Essential Tips to achieve a successful IoT Development

When it comes to successfully developing an IoT application or platform that will meet its requirements and perform well in the marketplace, there are many aspects that IoT software development services need to consider. There are the project management related aspects, ensuring the right resources are in the right place at the right time. There are financial management issues, team management challenges, market selection and so on.

But more than these, the development of IoT technology has a number of more parochial concerns to which attention needs to be paid.

Investment, monetization and commercialisation

Successfully monetizing any commercial investment is common across most projects. But for building the internet of things tools and software applications care needs to be taken not to allow cost and financial issues to choke off software development too early. Working out how a new application or tool will be able to provide a solution to the problem is an intensive process. It takes time, it takes money.

Managers need to appreciate that the early parts of software development are critical. It can be better to ensure that a product is viable and then take business case investment decisions. The alternative can be to take decisions too early and then suffer delays and budget increases.

Having said this, an eye always needs to be kept on the end product, the sellable box or package. A solution that has to be somehow-wedged, somehow-squeezed into a container that doesn’t-quite-look-right is going to face commercial problems. Appearance isn’t everything, but it is still important.

The right IoT platform

IoT platforms connect the various device sensors to the particular data network and backend applications. They are the important middle step in how internet of things works. There are a number of IoT platforms available, whether from the major tech companies or smaller competitors. While there may be an IoT platform that will be exactly what is needed ‘off the shelf’, any further or novel development is likely to result a requirement for the creation of additional aspects of software. Thus the ideal platform may well be a ‘best available solution’ rather than ‘ideal solution’.

This needs to be accepted and consideration given as to the implications that this has: does the in-house team have the right skills to work with the platform? Does it fit with other services? Are the development team happy to work with it?

The Team

Team selection and team management are clearly huge topics in their own right. When it comes to IoT software development services, the team question and whether to hire IoT developers is essential. The level of skills required, and the level of technical specialisation can be very demanding.One cannot just assume that the team you have used before or the team you have in-house is the right one for the next project.

The question of team selection isn’t just about the skills, however. How that team will work with your company and your own in-house team is important: do working practices gel or do they clash? Do you need to be able to get in instant contact with the team or can you work with the occasional time zone issue? Do you want to be able to be in physical contact with the development team? And then what about the cost? Can you get an equivalent or better service at a lower cost by looking further afield?

Device management

Ensuring that devices collect, store, transmit and (or) process data all operate and work effectively is clearly the primary essence of IoT development and deployment. Device management is therefore critical. Ensuring that it can be done easily and cost-effectively is vital. Automation plays a major role, with any updates or patches (for example) taking place without the user needing to intervene.

IoT technology devices also need to be able to take into account the various connectivity issues that users face, from varying national regulations to local access and security considerations. Any IoT development needs to make it easy for the user to handle those parts of this that they have to – and not to have to worry about the others.

Summary

These are a few of the things that need to be considered for a successful IoT development. Like many projects, irrespective of the field, there are commercial and human considerations combined with technical and operational factors that need to be taken into account. Failing to get any single one of them right can doom an IoT development. But get them right, and you may have a great success ahead!

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Bio

Darya Tsygankova is a Marketing Manager at HQSoftware, a software development company with the main focus on IoT application development, VR, and AR solutions.