What should I ask my Ruby on Rails Development Company?

Every time you are planning on embarking on a project you need to make sure you are working with the best suited partner for the task at hand. You need to pay even closer attention to development teams to find out if they have the experience and skillset required. So, ask the following questions to any Ruby on Rails development company to make sure your project is in good hands.

1.What is the longest you managed to maintain a RoR app?

It is important to find partners who will help you manage and maintain Ruby on Rails applications for years. You don’t want to have to find another development partner right when your business is running smoothly.

In some cases, cheap development services might mean development products that were simplified and cut on important aspects. If this is your case, you will likely find yourself having to fix these issues in the future.

Some developers, want to get paid quickly and without commitment. You need to avoid this and find partners that will be helping you support your business growth for years.

Additionally, if you find teams who developed your app with best practices in mind, it means that it will be easier to hand the project to another team if required.

2.What testing frameworks do you use to automate testing?

Since Rails permits and highly encourage automated testing, there are excellent teams that help you do just that. If your Rails development company answers with either RSpec, Cucumber, Capybara, or Unit Testing, it seems that you are in good hands.

 Just remember that in some cases, developers are forced to work with frameworks defined by other developers if a RoR application was inherited.

3.How do you monitor app performance?

Every professional Ruby on Rails developer needs to use tools to monitor a Ruby app performance. If you ask them this, they should be able to provide a response.

Additionally, it is valuable to ask them what KPIs they use. Their answers should include page speed, of course, but not only that. There are many other valuable metrics to keep an eye on.

You can also ask them how often they check on database queries, search indexes, AJAX requests, caching and page rendering.

 4.In which way and how often do they contribute to the open-source community?

Ruby on Rail’s potential greatest benefit is how engaging is its open-source community. Every Rails app you see is in part a result of the efforts performed by many committed developers.

If you are happening to work with teams that continuously contribute to the RoR community you can rest assure that they love what they do and are likely to be giving you the most innovative and Ruby on Rails solutions they can find.

5.How do they manage Continuous Integration?

A well-built, technically-savvy team will likely have implemented Continuous Integration as part of its overall process.

The way this works is that, whenever there’s a change in the source code, a Continuous Integration server should run automated tests in which developers are notified if these tests fail.

If your team is properly managing Continuous Integration it means that they are concerned about continuous performance and have an eye on quality. 

Conclusion

The questions above are just a quick way of making sure your development team is experienced and skillful enough to provide you with great Rails app development and maintenance. While not infallible, they can help you filter out unqualified teams. Now that you are prepared, why not contact a qualified Ruby on Rails app developer?