This is the question that many companies always consider. Why? Because in the IT world software development is the key business, and all web-apps, and even games development are related to it. To outsourcing software development companies software development is their main product, therefore the market-place is like a survival battle between them. The core to thrive and stand still on your feet is that you need to develop your product much better than others so all you need to do is to enhance your company’s software development process. How to do that? Let's find out together!
We bet that our customers will compare our products with others in some following categories: speed, productivity, and your service attitude. There below are some useful tips that may help to to improve your product and services:
Firstly, you can speed up your software development by some of these ways:
Understanding requirements and creating a road map
Understanding the customers' requirements helps in speeding up the software development process. If your team is clear about the project and knows what to do, you will save a lot of time. The next step is to discuss with the development team and create a project road map. It includes choosing the language or framework, dividing the projects into several parts, and assigning the right people for each component. However, some challenges will still come your way, but your team won't have to rewrite code for the entire project.
Set the right expectations and review the progress
The software development process is always time-bound, and businesses need the projects on time. Setting the right expectation significantly improves efficiency. Moreover, reviewing the projects helps to eliminate any blockers and ensures everything goes according to the plan.
Expand your team
Project complexities and deadlines have to match with your human resources. It becomes challenging to meet the deadline for some projects with the number of developers you might currently have. The solution is to include more developers in the project. If you have a limited number of engineers, you can quickly hire top-class remote developers within 3-5 days with platforms like Turing.
Divide the project into small components and assign small teams
Splitting a large and complex software project into smaller chunks and assigning a small team is an effective way to meet deadlines. For example, assigning the complex part of the project to the most experienced developers and simple tasks to the less experienced ones will enhance efficiency and reduce the overall turnaround time. It will also ensure every team member can utilize their skills more effectively.
Reduce work-in-progress
Limiting the amount of work in progress makes the software development process more efficient. A higher number of ongoing tasks can be overwhelming to any developer, no matter how experienced they are. Multitasking may save time, but it has a flip side as well. As the number of open tasks goes up, it puts extra pressure on the developers, affecting quality and productivity. The best way is to assign only a limited number of tasks at a time, to reduce the pending tasks. It helps in proper planning and reviewing, which ensures high quality.
Avoid frequent changes
A complex software project may require multiple alterations as the work progresses. Too many changes during the development process can significantly affect the project completion time. Sometimes, you may think it could be a small change, but it can be a complete mess and cripple the whole system. It is impossible to avoid changes as the work progresses; however, documenting all the modules, scenarios, and factors before starting the project will reduce the number of alterations and accelerate the development process.
Secondly, improve your software development process productivity:
Choose the proper SDLC model
This is the first step to take. Choosing the right software development methodology for the project will highly improve the process and the results. Whether you decide to use Waterfall, Kanban, Scrum, or Lean, the best decision will rely on how well-defined the goals, scope, budget, capacity, and functional and non-functional requirements are. Not having the proper model means you will drive the car blindly, with no purpose or direction.
Optimize your workflow
Creating the workflow is essential to improve the software development process. Many teams ignore this important task, arguing they already know the processes. However, having a well-defined workflow will assist in pointing out any flaws and inefficiencies, if there are any! Furthermore, it will aid you in tracing the “dead” tasks (those that were killed before reaching their completion). Workflow creation will help you to streamline the process by giving insights from data.
Have a clear definition of Done (DOD)
Define what the “done” is for the tasks that are truly completed to their quality and performance. Ensure the entire team is aware of this Definition of DOD so everyone is aligned and following the same objectives and there is a common understanding about the set of items that must be completed before a project or user story can be considered complete.
Implement code reviews and testing
If the code of your software lacks quality and has bugs in it, it will undoubtedly result in a drop in customer trust. To overcome these problems, there are two ways to tackle them. First, make sure the development team runs a code review of every (at least the most important) code they write. Code reviews are a technique that can transform the way development teams work intrinsically to improve quality and promote culture and communication.
You may want to get the codes reviewed for certain processes that you feel are complex, so rather than doing it optionally, you should make it mandatory. Then the testing stage is another essential path to follow. Although teams can put into practice the code review technique, testing is essential when it comes to quality. It is the best way to find failures before the release of the product. Testing enables the processes, work methods, and tools necessary to guarantee software development quality. Without in-depth testing, the overall project will undoubtedly fail.
Pay attention to your technical debt
The cost of accumulating technical debt is extremely high for both the client and the development company, which makes it necessary to manage it as a risk. One great technique to improve your software development project is to wisely manage and detect when technical debt is growing more than expected. Although it is not possible to avoid it completely, we can apply some preventive measures to reduce the occurrence or growth of debt:
- Establish standardized processes for quality management and refactoring.
- Always keep technology tools up to date.
- Promote continuous training within the team to stay informed of technology trends.
- Define responsibilities and tasks for each team to avoid rework, duplication, or feckless steps.
Choose the right tools to work with
You can consider these free tools to speed up the process and enhance productivity:
IntelliJ Idea
This assists in the analysis of code and creating connections for the files of the project. Also,we can find detailed help in coding, refactoring, and fast navigation.
Jira
It was developed to find bugs, but now it is used to track productivity in a wide range of tasks from Agile software development to management of test cases.
Jenkins
To divide the tasks among developers, CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) have been a challenge for decades. Jenkins is open source, provides community support, and helps to automate the build cycle of any project.
Selenium
Its basic task is to automate web applications for functional testing across different platforms and browsers. It can help in automating testing for web-based software development.
AWS Cloud 9
It provides the facility to write, run, and debug the code with a browser. It has eliminated the constraint of installing a plugin on the system for the development of software.
Finally, another important aspect that affects our customers’ will to collaborate with us in developing any IT project: our being easy to work with.
We need to be professionals, with full passion in work, and able to hear and understand the customers’ demands. Willing to change, fix problems, and be able to be their good assistant, and useful counselor.
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