Proprietary software is often seen as the holy grail for companies, a sure sign that they’ve “made it.” Ushering in digital transformation establishes a business as technologically advanced and innovative, while simultaneously boosting the company’s overall value.
However, when creating a software development budget, many upstart businesses tend to be overly cautious, leading them to spend more money in the long run. A tight initial budget doesn’t account for project changes that will inevitably crop up during the developmental stages.
Overhauls in software and app development can result in higher long-term costs when the necessary capital isn’t available from the onset. According to a 2020 report from the Consortium for Information & Software Quality, unsuccessful software projects cost companies $260 billion, and software systems with operational failures cost $1.56 trillion.
Building more budget into the front end of software development can help you anticipate failures and properly allocate resources to make the software successful. I connected with Mohan Karunanidhi, Consulting Director for Propel Technology, who has expertise in helping businesses navigate the processes of sourcing software and managing projects, including offering innovative ideas to solve budgetary problems.
When creating the budget for propriety software, here are three things that Karunanidhi recommends businesses consider:
1. Set expectations on what your software will accomplish.
What does the team want the software to actually do? Are there specific problems that the software will solve? How will it do so? Are there experts in-house already, or does a person or team need to be hired to help develop the software? Outlining the goals of the software and having an in-depth understanding of what it will do is an essential first step in establishing your budget.
“Budgeting for a software solution should be preceded by budgeting for a hypothesis or a proof of concept,” Karunanidhi said. “Having a deeper understanding of the requirement by identifying and onboarding the right people with subject matter expertise and industry experience is critical to having a keen sense of budgeting once the hypothesis is proven.”
2. Consider the end-user experience.
Who is your software’s intended user, and how will they use it? A key component in software development comes from real user trials and feedback implementation, where the trials are repeated until the software is completely dialed in. Conducting trials and integrating changes into the software require capital. If enough isn’t set aside up front, a business can—and ultimately will—lose funds from having to recreate its product or from a lack of product sales and revenue.
“A constrained budget will have a direct influence on time and quality—the triangle factor that stays relevant until this date,” Karunanidhi said. “When it comes to budgeting, the optimistic part of the human mind tends to associate only with the best-case situations. With so much to accomplish on a restricted budget, incompleteness and inconsistency in requirements are frequently uncovered later in the development lifecycle.”
Karunanidhi went on to say: “Failure to construct for scalability and test the solution is particularly damaging because the potential delay happens at the end of the development lifecycle, making recovery impossible. A limited budget forces the compression of many deliverables into a short period of time, diminishing the possibility to construct an application based on feedback from actual users.”
3. Create a realistic timeline.
“When is this software needed?” is always the big-picture question. But between now and the deadline, myriad risks and problems can occur, and they need to be budgeted for. You must widen the scope of work to include the “what ifs.” What could happen? What expectations does the team have? What kind of hiring and training is needed? Roughly 20% of software development is spent fixing problems that likely could have been avoided if a larger budget had been created.
Tight software budgets cause headaches for everyone involved because they directly influence the time and quality of the product. Budgeting with an optimistic mindset, as opposed to a realistic one, only allows for best-case scenarios to play out in development. The lifespan of production in software requires a lot of work. Attempting to accomplish it all on a restricted budget leaves room for an incomplete and inconsistent product, factors that are often uncovered later in the development lifecycle.
Failure to account for scalability and test the solution is particularly damaging because the potential delay happens at the end of the development lifecycle, making recovery impossible. A limited budget forces the compression of many deliverables into a short period of time, diminishing the possibility of constructing an application based on feedback from actual users.
As an example, Karunanidhi explained that a tight budget caused a company to build an app for users on only one platform. Later, the company discovered that the application should have been designed as a cross-platform solution (on iOS, Android, and the web). The software had to be redesigned for cross-platform user expansion, a consequence of starting the project with a too-conservative budget. This ultimately cost the company more money because it delayed the time to market for all platform users and affected users who had already used the application.
The new businesses that think incorporating propriety software into their companies is a sign that they’ve “made it” are forgetting a few things about software development: To truly “make it,” you must understand what your software solution aims to accomplish, onboard the right team to achieve your goals, and create a budget that allows for trial and error to fix problems as they arise. Ultimately, creating a larger budget for development will prove that your business has truly arrived.
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What if you could build an app for your company without having to hire expensive and hard-to-find software developers? That’s the promise of low-code and no-code platforms: wresting the power to solve workflow problems from the hands of the engineers. Can you imagine? “Now,” says David Adkin, co-founder and CEO of no-code platform Adalo, “entrepreneurs can solve their own problems.”
Still, there are a few things worth knowing if you want to join the revolution. We’ve interviewed experts in the field to bring you some critical tips to going sans code
Overcommunicate
Even low-code apps require planning, governance, and training, according to Rachel Brennan, VP of product marketing at the Washington, D.C.-based software firm Bizagi. Loop in your IT and legal teams to monitor security, compliance, and scaling concerns associated with new software.
Beware Shiny Objects
Tara Reed, founder of no-/low-code school Apps Without Code, suggests test-driving different tools and choosing one that matches your skill level. If you already have design experience, she says, “pick a tool that gives you lots of freedom with design.”To guide your decision, see “Tools to Try” below.
Unlock Your Full Potential
No-code and low-code aren’t just for consumer-facing products. Ed Macosky, chief innovation officer at IPaaS firm Boomi in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, advises leveraging these platforms’ AI and machine-learning power to automate workflows for internal teams.
Don’t Be Shy
Don’t try to perfect an app before bringing it to market, says Emmanuel Straschnov. The founder of NYC-based Bubble says no-code platforms like his enable entrepreneurs to iterate faster and collect more data than with traditional coding, so it’s worth getting user feedback as early as possible. Just be sure not to store any personal information like credit card or Social Security numbers on the app.
Tools to Try
Adalo: For creating native mobile apps
Bubble: For those who need flexibility
Glide: For making your very first app
Webflow: For creating websites and landing pages
The Treasury Department on Monday sanctioned a cryptocurrency firm with ties to a North Korea state-sponsored hacking group for allegedly facilitating malicious laundering—marking the latest retaliatory measures against so-called virtual currency mixing services, which effectively obfuscate cryptocurrency transactions to make them more difficult to track.
In a statement Monday morning, the Treasury announced it was sanctioning Ethereum-based Tornado Cash for allegedly helping to launder more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency since its creation in 2019, effectively freezing U.S. assets on the platform and barring Americans from using the service.
Laundered funds included over $455 million stolen by North Korea hacking ring the Lazarus Group in the largest known virtual currency heist to date—when North Korean cyberattackers stole some $620 million from an Ethereum-linked platform for NFT-based video game Axie Infinity in March—the Treasury said.
On its website, Tornado Cash says it has helped nearly 40,000 users obfuscate transactions through more than 150,000 deposits that help “achieve privacy” by using smart contracts to route funds to an address with no ether balance and then send it to a new public address that has no link to the original sender.
In a Monday statement, the Treasury’s Brian Nelson said Tornado Cash repeatedly failed to impose effective controls and “basic measures” designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors and pledged to continue to “aggressively” pursue actions against mixers that launder cryptocurrency for criminals.
The move follows the Treasury’s first-ever sanctions on a virtual currency mixer in May, when it designated Blender.io for allegedly also helping to carry out the Lazarus-backed crypto heist in March—to the tune of more than $20.5 million worth of illicit proceeds.
In addition to the heist in March, Tornado Cash was also used to launder more than $96 million of funds derived from a June hack of blockchain bridge Harmony and at least $7.8 million from an attack on Nomad, which lost about $190 million in a security exploit just last week, according to the Treasury.
Treasury officials this year have unleashed a wave of sanctions to protect against the potential use of cryptocurrency for sanctions evasion and money laundering. Shortly before the first mixer sanctions, the Treasury in April designated a cryptocurrency mining firm for the first time—targeting Switzerland-based Bitriver AG for operating in the Russian technology sector. Also that month, the Treasury designated Moscow-based exchange Garantex for “willfully disregarding” anti-money-laundering obligations and “allowing [its] systems to be abused by illicit actors.”
In a post on its website, crypto policy think tank Coin Center criticized the Treasury’s Monday decision for “sanctioning a tool that is not an alias of any person meriting sanction,” and said the move effectively limits “any American who wishes to use her own money and a freely available software tool to maintain her own privacy—including for otherwise entirely legal and personal reasons.” According to Coin Center, the sanctions also have uncertain legal ramifications because they potentially put Americans who are sent money through a Tornado address at risk of violating the Treasury’s rules—even though they can’t reject the transaction due to the nature of blockchain.
I’m a senior reporter at Forbes focusing on markets and finance. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I double-majored in business
Planning for the future….getty
