cost to purchase, maintain, and modify custom off-the-shelf software (COTS).
Custom-built software applications do exactly what they are meant for. They are preferment and efficient.
Custom Software Development grows with the organization.
It is very well integrated with the processes, aligned with every step and incorporates factors.
It lets designers, and developers assess and justify their future needs as part of the requirement gathering process. Therefore, it does not include the incurring costs of purchasing licenses, and subscriptions to packaged applications.
Can CSD work with legacy software? If yes, the organization can save some costs. If not, the organization will have to further invest in getting commercial software to operate and communicate with their existing infrastructure.
Businesses that own software is able to license or sell it to other organizations.
By developing custom software, organizations can save costs, and avoid price hikes for licensing, and support.
Organizations can also save costs by avoiding price hikes in case a vendor terminates a product/software.

Use Cases Custom Software Development

Open-source software source code like Linux enhances development productivity due to component reuse and interoperability
Cloud-based software development brings the best features of cloud computing to software to control costs and speeds up applications.
Artificial Intelligence(AI), and Machine Learning(ML), into applications through APIs and services from the cloud.
Open source hyper ledger technology (Blockchain), into the applications to accelerate business processes.
Low Code techniques, to reduce the need for coding and enable developers to create applications at a low cost.
Analytics is helping users to handle big data through dashboards, predictive capabilities, and visualizations.
AI and cloud computing ease the incorporation of analytics into the applications.

Conclusive: How to make custom software development effective?

An organization must be aware of the following:

Do they actually need a custom application?
Is a software solution already available that serves their needs or the needs of their customers? Will they be able to support and automate it periodically?
Will they be able to handle information and data specific to the industry that it caters to?
Will it facilitate integration with legacy software applications?
Will it replace or consolidate with existing applications?
Will a replacement enhance productivity?
Will their CSD enable new opportunities or improve competitive advantage?
Will it scale up and adapt to the changing requirements?

The cost to support and maintain a custom software goes back to the organization which creates it. Therefore, every organization that is willing to tailor-make software must look carefully at whether they should build or buy such software. For having a better understanding of custom software, talk with Custom Software Development Companies. They will help you to figure out whether you should buy it or build it from scratch.

Originally published at https://apnewstime.com on June 7, 2022.