Companies today are under intense pressure to deliver increasingly technical solutions in ever shorter time frames. Modern advances in fields such as AI and ML have increased the pace of change tenfold so that efficiency and effectiveness are vital to success.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the world of FinTech, where the rapidly booming industry is expected to be worth around $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade. Amongst rapidly emerging technologies, companies in and around FinTech are being pushed to keep up with ever-increasing demand to innovate and build.

To keep up with demand and enhance what they can do for their clients, companies are turning to the software marketplace to enhance the breadth and depth of their technical capabilities.

The software marketplace defines success for firms not just in the way it delivers engineering expertise and specialization, however. The most vital services come from the way these roles are deployed and managed within a project. Fortunately, a modern marketplace such as Pangea.ai is built from the ground up to meet these demands with ease.

In this article, we'll break down precisely how the software marketplace overcomes the biggest challenges in tech. Then, we'll outline how our concise requirements brief helps firms communicate their needs efficiently with our teams, build their own success, and avoid the biggest pitfalls in an increasingly complex technology landscape.

Using the Software Marketplace to Build and Grow

While the capabilities of modern tech are consistently improving and evolving, the biggest challenge in the field, project management, has been around for well over half a century. Yet, even today studies show that managers still tend to underestimate the risks of a project and its potential for failure.

In a study for the Harvard Business Review, the average project overrun when looking at almost 1,500 modern software projects was around 27%. Yet, that's only a part of the story. One in six projects studied overshot their costs by 200% and their time by almost 70%. The worst-case scenario was both common and catastrophic.

The key reasons driving these issues break down into four main camps.

• A lack of project focus. Businesses working with unclear objectives and a lack of clarity on how to move forward toward their goals.
• Construction issues. Shifting technical requirements creeping in throughout the project resulting in spiraling technical complexity.
• Skill issues. Teams built with skill sets that don't align with the goals of the project and a lack of relevant technologies, roles, or industry experience.
• Management issues. Unrealistic technical expectations for teams, a lack of familiarity with the technology or industry, and reactive instead of proactive planning.

Within this study there's also some good news. None of the major issues listed are hard to overcome. All they require is the right experience, expertise, and knowledge to do so.

The modern software marketplace was built from the ground up to solve these technical problems in today's projects. Providing technical expertise, technology skills, focus, and management capabilities — it's a solution ideally suited to building success and growing a business in the tech industry.

Over time, our involvement in the software marketplace has evolved and changed to more efficiently capture what businesses value most within that process. As a result, our requirements-gathering process has been refined and reshaped into our Pangea.ai requirements brief — an intelligent project tool that allows clients to quickly and efficiently communicate complex project requirements in just a handful of questions.

By continually improving the way we interact with clients we've created a concise technical brief of just seven key questions that allow businesses to clearly and directly communicate their project requirements with teams that can solve their technical challenges.

So, let's take a look at what these seven questions deliver for businesses, why we ask them of every client, and how they overcome the four key issues every business faces when embarking on a software project.

1. Providing Tailored Software Development for Specialised Products

The biggest advantage the software marketplace provides clients is the global pool of software teams it connects them to. During this process, the fact-finding efforts of finding out what you need and how the right team can deliver it can focus your project requirements toward the most impactful areas of development.

Far from an online "supermarket" where you pick up products off the shelf, an effective SaaS marketplace is a collaborative conversation designed to provide and improve what you can bring to the market.

That's why the first question we ask our clients in our requirements brief is "What type of product are you developing?" This simple question alone can provide a lot of insight.

Many companies come with a broad spectrum of ideas and possibilities that could make five or six outstanding products. Focusing on just the core of your project and choosing just a couple of key domains to build in can enable you to work towards productive, realistic, and timely goals.

To address the single largest contributor to project overrun we ask this question first to start off by building focus and clarity around the project's objectives.

2. Bringing Industry Specific Expertise

The second question we ask our clients is about the industry they plan to target — for very good reason. The impact of industry-specific expertise on effective software development is impossible to overstate.

With a wealth of options across every major industry today, we regularly connect businesses with teams involved in automotive software, FinTech, HealthTech, e-commerce, and a host of other specialties to deliver large-scale projects. By importing expertise, experience, and institutional knowledge into your organization you bring in a competitive advantage that's often overlooked.

In the automotive industry alone, the software market is expected to grow at almost 10 percent per year through to the end of the decade. For businesses, this represents a huge amount of opportunity. Targeting this sector, however, will require the right expertise in technology, management, and regulations surrounding the industry. Our system will pair you with a selection of the right teams to do precisely that.

Our requirements brief matches clients with teams that have past experience and a proven track record of delivering projects in the right technologies and industries to fit your upcoming projects.

3. Enabling Comprehensive Service Offerings

Compiling a roster of services you'll need to succeed in the market is a great way to focus your efforts whether you use the requirements brief or not. Simply putting down on paper what your project needs in backend developers, frontend engineers, data analysts, and project managers will help to envision the scale of the project.

Identifying the project services you require will allow you to identify construction and management issues that could hamper the project at an early stage. Of course, none of these requirements are set in stone by any means — they often change according to expert guidance and further specification. However, few things enable you to get started more effectively than some practical action points in hiring and building a team.

By identifying the services at the core of your project, the technical requirements necessary for its success can be formed and a lean, fast route toward an MVP can be found.

4. Fulfilling Vital Roles On-Demand

The software marketplace's ability to provide skilled professionals at a moment's notice is so far unmatched. Fighting in its corner is a global talent pool to draw from and a nearly infinite depth of experience and expertise across every technology and industry. In our experience, there's no better way to connect with the talent and skills to create outstanding services.

With unrealistic deadlines, poor planning, and a lack of focus being the most pressing issues facing software projects today — our requirements brief is the perfect solution for filling the necessary roles to prevent these issues.

Regularly providing designers, engineers, and developers to build solutions to technical problems — one of our hidden superpowers comes from also connecting clients with project managers, product owners, and business analysts to ensure the success of an upcoming product.

To see how we've done this for others take a look at our case studies in tech where we've provided product managers, backend engineers, and product owners for clients across a range of industries and technologies.

5. Tailored Tech Stack

Understanding the tech stack of your project often requires specialist knowledge and domain insight. Connecting with teams that have the kind of experience you need in the field is the best thing you can do to understand how your project might progress in practice.

Many well-established tech clients approach our platform with the need to integrate specific technologies seamlessly with existing systems. We routinely find teams with experience in the relevant frameworks and technologies to make it happen.

In contrast, startup companies tend to approach us with a different set of requirements. Often setting off with a relatively clean slate, startups use our service to connect with teams that can form a long-term partnership and build a lasting tech stack with the potential to be upgraded and maintained in the future.

Our requirements brief allows you to concisely and accurately summarise the core technologies and tools you're interested in deploying in your upcoming project.

To see how it works simply fill out this brief and we'll connect you with teams that match your requirements in no time at all.

6. Deciding on Budget Requirements

The Pangea.ai requirements brief asks users to summarise an approximate budget for their project. This provides an opportunity to quickly and efficiently communicate the scale and complexity you envision for your software without the need to spell out every step along the way. Our system uses this estimate to match you with teams best suited to meeting your goals.

A concrete budget estimate communicates your project’s goals, sets expectations for the project, and provides an instant framework for project managers to begin working towards.

7. Accelerating Time to Market

The final question of our requirements brief sets out a time scale over when the project might be started — another way to keep teams and businesses in sync with each other.

In tech, there's rarely such a thing as a 'typical project'. The range of uses there are for an additional resource can vary from long-term team augmentation to a short and sharp feature sprint conducted entirely externally. No two requests are ever the same.

If your project needs to start ASAP then let us know and we'll find the right team to get started right away. In contrast, if you're looking further into the future to set up a long-term project then we'll be sure to translate that need into a detailed schedule designed to maintain project focus.

Ensuring Project Success

Each of the seven advantages listed here contributes significantly towards ensuring projects can be delivered on time, within budget, and to the highest possible standard. By matching your business with a team that can deliver technical expertise, management, and experience we can build up the four key elements that guarantee success:

• Excelling in technology and management by ensuring the right internal and external talent is in place and coupled together to build a complete and successful team.
• Strong communication in aligned project goals between all team members with tracking towards each right from day one.
• Comprehensive project management by focusing attention on overall strategy and stakeholders instead of irrelevant details and minor issues.
• Complete accountability over every stage of the project by summarizing its broad strokes in just a few words and inviting teams to propose innovative and groundbreaking solutions.

Achieving Success Through Today's Software Marketplace

With today's technology, success pivots on the ability to build and innovate with accuracy and efficiency. In this respect, the software marketplace is an ideal partner for tech firms looking to expand and enhance what they can deliver to clients. Our concise requirements brief allows you to communicate, build, and align with top-rated talent chosen specifically for your firm more efficiently than most.

By offering accelerated technology deployment, comprehensive software development services, product ownership, and management alongside the expertise and experience of industry insiders Pangea.ai will raise the questions necessary to guarantee your success.

To try it out for yourself simply fill out our requirements brief with the broad strokes of your project and let us match you with top-rated talent to meet your demands.