Tag: BUSINESS

Top Ten Startups In The Logistics Industry

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Running a shipping and logistics company is not easy, especially when it comes to startups since small business owners do not usually have the needed resources to cope with all concerns the logistics process involves.  Still, lately, the tech times have arrived and things have dramatically changed.

By using cutting-edge technologies, not to mention big data, machine learning as well as artificial intelligence and business intelligence combined with completely different approaches to the way people run businesses, tech startups have managed to significantly reduce costs, increase flexibility and effectiveness, therefore streamlining all operations. What is more, the tech network logistics sphere has also reached the highly competitive mobile world.

As mentioned in the opening, different tech startups have cropped up within the shipping, supply chain, and logistics industry. As a result, there have appeared a number of promising startups, in which venture capital businesses invest millions of dollars or even billions of dollars. Below, we have hand-picked top ten logistics startups that are definitely worth mentioning.

But before we get into any specific chain and logistics examples, let’s quickly go over the main idea what the term “unsexiest trillion-dollar startup” means. In fact, these days, this term can be seen almost everywhere when it comes to the web and mobile world shipping and logistics industry. It means that from the unpopular, not-perspective industry (meaning freight, which used to be too complicated, boring and poor) the logistics services app has risen to a highly famous startup bringing its owners trillions of dollars.

Thus, the top tech 10 unsexiest trillion-dollar startup companies are:

  1. Uber Freight. Being an Uber-based startup, Uber Freight is a great, smooth yet elegant logistics and transportation app that helps truck drivers to find loads easier and pay them in a faster manner. Surprising it is, today, there have also appeared dozens of tech startups calling themselves the “Uber for trucking”.
  2. Dispatch. Established in 2015, Dispatch is a fancy autonomous robot that was specially crafted to automate the last-mile delivery. Simply speaking, it’s a small delivery service with a high tech twist. What makes this app so cool is the fact that it’s a carefully thought self-driving delivery. To deliver different kinds of items, it walks at the pace of pedestrians on sidewalks and bike paths. You can check the real time location of Dispatch carrying your item. Plus, you will be notified once it arrives. For now, the robot solving the last mile travels around US only, but things keep changing and more and more locations are expected to cover soon. So, don’t be surprised if you happen to see this robot in the area. By the way, just for the record, this unique robot is smaller than ordinary people, it is about 100 pounds and has four compartments.
  3. Cloud Van Lines. Being end-to-end SaaS logistics software to manage household moves, CLOUD VANLINES totally covers all business operations of an average logistics company. To put it simple, this secure and feature-rich chain and logistics platform covers everything logistics household has to deal with on a regular basis: transportation, loading, unloading, as well as packing, and unpacking.
  4. Haven. It’s a state of the art freight marketplace, which has changed the way people transport goods. Haven lets shippers bid on guaranteed shipping container capacity, therefore saving up to 20%. In most cases, freight carriers get the best freight quotes among bidders. Today, this freight forwarding company has become truly worldspread and yes, it is for ocean freight and air freight carriers.  Picture this: it runs around the world, taking 15 of the top 20 ocean carriers and freight forwarders.
  5. Transporteca. It’s an amazing web logistics platform that allows shippers and consignees to compare prices for shipping and check transportation rates from freight forwarders. The service was established in Denmark and currently, it includes tracking and transportation and logistics options from Asia to Denmark only. Still, we have to admit that it’s a rather promising startup, so new coverages are expected to appear soon.
  6. Shippo. This novel state-of-the-art shipping application was specially created for e-commerce businesses, both small and big, to facilitate the shipping and everything it concerns. In fact, it lets business integrate shipping with multiple carriers through their API and handy web application. Thus, you can easily and effortlessly track all your shipments with it.  The other good thing to mention about Shippo is that it covers both domestic and international shipping. Today, it can be said for sure that it makes global shipping fast, simple, and rather cheap.  
  7. Zipline. Founded in 2014 in San Francisco, Zipline is a tiny autonomous life-saving robot. Yes, this robot airplane (a “zip”) delivers medical care. Surprisingly, that’s a real small airplane that can vaccines, medicine, or blood from one location and deliver to other medical facility or to the locations, which are hard to access or to completely inaccessible ones. Currently, these electric drones have saved hundreds of lives across the United States, but don’t have global logistics. Let’s wait and hope they will appear in the other parts of the world as well.
  8. DoorDash. It’s a robust, consistent and easy to use platform that lets small business owners offer restaurant deliveries in a charming and convenient manner. In other words, it helps small restaurants easily deliver its foods and beverages in a simpler, cheap and fast manner. Currently, this has more than one million customers and it keeps improving and growing.
  9. BlackBuck. This novel software platform offers a seamless experience for shippers and fleet operators by aggregating freight to transport goods between cities. Needless to note, the freight here always involves large goods and covers everything from trucks to trains and ships.
  10. PiggyBee. This logistics tech service connects people who want to get or send something with the help of travellers. It’s one of those small businesses that offer a rather innovative and unusual goods delivery solution.

Anyway, these are the killing startups in the freight, shippers and carriers apps we have come across so far. By the way, if we have missed any of outstanding logistics or transportation management app that has gained a competitive advantage, please share them with us in the comment section.

P.S. Got a wonderful chain management startup idea? We, at Unicrew, can transform it into reality. Join the ranks of the most promising startups, feel innovative and tech-savvy!

First Time Outsourcing

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Calling all business owners who consider outsourcing service for their development! It’s truly an art to get the right outsourcer: to benefit from this kind of product development, you need to make sure that you have chosen the right IT partner or you risk to run into nothing but trouble.  

Wondering why? Below, you will find the most common pitfalls business owners might face if they are not launching a profitable home-based business, but happen to choose the wrong outsourcing software development company for their projects. So, please have a more detailed look.

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Key pitfalls the improper outsourcing can bring:

  • Horrible bugs that results in application errors and customers dissatisfaction
  • Lack of realization of expected cost savings
  • Poor process automation
  • Unhelpful customer service, which is constantly unavailable
  • Big project delays costing you lots of time and money
  • Lack of proper communication in the team, which results in misunderstanding or unwanted changes within the project

With this in mind, we have to admit that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There can appear more serious problems should you contact the wrong company. So, it’s obvious that you need the right software development partner. Save big when you outsource the right way, preventing most unforeseen problems. To help you with that,  below we have handpicked some tips to consider when launching a profitable business with an outsourcing team.

Your business can easily surpass competitors failing to see the advantages of the proper outsourcing should you outsource the smart way. Major considerations for effective, smooth, and result-driven first time outsourcing are as follows:

  • Define your clear project vision and state major requirements. Never start outsourcing until you know what you need. You have to fully understand what your product requires and how the outsourcing development team can help you. Have each and every requirement listed in a detailed fashion.
  • Set realistic expectations. Who would mind having the cutting-edge business-centric solution delivered tomorrow? But we all know that is hardly possible. To eliminate pitfalls and common risks, make sure you always set realistic deadlines and scope of work for the given period of time.
  • Know your team. Get to know more about every member of the team you are going to work with. Hand-picking candidates for your project is a smart way to go.
  • Determine the required budget and do not overdo it. Before signing the contract with the outsourcing partner, ask for a free project development calculation and make sure that all needed features are included. Once stated, follow your budget and never exceed it.
  • Monitor, control, and evaluate all the processes. Stay in the know with everything happening to your product during development, testing and deploying.
  • Mind the time and culture differences. If you outsource, your development team might be sleeping while you are awake or vice versa. Bear in mind the time difference when deciding upon vital meetings. Sometimes, it’s better to double check that the outsourcing team manager has understood you correctly than to believe he or she has.
  • Think outside the box. To take your projects from average to amazing, both you and your IT partner have to think outside the box. Remember that when choosing the right people to work with.
  • Invest in the training and development. Ensure the people managing your campaign remain competitive, update their competencies in all skills needed on a regular basis.
  • Collect some information about your outsourcing partner. Check its case studies, find what people think about it, make sure its site is easy and fast to navigate. By the way, if you want grandiose, partnering with Unicrew is highly recommended. It’s an expert software development company boasting customer-centric thinking, which helps businesses find their sweet spot of creativity, productivity and making money. Time to achieve something really unique and meaningful with Unicrew, which is featured by many independent resources as a top software development company!

Unicrew is featured among Clutch Global Leaders 2017

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Unicrew is featured among Global Leaders 2017 in the web and software development space at Clutch, an independent B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm.

The research is based on verified clients feedback and expertise metrics, and names top performing web and software developers. As it is mentioned at Clutch, to identify leaders, they use the methodology which evaluates companies on their ‘industry expertise’ and ‘ability to deliver.’

For the determining industry expertise, the platform measures such criteria as services offered, client base, case studies, awards received, social media presence. While the ability to deliver is evaluated by the clients’ review. It is conducted as a personal interview between Clutch business analyst and a client reference.

Though software development is a huge field, Clutch has performed a very extensive research, making us be especially proud to be presented as a leading provider amongst so many strong companies.

And a few feedback our clients share with Clutch: 

The full information can be found at the official Clutch press release and the explanation of their methodology.

About Clutch

A B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC, Clutch connects small and medium businesses with the best-fit agencies, software, or consultants they need to tackle business challenges together and with confidence. Clutch’s methodology compares business service providers and software in a specific market based on verified client reviews, services offered, work quality, and market presence.

 

Advanced process and productivity management infrastructure

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

You might think that to reduce risks and set up right processes in the development environment, it is enough to choose the right methodology for your ultimate project. It is also known that no matter which programming languages the development team uses, the right software development process these days is almost always agile. At Unicrew, we are aware of this, but agile software development is not the only way to go with. There are still projects, which software development life cycle requires another development methodology, like waterfall, iterative development, the spiral model or rapid application development (RAD) with prototyping or other.  

Anyway, the main point of this article is to highlight that it’s crucial to remember that despite the methodology applicable to your project, all the processes have to be unified. Smooth, straightforward and result-driven workflow is something your technological partner has to provide you with. Plus, a well-designed functionality and security are always winning factors for any product development provider.  

Why Unicrew: Competence and Development Tools Used

We at Unicrew understand the value of right infrastructure applied to the process of software engineering.  Conducting different work from requirements analysis to building software architecture and novel functionality, we understand how important are security, transparency, and communications. They directly affect the quality and productivity of your team. There are a bunch of professional tools and instruments Unicrew uses to deliver first-class services. In total, we can divide the instruments we use into the following categories:

  • Software design and development
  • Testing and quality
  • Security and performance.

Tools Unicrew Uses During the Software Development Cycle:

  • Atlassian Jira – robust project management system, which is also a good task and test management system.
  • Atlassian Bitbucket/Git – cloud-based source version control, which makes it easier for the whole team to simultaneously work on one issue and to switch from one version to another without any hassle.
  • Slack – powerful team communication tool, which significantly improves the working processes.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 & 2017 and PHPStorm – IDE platforms, which boost product development, analysis and design.

When it comes to security and performance, there is also an array of professional tools our team uses. The most widespread security and performance tools are as follows:

  • LastPass – the leading passwords management system, which keeps all your vital data protected.
  • Google Drive Apps – secure online cloud applications, which are used to increase productivity.

To achieve A-level quality every our development process includes software testing. Quality Assurance and Effectiveness tests conducted by our team help us remain assured that all our products perform at best. The tools we use on a regular basis are:

  • TestRail – modern test case and test management software tool, which helps us release bug-free products.
  • Codeship – fast and secure hosted Continuous Integration service, which boasts a set of already pre-installed and ready to go CI dependencies, making it easier to get started, manage teams and streamline projects.
  • TeamCity – popular build management and continuous integration server from JetBrains, which comes with a vast selection of developer-oriented options, taking the team’s performance to the next level.
  • Atlassian Jira – powerful system, which is useful for test cases.

Anyway, as you might see, the development life cycle of any top quality product requires different tools. Gain a competitive advantage with Unicrew, which masters all the needed tools for outstanding product development. Partner with our dedicated team and you may count on the  following benefits:

  • Premium quality products tailored to your ultimate needs
  • Better collaboration with our project management team
  • Bank-grade security
  • The possibility to solve your real business challenges, always remaining on top of what’s important.

So, to make your product clear, transparent and productive, Unicrew is a way to go.

How to Find the Right Web Developer

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Need to find a developer for an app? Wondering how to find who designed a website? Urgently want to find a startup partner? Don’t have the needed technical expertise to check your candidate? With so many options and alternatives on offer you simply don’t know how to act, right?

First and foremost, stop feeling overwhelmed, here comes the way out! Check this!

To make your products or projects worth bragging about, you need to find the right team who can put all your ideas into reality. With thousands of web developers on market, the main concern you might face today is how to find not only the top talent but the right team for your needs. Below, we have handpicked the list of things to do before you get started with the hiring process. By performing these steps you’ll be able to find web developers for startups or already existing businesses without any hassle.

But before we go further, consider this: these suggestions will be useful both for those who need to hire a freelance web developer or a team member on a day-to-day basis.

And now, let’s dive in! 

Steps to follow to find the right candidate for your project

Determine your ideal candidate:  to help you with that, take a look at any web developer profile sample and analyze which skills your ideal candidate should have, professional and personal. The better way is to have a consultation of the web agency, analysing your particular case, they will be able to recommend the most optimal skillset.

State the particular position requirements: think about all duties and responsibilities the individual should be able to cope with. Think also about the roles of quality assurance engineer being involved into the development.

Decide upon the preferable way of cooperation: decide whether you need to hire staff on an hourly or ‘per project’ basis. For saving reasons, it’s recommended to hire a dedicated developer.

Don’t work directly with the freelancer if you feel you are not enough tech-savvy: we are not joking! Please take this issue seriously since a person might provide you with a good looking piece of work containing multiple bugs or internal errors which you’re simply not aware of. Choosing an outsourcing company not only eliminates those unwanted surprises but also simplifies the whole process of staff finding and hiring.

Get the full picture of the person you are hiring: browse the candidate’s CV, have a look at the Linkedin web designer profile description and company’s profile. Plus, it would be wise to take a peek at the freelance web designer portfolio.Having a closer look at his or her list of implemented projects also seems like an important way to go. Don’t forget to check the Upwork web developer profile.

Make sure your future team member is reliable enough and suits your business needs: It goes without saying, but we remind you to ask the candidate you would like to hire or a company to provide you with the recommendations from  their clients.


Anyway, these are the key steps to follow if you really wish to find a freelance developer or a dedicated developer that will suit your needs. Meanwhile, whilst looking for the perfect candidate can be a daunting task, one thing remains clear: to erase unwanted fears and worries in the stormy sea of web developers for hire, you should choose a reputable outsourcing agency, such as unicrew. Our technical talent has the needed experience and expertise to guarantee you the highest-quality software development services on time and on budget.

5 Things You Should Know Before Developing a Web App

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

The product you work on is definitely going to achieve groundbreaking results. The audience is ready. Marketers are ready to launch campaigns. Investors are ready to finance the idea.

The only thing you need is to develop the app. And to hire engineers. And to manage all the tasks. And to control the quality. And to do plenty of other things.

Here is the list of Top-5 things every business owner should consider before developing an app.

1. What is your marketing and monetizing strategy?

You should think about it while planning the app development. That’s vital to create a successful app. What’s your monetization model? How will you attract new users? Answering these questions will help to build an app from scratch and to create an app which makes money.  

2. How to build an effective team? 

The informational technology industry is highly competitive in talents acquisition. Even when the project is well financed, the hiring can turn into the nightmare. This is one more important thing to consider when designing an app. One of the cost effective solutions is outsourcing to a development company. An outsourcing company can provide your business with all specialists you need. Such companies have strong expertise in projects of different kinds. Outsourcing solves the issues in the development process and in the project management and talent acquisition as well. All of that affects the final result and helps to achieve the business goals smoothly and faster.

How to choose an appropriate outsourcing company? 

3. What development company fits to your goals? 

Believe it or not, some founders search the way how to code an app for free. Still, you really can reduce the expenses sharply with the outsourcing. A team of professionals can both give you tips for developing an app and help to overcome challenges when developing your app.

Experience with similar projects is also vital. The portfolio of your potential vendor should include at least 5+ projects (applications, websites, etc.), which demonstrate the experience needed for development of your application. 

Most of the outsourcing companies provide customers with several types of cooperation models. How to pick one of these models is also what you need to know before developing an app.

4. To find the most efficient business model 

The efficient business model is among things to consider when developing the web apps.

Dedicated team business model enables you to communicate with your team in real time. It’s good for fast growing startups.

Managed engineering team relieves you from controlling the processes. You see the results and measure the efficiency. It fits perfectly for enterprise companies.

Fixed project development provides you with the predictable information about time and costs. It works good for startups and SMB, and can be applied to small and medium projects.

5. What are the real budgets, both time and money? 

One of the most important things to keep in mind while developing an app is the time and cost efficiency. It’s very easy to dive deep into ambitious dreaming. Meanwhile, the money will be spent not as wisely, as it could be.

What do I need to make an app firstly? What is you MVP (Minimal Viable Product)? What are my primary business goals?  These are the things to consider before starting an app development. This will make your business healthier and more result oriented.

So, keeping the efficiency in focus is what can make an app successful.

Projection by Unicrew

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Projection is an estimation tool being developed by Unicrew that aims to simplify and radically improve an accuracy of projects estimates by integration of easy to follow estimation techniques within an organization. Projection’s primary goal is to bring transparency to the estimation process and enable organizations to track their past estimates and continuously improve over time. The prototype of Projection is to be publically presented at RISE, Hong Kong.

The main idea of Projection is to simplify the process of estimation and in a few steps demonstrate realistic expectations in terms of time and budget investments that a project requires. In addition to this, Projection’s analytical metrics are to allow leveraging insights from organization’s previous projects and forecast new ones with higher confidence. Organizations historical estimates and projections are being stored in the one place, enabling easy access to analytical data whenever needed so that every new project endeavour can quickly benefit from past projects.

The Projection also targets to ease collaboration with other team members during estimation, allowing project managers to involve teammates, like software and quality assurance engineers, to the process and be sure their contribution is relevant. But streamlining an estimation process is not the only goal of Projection but also to help sales managers better collaborate with development teams and in one click convert their technical estimates into ready-to-send commercial proposals. Once the project is approved, Projection can also take care of routine operations, such as transferring high-level tasks and requirements to a task tracking system of choice, populating all the estimates and then tracking the progress.

“We promote business transparency at each level of technological partnership. It’s a part of our business philosophy to continuously improve our operations by leveraging the power of simplicity. Estimation is, essentially, the most decisive stage of a project that is often to decide its chances to succeed and, unfortunately, very few organizations can claim to have at least barely standardized approaches of projects’ evaluation leading to a phenomenal amount of failures. Our primary mission with Projection is to radically change such state of things in software development industry”, said Tural Mamedov, Co-Founder and CEO of Unicrew.

Requirements Elicitation

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Have you ever traveled from Lviv to San Francisco, you might know that no direct flights are connecting these two cities. And if you once would like to get to the city by the bay, the booking system will offer you several options for through flights. It can be through Warsaw and Chicago or Vienna and Frankfurt or even other combinations of transit cities. Checking all possible ways, you surely will find the one, which meets your expectations.

In other words, to get successfully and in time from point A to point B you have to know your final destination, properly estimate your time and take into account other details that can influence your way. And Voila! You are there.

In this article, we’ll briefly explain what goes before the estimation process, which is commonly called requirements elicitation. 

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Software product development is also a way from an idea to a release. Every project request comes as a significant white space opportunity that makes us think about expectations regarding a budget, timelines, and a work scope. Even being very experienced in logistic, medical or other fields, new requests never fit the patterns. It has to be analyzed and individually approached, how tritely it can sound. 

The first stage of the product development life cycle is a communication between a company and a client.  The more right information you have got at this stage, the better it helps find the right solution and deliver a technically and economically feasible product as an outcome. This, of course, may lay to a bit longer development kick-off but should save a lot of time, nerves, and money from a long-term perspective. 

So, a technology company has received a request for software development. Thus we are at point A. At this moment it is important to study the existing situation and available resources. Does the company have to develop the project from scratch or have to proceed with a third-party code? Has your client already got any work in progress? What kind of real expertise is needed?

It is strongly recommended to customers to have their thoughts and plans on paper. This will allow getting a fair estimation, based on the same information, from different providers rather than getting them based only on not enough clear discussions. That should help clients find the right vendor and a team.

The next stage is determining the desired result. In our case, that is a point B in the picture. We have to understand exactly, what an idea and a project aim are. What issues it has to solve and cover? And thus what do we expect to have as an outcome? At this stage, customers have to understand clearly what they need and expect to get. Very often it is difficult without correct questions, being asked and properly answered.

Perhaps, this is a common situation for a lot of IT vendors when clients come with great ideas and readiness to start the development immediately without being enough specified with requirements. A step-by-step approach implies to begin with a detailed specification and project estimation, and only after proceeding with their implementation.

As an example, a HIPAA compliant project from a medical field can be mentioned. Usually, it takes more effort for developers and QA specialists to make their work properly. All these should be included and presented in the estimates. 

This is a study of alternatives. All stakeholders have to understand what is expected from each of them as the project progress. As you can see in the picture above, the way from point A to B can be different; it can be straight and short or may require a much longer way. The goal is to choose the most effective option from among available and provide the expected deliverables in the most cost and time-effective manner.

This is also a stage of analyzing the requirements, choosing the best technology fits the implementation and right specialist to be engaged in the project. After evaluating all these factors, the right efforts will be applied.

As an example, a simple website can be developed based on a few CMS platforms, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal. It can be also developed without any CMS if a real intention for the future is to scale the project with various features. Usually, customers come and say that they want a website on WordPress, but if they go deeper to understand what should be done eventually, we realize that WordPress is not a good option.

Except all mentioned above, all parties have to understand realistic deadlines.

Sometimes technical specification is underestimated. But as practice shows, having it clear, saves a lot of time in the future for all stakeholders. 

Having got and summarized the received information, we are ready to prepare a software requirements specification, and, thus the project estimation. This means you are aware of the budget and timelines. But that is a topic of another blog article.  So let’s keep in touch.

unicrew Has Joined Lviv IT Cluster

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

unicrew (former Artelogic) was founded in 2012 and since that time provides a full spectrum of software development services to its customers. Company’s portfolio consists of more than 5 years of experience, more than 100 completed projects, most of which have become profitable and continue extending their functionality.

Two startups were sold for $3 millions in total value in an early startup stage. This year the company has also launched its own startup. But the main pride of unicrew is its team of professionals whose day-to-day work allows for building a genuine technology partnership with customers and partners all around the world.

unicrew’s engineering expertise is not industry or country-specific, but the top vertical markets the company deals with are logistics, healthcare, finance, and data management. Among customers are companies of different sizes and geographical locations, from startups to established enterprise corporations.

Currently, unicrew is represented in 4 countries with offices in the US, Poland, Singapore and the HQ and development center in Ukraine.


“We are glad to become a member of Lviv IT Cluster, as we believe in the power of partnership towards achieving broader goals. Beyond doubt that a mutually shared idea can unite and empower people to shape a better future, and with all our efforts we endeavor to be the part of the community that advances the IT industry in Lviv to new exciting opportunities” – comments Tural Mamedov, CEO and co-founder of unicrew.

Get It Right: Fixed Price or Fixed Quality?

Posted on by Volodymyr Khitsiak

Have you ever heard this from a software development company: ‘Dear client we are experiencing some turbulence. Please, fasten your seatbelts’? What to fix, what to fasten and what to lose in order not to hear this phrase from a software development company, which is piloting your project. One of the most sensitive issues is a price. Along with other factors, it can markedly affect the project flow.

In everyday life when it comes to a price, shoppers know it exactly before they are in front of a checkout lane. The same situation can be regarding to a lot of services. Usually, we feel psychologically more secure and confident when know in advance how much this or that will cost. But this approach doesn’t work in the same way for all businesses. For such industry as software development, that is not so easy to determine the final budget. This difference is specific to the field. Standing behind checkout lane, you usually know what you buy. Developing a software application, you might not know from the beginning the final work scope or be able to realize that a project flow needs systematic adjustments.

While a client is thinking about a cost, a software development company has to think about a pricing model convenient for both parties. Does a client really need a fixed price or simply want to know a possible minimum and maximum of a budget to evaluate its competitiveness? There are two types of pricing models in the IT industry. Both of them have their own pros and corns. These are fixed pricing model and time & materials model.

So when is it better to fix and when to choose more flexibility?

The idea of a fixed price is that a supplier has to deliver a defined product to a customer at a predetermined price. This approach has its own advantages. It can be considered as an option to go with when a project is small up to one week of work with very well defined requirements and a clear work scope. In a case when a vendor has the similar projects in its portfolio, it also allows to rely on an experience and quote a fixed price.

But this approach implies strong experience and proper application of a risk reserve. Otherwise, it can lead to risk connected with estimation and thus to a serious quality loss. Choosing a fixed price, you have to remember about its disadvantages. This is a lack of flexibility, which means that once a work scope is approved, you do not have any possibility to change the way it develops. Basically, that is a closed book contract. This all is especially risky if that is the first time you collaborate with a company and are not sure about the transparency of all processes.

If you prefer flexibility or simply your project requires regular adjustments, adding new features, prioritizing them, the advice is to go with time and materials. This approach to pricing calculation means that a company charges the client based upon the work performed according to the following standard hourly rates. This approach is highly recommended to use for long-term projects, which last for more than 2 weeks. This will help you to adjust your work scope and influence it every 1 or 2 weeks. The concept of time and materials contract is more client-friendly and focused on the project and its quality. Mainly because of the possibility to prioritize order of features,    

The time and materials pricing model has also its disadvantages. For a client that is a risk to go over budget and over timeline. Choosing time and materials model client has to be provided with accessible and transparent tools for tracking time and expenses in order to be fully aware of the process within a project.

What experience do you have regarding price model? Which one do you prefer?