If software is developed for you by another party, it is very likely that you are not a developer and you do not have the possibility to test or judge yourself if your software is of high-quality as you want it to be. Having a QA professional in the team during development is the best practice for this, and some prefer to have the code checked by an external QA expert at the development. Still, you may be aware of some common signs of software development problems yourself. Some common examples may be summarized as:

• Unacceptable software performance
• Late discovery of serious project flaws
• Software that is hard to maintain or extend
• Inability to deal with changing requirements
• Inaccurate understanding of end user needs

Above is a very short snapshot of a list, that can actually be many pages long. Before starting a software development project, we strongly suggest that you get familiar with software quality issues and make sure that the related key performance indicators are included in your contact with the software development company.