Acquven provides customised software solutions based on user requirements.
Develop fit-for-purpose software
Assist you to expand your customer reach using cloud
Future enhancements and long-term support
Time and cost effective
Cloud Hosting, Data security and backup included
Developed using latest technologies
Custom software development is the process of designing, creating, deploying and maintaining software for a specific set of users, functions or organizations. In contrast to commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS), custom software development aims at a narrowly defined set of requirements. COTS targets a broad set of requirements, allowing it to be packaged and commercially marketed and distributed.
Microsoft Office and Sitebuilder.com, for example, are packaged commercial software products and services. They meet the generalized needs of office productivity and website creation.
Custom software, on the other hand, is designed for a specific set of needs, such as:
Custom software, and its development, is also referred to as bespoke software.
Custom software development is usually performed by in-house development teams or outsourced to a third-party. The same processes and methodologies apply to custom software development as other types of software development. A custom project would move through the familiar steps of requirements gathering, code construction, testing and deployment and apply the same methodologies, like Agile, DevOps or Rapid Application Development, as any other software project.
Efforts associated with custom software development include application customization, application modernization and application management. Application customization refers to modifying COTS applications to support individual requirements. Application modernization plays a critical role in maintaining the viability of a business’s custom software to meet evolving user and market demands. Application management makes software effective by supporting tasks like installation, updating, performance and availability optimization, and service desk functions.
Custom software development is important because it helps meet unique requirements at a cost competitive with purchasing, maintaining and modifying commercial software.
Some of the benefits include:
Be sure about build vs buy
The first key to an effective custom software development project is making sure that custom software is truly needed, as opposed to buying a packaged solution — and there is good reason to be sure. Software solution finder and researcher Capterra reports that 75 percent of business and IT executives anticipate that their software projects will fail and that, over a year, fewer than a third of projects are completed on time and on budget.
One approach to a build-vs-buy analysis is to ask if there is already a packaged software solution that delivers greater than 80 percent of the functions needed to:
Collaboration is key
If the decision is to build, an important initial consideration is to get buy-in from key participants and ensure that they communicate and collaborate on the project. Collaborators include sponsors, users, developers, even customers and business partners outside of the organization.
In this context, collaboration means business users working together on requirements, sharing knowledge among global development teams, and working hand-in-hand across development and operations teams to improve quality and responsiveness.
Requirements are required
One of the critical outcomes of collaboration is a clear, shared vision for what the software is required to do — and not do. Acquven has established that “organizations need to effectively define and manage requirements to help ensure they are meeting customer needs, while addressing compliance and staying on schedule and within budget” and that “requirements definition and management is an activity that has the potential to deliver a high, fast ROI.”
A "good" requirement, according to Acquven, is…
Methodologies, technologies and practices
With requirements defined — and they will likely change more than once — applying mature, modern development methodologies and practices can help deliver effective, even innovative, software efficiently and rapidly.
Development methodologies to consider:
Technologies and practices to consider: