What to Consider When Looking for React Native Development Services?

Choosing the right technology partner isn’t easy. There are multiple factors to consider, past track record being the most obvious one. But that’s only the beginning. It’s good to look at React Native development services as a business relationship rather than a service. It’s about trust, transparency, and even consulting.

How to begin?

The first step to successful cooperation is to have the right definition of your internal business needs. How do you want to solve market problems? What added value do you want to offer by putting an application to an already saturated market? How’s the application going to help the end-user? If you know what you want, you can easily share these needs with a potential partner.

It’s very dangerous to not have that. Basing the development process on assumptions rather than facts can backfire. Especially where software products grew so complicated, that they require multiple tools to manage the process of creation, enhancement, quality control, and post-launch support.

When you have the basics, evaluate collaboration capacity. From your side and on the vendor’s end. How’s the cultural fit? Can you freely talk to each other, understand where you’re both coming from and what is important to both of you? Cultural fit means that if something happens (communication or development problems) you will be able to fix that through mutual understanding.

Another matter is your product requirements. Business goals are one thing but requirements (compliance in the FinTech field, for example), are another. How the application should look like, what features it should have, and even how the product is going to behave (user feedback) is also very important. Communicating that will shorten the initial phase of project kick-off.

Going deeper

Think about the product’s quality. Do you know how the vendor is going to assure it? What processes are there to control the code and progress? Does the company use standard code reviews or static code analysis? Maybe both?

Then there’s the question of involvement. To be specific – your involvement. To assure the proper level of quality, you should also actively participate in the development, not only act as a reviewer. Four to six hours per week in the design and specification phase, coupled with three to five hours per week in the development phase will paint you an image of what is expected. That’s pretty standard since in Agile the client is also a partner. React Native development services are only as good as cooperation between the vendor and the client.

The next question is the technology stack. React Native development services are based on… well, React Native, but what else? What other languages, frameworks, and tools does the company use?

A very similar matter involves application architecture. You can create an app as a monolith or adopt the “infrastructure as a code” approach. In the first case, the ability to maneuver is very limited. Once you settle on the premise and scope, it’s done. The software will look and feel as expected. In the second approach, and coupled with the nature of Agile itself, we all have the room to breathe. “Infrastructure as code” means that you can significantly reduce costs while staying operational with the app and the process of development itself.

Another thing is constant communication. You need to be informed about the development progress and its key metrics. This can be addressed in many different ways since every company has its own way regarding cooperation with the client. Some prefer the “earned value management” approach, which keeps control over the budget and its limits while keeping tabs on progress at the same time. It’s about fitting functionalities that safely achieve your business goals while staying within the previously defined budget and costs.

Conclusion

React Native development services are complicated in nature and demanding. Not only on the technology level but mostly from the human and management point of view. Making it work requires knowledge, experience, domain development skills. It also requires a certain level of openness from the client who should be vital, and most importantly, an active part in the development process.

There are a few things to consider while looking for the best React Native Development services. Gather all the pros and cons and choose the right partner for you!

Author bio

Jaroslaw Ściślak

Content Writer at Code & Pepper. Branding, marketing, business scaling, content & company culture specialist. Created shared value (CSV) evangelist.