CLIENT CENTER

What to Ask When Hiring a Web Development Company

by Bernard Kohan

Watch out for sloppy programmers

It is important to know that not all programmer's codes are the same. . . and not all programmers follow the same coding standards and business ethics.

In most professions when consumers' health and rights are on the line, there are protocols in place and licenses required from a government agency to allow a person or company to conduct business. Unfortunately, in the programming world, anyone with some coding skills can start his/her development company or become an independent contractor.

In addition to sloppy coding practices, there are many off-shore web development companies and independent web developers who may not follow the same ethical standards that a US based business must legally follow.

An impressive degree doesn't always equal quality programming skills.
If someone has a Masters degree, that does not mean he/she is a great programmer. Someone can be book smart but does not know how to code properly. I have seen programmers with Bachelors and Masters degrees in programming that cannot keep up with today's Web 2.0 complex programming world.

Look for clean, consistently written code.
It is good to know that it is likely that two programmers can accomplish the same result, one writing 10 lines of code and one only 3 lines of code.

An SQL Query can be written so sloppily that after five concurrent database connections, the SQL server or server's CPUs can come to a halt. A good database programmer can write a SQL Query that produces the same SQL result and the server can can handle 100 concurrent database connections without any server issues.

It is true that there is always going to be a learning curve for one programmer to study and become familiar with another programmer's code, but if the code is clean and consistent, comments are used and some basic coding guidelines and structure is in place, there shouldn't be any issues for another experienced programmer to be able to jump in and edit and extend a well put together and structured web application.

Does the development company follow coding standards and use a framework?
For example, here at Comentum, we set forth coding standards that every programmer on our team follows. This means that all of our programmers can easily understand and follow each other's codes. It is so seamless, that a team member would not know which team member has written a function, because we all follow the same coding guidelines and standards. Anytime we add a team member, he/she can jump in and start editing or updating another programmer's codes easily.

What are good questions that you should ask a prospective web development company?

• Will I have the ownership of the final program code?
• Can I take the final program code to another development company for future edits and expansion?
• Does the code come with proper documentation to allow for migration and scalability?
• Would there be a copyright issue, such as code that was copywriten by someone else?
• Are there comments used in the code that would provide ease of migration and readability by another developer?
• Are there coding guidelines and conventions in place?
  If yes, ask to see the coding guidelines and conventions documentation.
• Is there a structure and web application framework?
  If yes, ask for additional information on program libraries, tools and the type of framework used. Ask to see a sample of the project's folder structure with programming files in it. This should show how organized and useful their programming would be to other programmers. Make sure that the file structure matches a live project. You don't want to look at a fake file and folder structure.
• Is there a MVC Architecture? This method is a big plus and a useful way of programming.
• What type of quality assurance testing is in place and what methods are being used to do bug testing and fixing?
• What type of security testing and methods are being used to find and fix vulnerabilities?
• What type of stress testing and methods are being used to check the site's scalability and tolerance for large traffic growth?

The above questions are just a few important considerations when hiring a good development company.

Since many of these questions are very technical, it may be a good idea to hire an independent consultant to evaluate and ask these questions for you, and evaluate any answers and supporting documents provided by the developer.

Comentum wishes you good luck and success on your next web application project.

Copyright © 1996 - 2010 Comentum Corporation