Overcoming the 3 biggest challenges startups face in software development

In the world of software development for startups, hiring talent and prioritization are the biggest challenges, according to the latest report by Coding Sans.

A survey conducted by Coding Sans asked 126 tech people working for startups about problems they face in software development.

The three most common challenge facing startups in software development according to the survey are hiring talent along with prioritizing development, and capacity.

1) Hiring Talent

To overcome the challenge of hiring the right talent, Coding Sans’ report says the best solution is “to hire a head hunter or agency and also to use professional connections to get talent on board,” as well as allocating “more time for hiring and posting job offers on job websites.”

Business News Daily reported last year that “more and more employers are partnering with staffing agencies, which take a lot of the time and effort out of the talent search by providing their own workers for open roles.”

However, traditional hiring agencies aren’t for every business, and the emerging gig economy is swiftly filling this gap.

Having personally seen the inefficiencies in the marketplace for hiring services, entrepreneur Neil Sandhu founded his own on-demand hiring startup, Hire.Bid, as a creative alternative.

Read More: Hire.Bid uses gig economy to flip professional services marketplace on its head

The platform inverses the traditional model where professionals race to the bottom with low bids (and resulting low service), instead allowing clients to bid for the services of high-performing professionals.

2) Prioritizing Development

The second biggest challenge facing software development for startups is prioritizing development.

According to the Coding Sans report, “The number one way to handle prioritization challenges is by listening to potential users and existing customers by doing interviews and conducting surveys” while “hiring a dedicated product manager or spending more time on product management is a possible way out from this challenge.”

Dedicated product managers are also hard to come by, and that goes back to the whole finding talent question addressed above.

When looking for a good product manager to prioritize development, Yuxi Global’s shared development services manager Renata Aguilar likens a product manager’s “must haves” to the characters from The Wizard of Oz.

“There’s three essential elements for any Project Manager: heart, brains, and lots of courage,” she writes. “Those three ingredients are essential in the PM world.”

Balancing passion with analytic thought and the courage to see it all through, the team at Yuxi Global is an emerging leader in software development services focusing on IoT AR/VR and simulation, Mobile, and Big Data.

3) Capacity

Once hiring talent and prioritizing development are tackled, working towards capacity is the third biggest challenge for startups in software development.

The most widely used way to overcome capacity issues, according to Coding Sans, “is to keep product development more focused, only paying attention to things that are aligned with business goals. Hiring more people and outsourcing are also practices startups use to handle capacity issues.”

In a way, the three biggest software development issues facing startups piggy-back off of one another. Start with hiring good talent, which will lead to solid product managers who know how to prioritize, and from there you can maximize capacity.