Here are some questions you should consider when you start planing your software development project.

What type of software do you want to develop?

A web application, desktop application, mobile application, programming library? A simple website, a customized CMS (like Drupal or Wordpress), a full-blown web application? Depending on what type of software you plan to develop, different questions have to be asked and different requirements should be considered.

How long do you want to support the application/do you want it to live?

Applications need to be maintained to live on. If your project runs for 3 years and there is no funding afterwards don't expect your application to live longer than that. Technology changes fast and your application has to be updated and maintained to continue to run. Some institutions offer services to archive applications or websites but as far as we can tell this is still not the norm.

How much money do you want to and can you spend?

Developing an application is expensive. Depending on what you want the application to do, a simper solution like using a CMS might suffice and be more financially realistic. Also, development takes time. So make sure you start planing early and start the implementation early on in the project phase.

Software development is a profession for a reason

Yes, there are a lot of self-taught software developers, and many of them are really good at there job. You don't have to have studied software engineering or computer science to be a software developer. However, that doesn't mean that anyone who has taken a programming course can develop software. There is a big difference between programming and software development. If you spend a lot of money on building a piece of software, you want to make sure it will survive for a while. If the person who started the development can't continue for some reason, you want someone else to be able to take over. And you want it to be relatively easy to maintain and update your application as technologies change. This means, you want to make sure you find someone for the job that knows how to develop software and has enough experience, so that your application can survive even if circumstances change. Hiring a postdoc with some programming experience will in most cases not be the best solution.