Buying software development is a real nightmare for many companies
We have seen the software industry for a long time as a vendor and a supplier. I dare say that we have the appropriate experience to comment in this area.
Let's get to the point. The software industry has been broken for a long time. We are talking here mainly about customised software, not SAAS products. Many companies need customised software development. For some it's just a website, but many need much more advanced solutions.
Software development is mainly sold as agile development and so-called waterfall development. Both have their good points, as well as their bad ones. Agile is a trend of recent years, but in this hot wave of digitalisation it has driven many companies to buy mainly problems. Large companies, that is, those converting more than 100 million euros/dollar, may not experience this problem, but the group of companies that represent a large part of the business world, that is, those converting between 5 and 50 million, they usually have limited resources and can't afford to burn money on software development.
With limited resources and expertise within the company, it is crucial that buying is safe. The waterfall model and fixed prices were first seen as a solution to this. When that didn't produce the right results, an agile method and different prices for different expert resources were invented. It was kind of easy for the seller and quite safe too. But if the buyer doesn't know for sure how the resources should be used to get the desired result, there's a big risk that the agile model and open wallet will lead to trouble.
But this is not the only reason for the software industry's poor reputation. I would argue that the biggest problem lies in the fact that software companies, in their greed to make money, sell resources to anyone. They don't need to understand the business because it's just easy to make a deal for resources. All the risks of the vendor have been successfully buried under agile development. The risks have been transferred to the buyer. This should not be the way it is.
Somewhere along the way, SaaS products started to take off. This is not to criticise SaaS in any way, it's its own thing and there's a place for it. SaaS software really does solve a large part of the software needs. We probably wouldn't be here either if we couldn't use SaaS applications in our business. But really, SaaS is not the solution to this need for custom software. So there's still a problem in this sector that those agile development and waterfall development mentioned earlier are related to.
We approached this challenge by asking what is good and bad about all of the above?
We discovered some really good stuff in all of them. But there were two things missing. Easy to buy and easy to customize at the same time. So we decided to look for a way to bring them together.
This is how the VaHa method was born. It is a combination of simplified software development and high-quality support. We don't offer everything to everyone, but we have the know-how and understanding of the needs of industry and wholesale. That's where we can deliver superior solutions and customer service that customers love.
Read more about the VaHa method.