From a time when only 5% of the employees in the USA were working remotely to now when millions across the world have been locked down in a remote working condition, the time and era of workspace is witnessing a drastic shift. While the freelancers and gig economy patrons are already extremely used to the idea of remote working, there are teams that have been working in collaboration with each other since the inception of their job roles. One of which are software developers. The software development work process has always required designers, developers, and QA experts to work in close collaboration, one that mainly has been running on a face to face since the beginning of the time.
Although coronavirus has made it a mandate for the IT employees and software developers to get confined in their homes or respective locations and adapt to the remote workspace lifestyle whether or not they are willing to, the shift has been gradually moving for much longer.
According to a report by TechRebulic where they interviewed several developers, where 43% of the developers cited the option to work remotely as a must-have when looking for a company’s offer, and 53% of respondents said they would think less of a company if they didn’t offer any remote work options.
Remote work has drastically improved work life balance for the employees, as the report highlighted. It was also one of the biggest reasons behind the trend becoming a massive norm. Remote employees said this working style reduces stress of commuting (77%), provides the ability to work from wherever they want to live (75%), and allows them to care for children or family members (56%).
The next event besides comfort that has fueled digital workforce and remote work lifestyle is the onset of outsourcing. In the search for low cost of developer acquisition, entrepreneurs generally take the remote work and outsourcing route.
The impact of remote workforce on app development and delivery ecosystem
Although the adoption of remote workforce in the IT industry has been slow, the software development industry is slowly and steadily coming at par with the digital shift. There are some mobile app development companies which are operating as a torchbearer for others who are struggling with the shift.
The direct impact of this workspace shift is visible in the greater adoption of digital solutions and collaboration platforms. With the right network conditions and the presence of platforms to enable real-time collaboration, it can be extremely easy to streamline the processes and that too in a real-time mode.
While the presence of tools and collaborative platforms are doing a great job at resisting the shock, the problems are mainly surrounding the managerial front – something that companies are able to solve when they partner with the companies with remote workforce. These companies are not just used to the remote work setup but their teams also have the ability to work independently.
We have shared both: the list of tools and the issues that the challenges that PMs face when managing remote software developers face, a little after a few scrolls.
Benefits of remote job for developers
1. Higher Inter-Team Collaboration
In digital workspaces, the individuals work in collaboration with other teams which helps in supporting the key organizational priorities. A high exposure to other experts and thinkers inside an organization tends to enhance mobility by enabling the employees to develop new skills and try newer roles, which ultimately increases engagement and productivity. This is the reason why remote work developers tend to be more connected with their organization, across levels compared to their centrally located counterparts.
2. Greater Flexibility
The employees who are given the freedom to choose their work timings and work locations are a lot more engaged. Additionally, the flexible schedule helps in closing the gender gaps prevalent in the corporate world thus improving diversity and success in the organization. This high flexibility is what acts as a backbone of the statement that happy employees are more productive.
3. Greater returns on the IT investments
There are several decentralized platforms which are very simple to use and enable the employees to access the cloud-based data and tools. It also frees up the company’s IT teams to focus on high-level priorities like integration of tools enabling seamless workflows and troubleshooting the clunky legacy software.
4. Higher efficiency
A remote team is able to streamline the administrative tasks, remove the barriers when it comes to accessing resources and data, and increase critical information flow across businesses. This streamlining of tasks enables the employees to make several data-centric decisions effectively and much more swiftly than before.
The benefits of remote workforce for the software developers can only stand true as long as they have the necessary toolset to drive the application towards success.
The toolset that are devised to enable smooth remote workflow for the software designers and developers are usually are divided into two parts – one which takes care of the remote dev work and another which looks into managing remote workers:
Collaboration & Resources.
For Collaboration:
Team collaboration:
Trello
Sketchboard
Zeplin
InVision
SpaceTime
Screenhero
TipHive
Bit.ai
Task management
Taskworld
Fusioo
Jira
Trello
Eylean Board
Communication
Slack
Skype
Telegram
UberConference.
For Resources:
Type Anything
Frontify
Challenges that project managers might encounter when working with the remote software developers
Even though remote software development has become a common practice, it still comes with some obstacles and unique challenges which should be overcomed for attaining success. In a remote development setup, you will find that everything from project management to communication and technical aspects of the software development tasks call for a different mindset. Translation: Managing remote employees is very different from managing a centrally located team of developers.
Having developed more than 700 applications for global clients, we have gained several insights into the dos and don’ts of remote app development work and what managing remote employees entails.
1. Onboarding of new team members
Introducing new developers to a large codebase calls for a lot of effort and time. When we say codebase, we mean a collection of source codes that are used to develop a specific software component and system. When the codes are poorly documented or messy, the new remote developers will find it extremely time-taking to know how the code pieces are working in sync. This becomes all the more difficult when they are working with a remote manager who is evry new to them.
The solution to this lies in writing clean codes that follow the industry standards. A detailed and clear documentation should also be followed at every stage of the app development process.
2. Communication related issues
One of the biggest challenges of remote development teams is communication. Collection of daily updates, discussion of urgent issues, and explaining objectives, new tasks become overly difficult when you work in different locations and even time zones.
In order to make sure that everyone in the team is on the same page, at Anteelo, we schedule frequent online meetings with both development teams and clients. Additionally, we also hold longer weekly meetings and app demonstrations at the end of every development sprint.
3. Tracking the progress
In the absence of issue tracking systems and version control, working with remote developers becomes a complete nightmare. They also make projects a lot easier to implement and manage. Version tracking enables team members to work on the file anytime, without worrying about the instances like overwriting of current versions or time it takes to locate where the latest file iteration is stored.
The issue tracking tools have proven to be extremely useful for the product owners and project managers to oversee the complex development process. Everybody can see the scheduled work task and what the developers are working on. At Anteelo, we also invite our clients to view the issue trackers that help them see where the project has reached.
I’m not sure if there are any real metrics to judge the quality of software developers thus no one knows how good they really are. The thing that comes closest to rating a software developer is the feedback from their peers – what do they think about their programming abilities? Generally software organizations don’t invest in a 360 degree feedback thus most of us are always clueless about how good we really are. There is a lot of literature on how to become a better or great developer but there is hardly anything out there to identify a lousy developer. This is an attempt to share some of the top-notch qualities of a lousy developer. Well, think of it as an “Good Developer Anti-Pattern”.
Writes code that only machine can understand. The lousy developers take great pride in writing complex code. There would be no separation of concerns, everything would be one giant ball of spaghetti code, the methods would as long as the Great Wall of China, the variable names would be unintuitive as if an obfuscator had named them.
Never keeps the team informed about milestones.Who gives a shyte!? I ain’t telling nobody about the daily progress. Yes, you would hardly get to know what they are working on until you prod them. Asking status from them becomes such a chore that you shudder at the very thought of it.
Needs to be Micro Managed. They need constant baby sitting from their team mates or their manager about tasks they are working on. They just can’t work independently. Period. You give them their own space and you know things would never get done on time. They would constantly forget their tasks or would deliver code in a haste without giving too much thought to it. To them, bugs or unfinished tasks are the hallmark of a working developer. Yeah, right!
Not a Team Player. Their world is finite and they are at the center of their own little universe. They won’t acknowledge the skills of other team members and think they are the best thing after sliced bread.
Blame Game. Somehow it is never their fault when things go wrong. It’s like the word sorry is not in their vernacular. They always have something or someone to blame when things go wrong rather than admitting to the mistake.
Wastes too much time. Most of them are always busy doing other important things than programming like chatting with their friends, spending time on facebook etc. I just don’t get it. Why would anyone spend killing their office hours than being productive or learning new technologies/reading technical blogs.
The thing is that it only takes a mental switch to turn off these nasty habits and adopt more productive ones provided one is willing to make oneself better.
There are various parameters to judge a developer but for me the number one criteria is efficiency. Ahem…I don’t mean efficiency of writing bad code or providing sub optimal solutions. Far from it.I mean the efficiency to write good code. Readable Code. Extremely Flexible Code. A highly maintainable code.It’s the efficiency with which they passionately latch on problems and solve them. They are efficient because they understand the underpinnings of the programming framework and the toolset they use every day. So, how does one become efficient at developing software or be “The Good Developer”?
I’m not sure if you loved Physics or if you ever understood Einstein’s famous mass-energy equivalence. Well, the one where he proved that mass of a body is a measure of its energy and they are connected by a constant.
E
=
mc2
I hope Einstein forgives me for this. But, in our little software development world, it means
E
= Efficiency
m
= (intrinsically) motivated
c
= Cluefulness
Thus, efficiency of a developer can be defined as their level of motivation to excel times the square of their cluefulness.
True. Seriously. Don’t believe me? Ask Einstein. Can you? You can’t, can you? Then, you really have to trust me on it
What is Cluefulness? It can be defined as one’s expertise and capabilities in developing software. Please read this extremely insightful post by Eric Sink if you want to learn about Cluefulness and how to increase it.
If you one of the developers who are extrinsically motivated by rewards, all-the-things-money-can-buy-kind-of-salary, free beer to write code – tough luck in this life. On the other hand, if you are intrinsically motivated to learn new frameworks, delve into complexities of algorithms and data structures, write code for fun then all you have to worry about it is how to increase your cluefulness.
I won’t repeat what Eric mentioned in his great post but I would mention few things to increase your cluefulness.
Read Code – It’s surprising how less time developers really spend reading other people’s code for learning patterns and anti-patterns. Some developers would keep on writing the code in same style that they learned in school. For real. One can either learn by working with really good developers or reading code of open source frameworks/products. I can’t emphasize enough the value of reading code – Can one become really good writer if they haven’t ever read a good book in their life?
Focus – How can one become good at their art if the first thing they were to do every morning was check their friend stream on Facebook, chat with their long lost friends on their favorite IM, check their emails, any-other-unproductive-activity-except-programming. Shouldn’t the first thing really be to focus on building great software? I doubt if Einstein would have come up with general theory of relativity if he was checking his friend feed on facebook all the time or was being bugged by other Physicists on Skype.
BeInquisitive – One has to be curious and hungry to learn new things, ruminate on hard problems, figure out ways of doing old things in a new way. One would never learn better ways of doing things if one is happy with the status quo.
Tools are your best friend – I’m not sure if a developer could really be productive in writing ASP.NET applications using Notepad. One has to be good at Visual Studio.NET or an equivalent IDE to be really productive at building websites using the ASP.NET framework. Thus, it’s not only enough that one spends the time in learning and polishing their programming skills but also picking up tricks to use the development environment to their advantage. Learn the Shortcuts, write loads of reusable code snippets, know how to use Nuget etc. They are an aide to being efficient and solving problems faster.
Understanding a clever and cost reducing way that businesses adopt to scale and solve problems in direct ways using custom software development. To be or not to be, that is the question businesses face when it comes to choosing between customized software and standard software. In some respects, the question could be the difference between the haves and have nots. Being a successful custom software development company ourselves and pushed to innovate cutting edge solutions on a habitual basis, we know first-hand what to do when.
If organizations are to transform digitally, then the installed software would have to compliment the needs equally. If you are in the middle of such a dilemma, by the end of this article you would gain clarity on the subject. Hence, we begin by answering the question, what is custom software?
What is a Customized Software?
The software that comes pre-packaged with features is referred to as Commercial Off The Shelf or COTS. The vendor that develops it owns the responsibility of updating its versions. Enterprises slash users subscribe to it by paying a licensing fee. It is designed keeping in mind the most universal needs of the mass market. Microsoft Windows is an example of COTS. It offers the apparatus for each user to carry daily-life computational tasks without having to think twice.
On the other hand, a software that you develop, or ask a third-party to customize for you is called customized software. Since it is created unique to the needs of a particular user, it is also termed as bespoke software. Made on order, it weighs high on features that are relevant to the organization. Custom software applications are cut to fit the ongoing and upcoming business requirements.
Tasks that a standard software will take ages to complete can be accomplished in a whisker of time with custom software apps. Think of it this way, COTS is a public utility vehicle that takes the combined choices of travelers’ into consideration and drives at a speed fast enough to pacify those onboard. While custom software is that private car that you can modify as per wish and break the speed limits with.
Now that you understand what is custom software, let’s find out about its development procedure followed by a full cycle app development company.
Does Custom Software Development Process Differ from Standard?
Not at all. The software development life cycle is almost identical in each case. You traverse the same stages of basic information collection, coding, testing out the software for inconsistencies, finally moving over to deployment.
There is an unprecedented urgency in enterprises to transform digitally for sustenance. Each is looking to differentiate itself and be seen and as an innovator. Be it an in-house project, or one that is outsourced to a company like Anteelo, custom development of software involves the following stages:
Application customization
You would either purchase a COTS software and re-program it to requirements or build a bespoke solution. No matter what you choose, it will begin at this stage of code creation.
Application modernization
Maturing with time, stakeholders realize that their value chains must improve and be just as impressive as their product suite. The deployed custom software will have to be modernized with features as new technologies emerge.
Application management
It is similar to after-sales support but one that you either do internally or let the third-party that designed the software for you do it. These envelope everything from installing the software to ensuring its 24/7 availability.
Why Choose Custom Software Development?
The reason why custom software is preferred is due to the changing market trends that makes the business transformation either costly or time consuming. Custom software application development helps businesses in building an intuitive and user-friendly software product tailored to their business requirements. It also handles various types of organizational challenges like process complexities, employee struggles, and meet the preference of customers.
Some points are discussed below for opting custom made software:-
Flexibility
One of the crucial benefits of custom software companies is its flexibility. Any change required might be easily acknowledged so your platform is always updated with the ongoing patterns. A significant degree of flexibility offers effectiveness in the working process. Competitive processes are simple to automate so that the framework automatically leads the users and there is no requirement for human intervention.
Better integration
Custom programming application improvement organizations give a scope of choices to incorporating various sorts of APIs. The vast majority of the bundled programming are not viable with different programs thus incorporating another product to improve its capacities are impractical. It is this explanation; numerous organizations lean towards custom software applications over canned programming.
Future innovation
Having your own types of custom software will empower you to explore and welcome on board creative ideas quicker and without relying upon other innovation merchants to do it for you. This can help in more noteworthy market ability as your brand would be perceived as a forerunner instead of a late adopter for innovations that user’s long for.
App security
The internet has an intricate dangerous environment and application security is a grave concern for modern organizations, regardless of the size. An application on the Internet is exposed to security breaches. Each organization takes measures to shield their customized software application development products against exploitation by hackers, the current circumstance is still the worst. By engaging in a presumed custom application advancement organization, organizations can take added measures to keep their information from hackers and displeased workers.
Cost reduction
At times the business do not need all the functions offered by a format yet they had to pay. On account to create custom software, you pick what you need and pay just for it. Additionally, there is something intriguing and that is off-the-shelf solutions ordinarily require monthly or yearly licensing expenses. There are already many payments in the process that if you calculate, then it will be much more costly. If you pick a custom solution, you’ll pay more at first but later on you do not have to put much effort. You can say that custom software development cost is a one-time investment.
What are the Benefits of Custom Software Development?
It is not a good rationale to buy an inferior product, and subsequently, modify it for installation. Why wouldn’t you just create the whole thing on your own! The following advantages of custom software will help you make up your mind. The benefits can also be read as ways how custom app development can increase app development:
Vendor independent
Custom design software and you shall be free from the clutches of vendors who upgrade their product based on user reception and trends than your needs. In doing so, your business circumvents fee surges caused in the name of licensing and maintenance. Then there is the possibility of the vendor ceasing operations leaving your IT department to shreds and affecting business continuity.
You would although need to hire subject matter experts to cope with a proprietary solution. But again, there is no saying how much indirect benefit you would derive from them such as mentioned in the next point.
Create white-label products
The resources you devote to creating a bespoke internal solution could be monetized by licensing it to similar businesses or allowing them to use it as a White Label product by making a one-time payment. A White Label product is one that you build and sell to a second organization, conferring them the right to use it under their brand name. The only catch here is to define the terms of use. Although white label solutions are not always deemed to be effective for long-term, they can be a good option, nonetheless for entrepreneurs who are just starting their journey.
High-End integration
Investment in COTS software becomes a catch-22 situation when you discover you have to program extensions into the system to make it worth your while. Diverting the same expenditure towards custom software applications that integrate effortlessly with other software (because you made it so) saves you much-needed energy.
Performance
Custom software development provides for more stable and efficient IT operations as the software does all (perhaps more) that is asked of it to deliver value-adding results.
Scalability
Nobody knows better than you the future of your venture. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you would, during the course of customized software application development, come up with something that is scalable and relatable to the needs of your company.
Optimized business process
Every association has its own plan of action and in-house processes. It is hard for businesses to change their process to suit a specific application, no matter how effective and powerful it could be. Software should be planned and developed in a way to such an extent that it can align with the business model. Custom development assists with improving your business processes instead of replacing them.
Compatibility
Most organizations have a design model in which the output generated by a specific process (software application or module) works as an input for another process. A smooth flow of data is essential while streamlining business. Utilizing different packaged programming for various processes can disrupt data flow. Building custom software can resolve numerous kinds of issues concerning the flow of data between progressive processes.
Data security
A significant concern for some B2B and B2C organizations, data access, and security concerns influence many end-users in the market today. Supporting costly security protocols can make you pass added expenses to the services you offer to your customers. With custom development you have the ability to choose which data security technology or protocol is appropriate for your business and coordinate that in your software.
Cost effectiveness
With custom development you can plan and stage the development process. You’re not needed to contribute an enormous amount of money first on to receive the rewards of automation. Based on your financial plan and funds accessibility, you can begin automating single processes flows in a coordinated and planned way over the long run to make development affordable software development services.
Adaptability
Organizational processes change with time, and as the market dynamics change, it gets important to adjust to new processes and innovations to maintain your marketing stronghold. Customized software can be effortlessly changed – New cycles and innovations can be incorporated into your current programming as and when showcasing patterns change, so you can stay side by side of your rivals.
How to Decide Whether You Need a Bespoke Solution or Not?
By tradition, companies prefer to purchase COTS software provided it helps them meet up to 80% of the following business requirements.
Either allow the functioning of or automate entirely B2B transactions and processes unique to the business
Take care of proprietary information and safeguard confidential data
Suffice for ad-hoc privacy issues that might arise
Enable integration with software already deployed by the company
Reduce the cost of operations and increase return on investment
Accord a certain level of competitive advantage to the brand
There are companies that may be fine if the software delivers 60% efficiency than 80%. The vacuum that exists they fill on their own. But that is a risky proposition, leaving things up to chance and making superficial efforts to transform digitally.
A big reason startups cover ground on legacy businesses faster than others, is because they do not hesitate to innovate. And if that means bringing in new digital solutions, so be it.
[Further Read: How We Solve the Digital Transformation Challenges Pulling Your Business Down]
Get The Requirements Ready
Once you set your mind for custom development of software the next step is identifying collaborators to help you with project development internally. These include program sponsors, high-level stakeholders, sometimes your customers, and other miscellaneous partners.
This step is all about conveying the workforce your plans to transform digitally post which a detailed draft must be prepared listing down your Key Performance Indicators (KPI). KPIs must bear in mind:
To flatten out any statutory and or theoretically unachievable targets and be realistic
Define the role the proposed software will play in business development
Not to leave room for assumptions in that the end-to-end capabilities of the software are discussed with project stakeholders
The introduction of the software must not intervene with pre-existing COTS software
There must be ample proof of concept in the market to base and validate your theory on
The source-code used should not violate intellectual property rights and must be either open-sourced or written from scratch
The allocated limit of budget and time should be respected
If needed there can be partial diversions/pivots from the originally agreed course of action
Development Methodologies You Can Use
You can pick any of the following software development methodologies:
Waterfall model
Envisaged in the 1970s, the Waterfall Model is rigid in its implementation and benefits those with a crystal clear understanding of requirements. The expectation setting is followed by rigorous project documentation. It is sequential in nature meaning one stage of the project must be finished before beginning the next. It includes the following phases:
Define scope
Re-assess the scope
Design
Implement
Test
Deploy
Maintain
Not that this model is out of fashion, but development teams that want to mix things up and be prepared for last-hour changes to plans, don’t like the Waterfall Model much. It is built for those who like working under ironclad rules.
Agile development
Agile is the exact opposite of waterfall, in fact it was introduced to do away with the rigid, inflexible redundancies of the waterfall model. It prioritizes business unit collaboration over documentation. Teams that go Agile, do so to wrap up coding in design sprints that are time bound mini-projects to accomplish software development faster. Customer satisfaction is the priority here, everything else takes the backseat. Here at Anteelo, we trust Agile more than other methodologies as a custom software development company. Based on experience, we can help you decide between Agile and Waterfall models easily.
Scrum
This is a nuanced approach between older models like the Waterfall and newer ones like Agile. It facilitates regular team interaction but with a relative degree of self-discipline.that team members must impose on themselves. Sprint retrospectives in scrum development last an average of two weeks during which the primary objective of software development is fragmented into smaller, more achievable goals. Developers stick to the daily briefs that are a product of demo feedback. The development is quick and results steady.
Lean
A philosophy, methodology, or a mindset, call it what you will, it brings out tremendous productivity from teams in custom software companies. Whereas other entries in this list were specifically meant to bolster software development practices, Lean methodology was adopted from the manufacturing sector.
Agile is accomodative of flexibility, but it offers no actionable course to extend the same ideology towards business wings outside of Information Technology. Lean proposes the no-nonsense approach, nullifying wasteful practices, encouraging knowledge sharing, experimentation, innovation and faster turn-around times.
Feature driven development (FDD)
Custom software design and development can be taken up via Feature Driven Development as well. FDD has been a precursor to the now omnipresent, Agile and Lean approaches. It follows a five-step development model. In the first step you take your plans to the whiteboard and lay out an overall strategy. The next step is defining the specifications of the software followed by planning around each feature holistically. Designing and building each feature make up for the last two stages respectively.
Make up Your Mind
We hope this clears the air around custom development of software. Be it on-demand, or standard solutions, Anteelo has a track record of achievements in both categories. Our report card in the subject boasts nothing short of an ‘A’ with top industry review journals giving us a 10/10 on numerous occasions. Signing off with a saying dear to all at Anteelo.
If you are looking to develop an app that would be up to date with all the latest technologies of the current time, you should partner with a software app development company that is well-adept with the changing market needs, or you can opt for developers in your area like software development company in USA or Florida if you live in US. But make sure you choose the best to get quality results.
There are a lot of things that should be spontaneous in life, like office parties, weekend trips, even tattoos but software development is not one of them! Stages of software development should be efficiently and effectively planned. If you want to develop a great software product, you need to have a proper plan and process in place. Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it – “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
Let us take you over the sequence of steps that are required for proficient software product design and development. The full cycle of product development involves several steps where the ending of one step is the beginning of another!
Table of Content:
SDLC for Product Development
SDLC stages: What are the stages of software development life- cycle?
How an MVP approach can make the software development process more effective?
Steps to lower the software development time and cost
Why does Anteelo trust agile methodologies?
The Path to Success
SDLC for Product Development
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process for developing high quality software to meet customer expectations. SDLC includes a structure with a detailed plan to strategize, build, and maintain the product development.
Each stage of the product item advancement life cycle has its procedures and deliverables that get into the following stage. Throughout the software development process, every product begins with a thought. Then it goes through exploration, improvement, and testing, to the last service.
SDLC stages: What are the stages of software development life cycle?
As discussed above, the process of software development is a step by step method that needs to be dealt with in an efficient and effective manner. Let’s learn about SDLC methodologies and stages in detail:
1. Idea and Concept:
It all starts with an out-of-the-box idea and validating your application idea, but it is suggestable that right from the very beginning, document everything! Don’t keep your software product development ideas just inside your head. Any concept should be carefully thought out and brainstormed in order to be executed. Here are a few things that you can probe upon:
Define your goals
List out the features your software will have
Research other software products
Figure out how your product will stand out
Discuss the target audience
Sketch out what the software product will look like
You can be analytical and put together a user story
These simple steps will help your software product development life cycle in ways that you can’t even fathom and make the process smooth right from the start! This also defines a clear agenda that you have regarding the product.
2. Planning and Feasibility Analysis:
Feasibility analysis, an important part of the app discovery process, will help you determine not only the technical but also the economic aspects impacting your software product development process. You need to keep a few things in mind while planning the roadmap of your product like time, resources, essential tasks, estimates, and ROI etc. An adequate amount of analysis and planning helps in foreseeing the risks that can occur during the software product design process. It will also help you in being ready with risk mitigation strategies.
3. Proof of Concept:
Once you are through with your second step, you can go ahead and start with a proof of concept (POC). POC is one of the most important steps that software development services need to follow. This stage comes into existence way before the software development process starts. It will help you in validating your idea and you would know if the software product development steps are actually working for your business or not. It will not only confirm technical feasibility and possible expectations but also determine the potential blocks and the scope to accomplish them.
4. Design:
A good design is the one that doesn’t scream ‘look at me’ rather it shouts out ‘look at this product’. Software design is an integral stage of software development. Once the POC is successful, the design team conceptualizes a detailed software architecture hitting the bull’s eye when it comes to the features of the software. Product design strategy is about striking the right balance between user needs and business goals and not losing sight of either one during the SDLC.
The product design of your software will include prototypes and the final mockups, making sure that they are very customer centric. So the wireframes, standards, workflows and end goals should be defined keeping user interaction and final output in mind.
5. Proof of Value:
Proof of Value (POV) dives deeper into what the product means to your business. It helps you determine if your goals are achievable or not! Through the POV process you can easily take a single case from beginning to the end and inspect all the elements and understand the gaps on the way.
A POV basically provides a better understanding of the predicted value that the products will bring in and measure success.
6. Development and Coding:
Once we have all the key elements like the POV, design document and the functional requirement specification document, we can start with coding and development. It is all about giving life to your product! The software product development engineering team has to make sure that their coding process is accurate since it is potentially the riskiest step of the SDLC. Once the complete architecture that includes database, application programming interface and planned functionality of the solution is built, we can move towards the testing stage.
7. Quality Checking and Testing:
Now that your team is developing the software, quality checking and testing is one of the most important development process steps. I would highly recommend you to test, track and fix bugs simultaneously. However, once the product is developed successfully, you must have a final in-depth test as well.
You can start with these simple mobile app testing steps:
Releasing the product to a small group of beta testers
Using UX tools to keep a track of how the users are interacting to your product
You need to be 100% sure that you are not distributing buggy software to customers; this can ruin your reputation and result in loss of revenue. Testing plays a huge role in the software development procedure. I cannot emphasize it enough!
8. Deployment and Implementation:
Once you are done with software development process steps like designing, coding and testing of your application, now is the time of actual installation of the crafted product. The application is now moved to production including data and components transfer. However, during the next releases, only some specific changes will be deployed. At this stage, end-users and system analysts can see, use and experiment the ready application.
9. Marketing Strategies:
Simultaneously the marketing team will keep coming up with a multi-platform approach to turn the spotlight towards your product. Out of the box strategies that will focus on telling the product’s unique story, understanding the competitive analysis, investing in digital marketing, creating social media and SEO master plans will enhance the product’s value.
10. Maintenance, Upgrades and Enhancement:
You think that you have accomplished all the SDLC methodologies, well think again! The software development steps are not over yet. The final stage includes maintenance, operations and regular updates. Since this process starts post-launch, keep in mind that the customer needs are evolving every single day, which makes this step extremely essential.
The product will be upgraded, maintained, polished, redesigned and enhanced according to the feedback of the customers and the rapid development in the IT sector. I believe that this is the perfect time to vigorously modify the application’s functionalities to upgrade its performance. This way, you will be able to meet the actual needs of your target audience.
How an MVP approach can make the software development process more effective?
The full-form of MVP is – minimum viable product. The MVP will help you gain the users perspective. How? Below are some important pointers for you to keep in mind:
It is a ready to launch version of your software product with the sufficient amount of features that are enough for the initial users.
Once the feedback is received from the initial users, only then the final product is designed with all the elements.
The MVP process is cost effective since it saves time and accelerates the development process.
Building an MVP is not the only important task but testing its viability is just as important too. A software development company may think that the product can satisfy the needs of the customers but until and unless the MVP test is run, it cannot be said for sure.
Steps to lower the software development time and cost:
Step-1: Turn to outsourcing
Outsourcing the software development process results in 40% decrease of the actual cost. You should consider your outsourcing options because:
Initial in-house cost cutting will save you a lot of money in the form of on-shore salaries, benefits, taxes, marketing and management costs, etc.
Zero pay out on software architecture.
You’ll be able to choose designers and developers on the basis of technical knowledge, relevant experience and lower budget criteria.
We suggest you do your due diligence and award yourself with a software product development strategy company that is capable of meeting the quality requirements and completing your product successfully.
Step-2: Leave no room for assumptions
You should not be ambiguous about what you want when it comes to product development! If the requirements are not clear your product can turn into a disaster because of haphazard design, unplanned functionality and the lack of distinctness.
Documenting each and every requirement and expectation regarding your product will help you eliminate the room for vagueness. This will reduce the overall software development costs and save time for you, helping you focus on other important business problems and solutions.
Step-3: Testing is the key element
Make sure that the testing team is involved in every step of the way. Successful software developers reveal that they started testing for red flags, errors or bugs right from the design phase.
If the errors are found at a later stage, the intensity of rework increases! The quality check team will not only save the cost and time by reducing the chances for mid-project redesigning but also avoid sub-optimal application quality. By making software testing your ‘mantra’ you will throw light on potential risks and surface functionality conflicts.
Step-4: Prioritize the ‘must have’ features and eradicate the ‘nice to have’ features
I’m sure that we all buy gadgets and do not use about 50% of the features, same is the case with software products! They have a lot of unessential functions that your target audience will never use. Such features increase the development time and maintenance cost, so make sure your product has the most viable features.
I advise you to start with a smaller chunk of money and create a basic product. Once it turns out to be profitable, you can always expand the functionalities of the product. This step will save your time and cost. Also, carry out a proper market research to determine and forecast what your clients are embracing about your product.
Popular Software Development Methodologies
A team picks a specific set of tools and procedures for design, testing, management, and other software development processes. These choices rely on the aim that stands before the team and the objectives of the product that is to be built. Here are the most well-known software development models that an experienced teams use:
Waterfall Model
This model presumes that each stage is finished before the beginning of the next one. For instance, QA engineers begin testing solely after programming is totally done.
V-shaped Model
It is a lot like the waterfall model with a slight contrast- that is the testing occurs simultaneously with the other major stride for software development process.
Incremental model
This model is split into builds. It implies that the product is developed with discrete squares/parts. In other terms, it means that the product is built like an enigma.
Rapid App Development Model
In this model, the project development is split among small teams who work simultaneously.
Agile Model
It is a sort of incremental model where each delivery is focused on better software quality. This methodology is broadly spread amongst teams and customers as it displays consistent process and fast results. Time taken to each build can be measured by weeks rather than by months.
The agile software development process and its most popular methodology – scrum, give you an interactive and dynamic experience. Agile methodologies will give you the power to collaborate with customers, interact with individuals and stay in constant touch with the team working on your project and produce sustainable, profitable and successful products.
It is all about accelerating the process, making it more efficient, and responding to the real needs of your customers, even if it does not align with your initial plan. Agile does help you to go with the flow and move in one direction with the understanding that you’ll change course along the way because of the constantly evolving technology and requirements. Also, this is the reason why the agile approach is really effective when it comes to startups.
The Path to Success
The most important outcome of following the above SDLC phases is that it will give fluency to the project execution process. Understand that the SDLC can be structured to the needs of a particular project in order to deliver the best product possible.
Anteelo offers custom software application development processes. The Anteelo product development team accomplishes in understanding your product, designing and developing it, testing it, and finally constantly evolving it. We align lean principles in our software development process.
Lean development principles is an agile approach which was developed on lean manufacturing principles. We assist in discovering, designing, engineering and scaling up your product. We excel in customer satisfaction, cost effectiveness, and efficient workflows.
If you are searching for a reliable custom software development company that involves the latest technologies of the current time, then you should opt expert agencies or companies in your area like software development company USA, if you live in the US. But make sure you choose the best to get quality results.
