Since the past 40 years, the number of technology innovations both within and around medical devices have increased dramatically. Especially, the past 20 years have witnessed an acceleration in the sector, thanks to the Internet of Things and rise of its other corresponding parts like wireless connectivity, cloud computing, and AI, etc. These advancements have transformed the healthcare processes.
Even after 20 years, these leading-edge technologies are continuing to source a seismic shift in the process of healthcare administration and delivery.
And now, mobile applications have also seeped in and have become an important part of these highly demanded, technology-based medical and non-medical purposes.
These Apps or Software which are a medical device on their own – Software as a Medical Device – have grown to become an inherent part of the users’ life. The applications of SaMD are not just limited to diagnosis but have also made their place in the monitoring and treatment process. In fact it is SaMD that has led to the evolution of healthcare 1.0 to healthcare 3.0.
Seeing the growing inclusion of SaMD in the everyday healthcare, The International Medical Device Regulators Forum have described the concept and SaMD risk categories in detail for the medical app development industry to follow.
* SaMD is not the only compliance that healthcare industry stakeholders – mHealth applications entrepreneurs and device manufacturers should follow. There are other compliances as well, such as FDA, HIPAA, HL7, and FCPA. We have touched upon these compliances in much detail in our mHealthcare App Development Guide.
In this article, we are going to throw some light on what is SaMD, the regulations that it entails, and what mHealth app types which are categorized as Software as a Medical Device.
What is Software as A Medical Device?
The terminology – Software as a Medical Device stands for any software that is intended for use for one or multiple medical purposes and which performs these purposes without being integrated into a hardware medical device.
Here’s how IMDRAF defines SaMD –
‘The term “Software as a Medical Device” (SaMD) is defined as software intended to be used for one or more medical purposes that perform these purposes without being part of a hardware medical device.’
How to know if your mobile app is a SaMD
SaMD is a medical device and includes some in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) medical device.
SaMD is able to run on general purpose (non-medical) computing platforms.
Software does not meet the definition of SaMD if its intended purpose is to drive hardware medical device.
SaMD may be used with other products such as medical devices.
SaMD may be interfaced with other medical devices, including hardware medical devices and other SaMD software, as well as general purpose software.
Factors to Consider for SaMD Characterization
There are two ways through which SaMDs are characterized:
A. Information provided by SaMD
To diagnose or treat patients
To inform clinical management
To drive clinical management
B. Healthcare Condition
Critical condition
Serious condition
Non-serious condition
On the basis of these characterizations, SaMDs are divided into four categories.
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Category Wise Examples of SaMD
Category IV:
SaMDs which perform diagnostic image analysis for enabling treatment decisions when patients suffer an acute stroke
SaMDs which calculate the fractal dimension of a lesion and builds a structural map which reveals different growth patterns for providing diagnosis or identification if the lesion is benign or malignant.
SaMDs combining data from the immunoassays to the screen for mutable pathogens outbreak that can be highly communicable.
Category III:
SaMD which makes use of phone’s microphone for detecting interrupted breathing during sleep.
SaMD used for providing information by clicking pictures, monitoring growth or other data to supplement other information that a healthcare provider uses for diagnosing if a skin lesion is benign or malignant.
Category II:
SaMDs that analyzes heart rate
SaMD which use individuals’ health record data for predicting the risks of heart disease or stroke and create prevention strategies.
SaMD which integrate and analyze multiple tests to offer recommendations for diagnosis in certain clinical indications.
Category I:
SaMD which gather data from symptom diaries for providing information to gauge occurrence of an asthma episode.
SaMD analyzing images, movement of the eye for guiding next diagnostic action for astigmatism.
SaMD which store historic blood pressure information for health care providers to review.
SaMD using data of hearing sensitivity, speech in noise, and asking users to answer questionnaires about common listening situations for self-assessing hearing loss.
What Can SaMD Manufacturers do to Ensure Regulations?
SaMD companies should have a good Quality Management System incorporated into the development process to ensure compliance with any regulation. The chosen QMS platform should be capable of compliance with regulatory requirements like the FDA 21 CFR Part 820 and ISO 13485:2016.
Any misstep in the direction can lead to severe consequences with your application getting banned being only the tipping point. Noting the cruciality, it is advised that you should partner with a custom healthcare software development company who works alongside medical practitioners who understand these regulations and compliances to their entirety.
FAQs About SaMD
Q. What are examples of software that are not Software as a Medical Device?
Apps that hardware medical devices need for performing its role.
Apps which are dependent on the medical device data.
Apps that enable communication and streamlining of clinical workflow, like ones for scheduling visits, video or voice calling, etc
The app examples are not limited to these. There are a number of other app types which do not fall under the definition of SaMDs.
Q. What can Software as a Medical Device actually do?
SaMD applications are those which act as a stand-alone health application that gives users the insight into their physical health by making diagnosis, doing X-ray processing, or calculating insulin doses.
Q. What is IEC 62304?
IEC 62304 is a standard that specifies the life cycle requirements needed for the creation of Software as a Medical Device and Software within medical devices. When used along with ISO 13485, it offers a framework that is important for safe designing and maintenance of medical device software.
Q. Describe your QMS process for medical device software development
We have our own internal QMS for working with medical device and pharmaceutical clients, to ensure our own quality. We do not get audited by clients, third parties, or regulators.
Stage 1 : Initiate Project: Conduct a kick-off teleconference with Client to:
Review the project plan and timeline
Finalize key sources of information
Define the project team
Stage 2 : Review Documentation: Evaluate and examine all relevant documents including existing product information, nonclinical data/plans, and regulatory documentation. The sources of this information are:
Non-clinical data, regulatory correspondence, product technical specifications, references to predicate devices, proposed product claims and intended/indications for use, etc.
Stage 3: Determine Regulatory Pathway Using information from above section, Develop an FDA regulatory path determining whether 510(k) or de novo is most appropriate (a PMA regulatory strategy is more complex and will require a higher budget). The goal will be to advise Client on the optimal approach to FDA.
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.
DevOps is the fusion of social thinking approach, practices, and apparatuses that builds an association’s capacity to deliver products and service at high pace: developing and adapting products at a quicker speed than businesses utilising customary software development and infrastructure management procedures. This speed empowers companies to give their customers comprehensive services and stay ahead of their contemporaries. DevOps is the posterity of agile software development – conceived from the need to stay inline with augmented programming speed, and throughput agile strategies have accomplished. Development in agile culture and approaches over the past few years revealed the requirement for a more universal approach for the end-to-end software delivery lifecycle.
Who is a DevOps Engineer?
DevOps Engineer is a professional who comprehends the Software Development Lifecycle and has the inside and out knowledge of different automation technologies for creating advanced pipelines (like CI/CD). DevOps Engineers works with designers and the IT team to manage the code discharges. They are either designer who gets inspired by deployment and network operations or system admins who have an interest in scripting and coding and move into the development side where they can planning of testing and deployment.
In DevOps, there is a need to have a continuous and gradual change in the code so that testing and deployment are conceivable. It probably won’t be persistently feasible for DevOps Engineers to do the coding from the start again and again; in that case, they need to know about it. There is a need for DevOps Engineers to associate different components of coding alongside libraries and programming advancement packs and incorporate different parts of SQL data management or various messaging tools for running programming release and deployments with OS and the production foundation. This article walks you through the skills required to be a DevOps Engineer:
1. Knowledge of Prominent Automation Tools
DevOps is continually evolving. To guarantee that your DevOps abilities are up to the mark, you should keep yourself updated with the best DevOps tools. These DevOps tools facilitate faster bug fixes and improved operational support, along with increased team flexibility and agility. They result in happier and more engaged teams and promote cross-skilling, self-improvement and collaborative working. The top DevOps tools are:
a) Bamboo: Bamboo has numerous pre-assembled functionalities that will assist you to automate your delivery pipeline, from builds to deployment. you needn’t bother with that numerous modules with Bamboo, as it does numerous things out-of-the-box with fewer yet more efficient modules.
b) Docker: Docker has been one of the most significant DevOps apparatuses out there. Docker has made containerisation mainstream in the tech world, mostly because it makes disseminated development conceivable and computerises the deployment of your applications. It separates applications into discrete holders, so they become convenient and increasingly secure.
c) Git: Git is one of the most renowned DevOps tools and is extensively used across the DevOps industry. It’s a distributed source code management tool that is highly appreciated by remote team members, freelancers, and open-source contributors. Git enables you to track the progress of your development work.
d) Jenkins: It is a reliable and most trusted automation tool for a great number of DevOps teams across the globe. It’s an open-source CI/CD server that enables the engineers’ to mechanise various phases of the delivery pipeline. Its vast plugin ecosystem has made it a very renowned and popular tool. As of now, it offers more than 1,000 plugins and still counting, and so it integrates with majority DevOps tools.
e) Raygun: Spotting bugs and finding execution issues is a fundamental need of the DevOps procedure. Raygun is an application execution observing tool that can assist you with discovering bugs and find execution issues through continuous checking.
f) Gradle: Gradle is a developer fabricated tool that is utilized by tech-biggies like Google to assemble applications and is displayed in a manner that is extensible in most elementary ways. For instance, Gradle can be utilized for native development with C/C++ and can likewise be extended to cover other programming languages and platforms.
g) Ansible: Ansible is an open-source application development, config management, and programming provisioning tool that can run on UNIX-based frameworks just as Windows-based frameworks. This DevOps tool designs a framework for software development and furthermore automatic deployment and delivery.
h) Kubernetes: While the Docker permits you to run applications in compartments, Kubernetes goes above and beyond by permitting engineers to run holders in a group in a protected way. With Kubernetes, designers can consequently oversee, screen, scale, and convey cloud-native applications. Kubernetes works as an amazing orchestrator that oversees communication among units and directs them as a group.
Puppet:
A puppet is a renowned tool utilized for configuration management. It is an open-source stage that has a decisive language depicting its framework arrangement. It can run on an assortment of frameworks, including Unix-based frameworks, IBM centralized server, macOS Servers, Cisco switches, and Microsoft Windows. It is basically used to pull strings on various application servers without a moment’s delay.
Elk Stack
Elk Stack is a mix of three open-source ventures – Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana that is helpful to gather bits of knowledge into your log information. With its downloads exceeding millions, Elk Stack is one of the most well-known management platforms. It is a superb DevOps tool for associations that need centralized logging framework. It accompanies a ground-breaking and flexible innovation stack that can streamline the outstanding burden of tasks and furthermore offer you business insights for no extra cost.
2.Programming Skills and a basic understanding of Scripting Languages
A DevOps Engineer need not be a coding expert but must have the fundamental knowledge of coding and scripting. These languages are mostly utilized in designing the automation processes and to achieve continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). Top DevOps Programming Languages are:
C: In this internet era, the majority of the code is written in C, and different languages reuse a significant number of its modules to facilitate the programming experience. Learning C is substantial so as to have the elementary knowledge of coding and to work on KVM and QEMU ventures.
JavaScript: The entire world wide web is the offspring of JavaScript. Many of the most well-known systems and libraries are written in JavaScript, from Angular to React and Node. Back end execution isn’t the only thing that this language brings to the table: the monstrous network of engineers implies that there’s consistently help accessible on GitHub or Stack Overflow. JavaScript is a sure thing for engineers.
Python: It has been utilized to fabricate cloud infrastructure tasks and assists web applications through systems like Django. Python is an agreeable all-purpose with a wide scope of utility. Python additionally upholds great programming rehearses through its elaborate prerequisites, which guarantees that code composed by one individual will be understandable to another- – a significant element in a DevOps world, where visibility should be constant.
Ruby: Ruby advantages from an enormous assortment of community-produced modules that anybody can incorporate into applications to add usefulness without composing new code themselves. It empowers an entirely adaptable way to deal with programming and doesn’t anticipate that designers should adopt a specific strategy to compose code.
Information on different automation tools isn’t sufficient as you should also know where to utilize these. These automation tools ought to be utilized so as to encourage Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. Continuous integration and Continuous Delivery are the procedures where your development squad includes constant code changes that are pushed in the principle branch while guaranteeing that it doesn’t affect any progressions made by designers working parallelly.
4.Software Security
DevSecOps (Security DevOps) has emerged as one of the tech buzzwords in the previous year for a reason being that DevOps helps in creating and deploying programs way more quickly, it likewise makes a lot of vulnerabilities, since security groups can’t stay aware of the quicker cycle. Basically, not just excellent code but bugs and malware can also be sent a lot quicker at this point. Presenting DevOps without having culminated security forms in the IT-association is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Accordingly, DevOps ought to have the fundamental programming security aptitudes to have the option to bring security into the SDLC directly off the bat.
5. Efficient Testing Skills
DevOps is gigantically affected by how well testing is done in a tech-based company. You can’t robotize the DevOps pipeline if effective constant testing, the procedure of executing automatic tests, isn’t set up. Continuous testing ensures that each computerized trial gets executed the way it should, or there is a huge risk of pushing faulty code straight away to clients, which isn’t acceptable.
6.Soft Skills
In addition to the fact that DevOps requires solid abilities like coding and robotization, yet it additionally requires such delicate aptitudes as adaptability, self-inspiration, and sympathy. A DevOps engineer is somebody who constructs associations and mitigates bottlenecks, which is achieved by conversing with individuals. Correspondence and cooperation are the abilities that can represent the moment of truth for a DevOps Engineer in any association. They ought to see how the association runs, who the individuals who oversee it are, and what the association’s way of life is to abstain from making conflict focuses and limitations.
Role of a DevOps Engineer
DevOps professionals come from a multitude of IT backgrounds and begin the role in different places in their careers. Generally, the role of a DevOps engineer is not as easy as it appears. It requires looking into seamless integration among the teams, successfully and continuously deploying the code. The DevOps approach to software development requires recurring, incremental changes, and DevOps Engineers seldom code from scratch. However, they must understand the fundamentals of software development languages and be thorough with the development tools utilized to make a new code or update the existing one.
A DevOps Engineer works alongside the development team to handle the coding and scripting expected to associate the components of the code, for example, SDKs or libraries and coordinate different parts, for example, informing tools or SQL DBMS that is required to run the product discharge with OSs and generation framework. They ought to be able to deal with the IT framework as per the sustained software code devoted to multi-tenant or hybrid cloud environments. There’s a need to have a provision for required assets and for obtaining the suitable organisation model, approving the launch and checking execution. DevOps Engineers could either be the network engineers who have moved into the coding area or the designers who have moved into operations. In any case, it is a cross-function job that is seeing an immense hike in the manner software is developed and deployed in object-critical applications.
Conclusion:
DevOps isn’t very hard to understand. It just requires a person to have a ton of hard and soft skills. DevOps specialists ought to have the option to do a great deal on the tech side of things — from utilizing explicit DevOps devices and overseeing framework in the cloud to composing secure code and checking mechanization tests. They ought to be people who are passionate about what they do and who are prepared to convey the gigantic measures of significant worth. They ought to be interested and proactive, compassionate and self-assured, solid and reliable. They ought to have the option to place clients’ needs over their teams’ needs and make a move when required. The DevOps job isn’t simple, yet it is absolutely justified, despite all the trouble to turn into a DevOps. To take things off the ground, check what number of the DevOps aptitudes highlighted in this article you have. On the off chance that you come up short on some of them, be proactive and start adapting at the present time!
Google recently announced that they have acquired AppSheet, a Seattle-based no-code mobile app development platform. They have not disclosed the terms of the acquisition yet. However, as per the revelations, AppSheet will continue to serve its existing customers.
Praveen Seshadri and Brian Sabino founded the AppSheet back in 2014. Keeping in mind to help business people and others build their own mobile applications without having any coding experience. It received its seed funding from the New Enterprise Associates in 2015 and was recognized as one of the creative tech startups by TiE in 2018. Following by getting fame of leading a leader for low-code app development for business developers by Forrester Research in 2019.
First choice of various brands for making their presence
The platform became the first choice of many small and established brands, including Whirlpool, Pepsi, the Global Cancer Institute, Toyota, American Electric Power, and M&O Partners for making their space in the IT-powered business world. It is a result of the set of features it offers. It features the ability to capture, collaborate, and display data, and create an explanatory programming model.
Praveen Seshadri said, “As we and IT industry has grown, there is now a huge pent-up demand for enterprise automation,”. He further added, “There is the rise of low and no-code platforms. This will make citizen development come out as the planned way for modern organizations. It will help to invest, innovate, and compete.”
AppSheet has also been combining AI and NLP technology. This is to further quicken the mobile app development process. This also enables businesses to enter the mobile sphere at the earliest.
Till now, over 18,000 app creators have used AppSheet’s development suite to locate around 200,000 apps. And now, when Google acquires AppSheet, the numbers and results are much beyond everyone’s expectations.
AppSheet services to Google Cloud
The tech giant, which recently acquired a retail inventory management startup Pointy as well, is expecting to reimagine the app development space by bringing AppSheet services to Google Cloud.
“The acquisition will complement Google’s strategy to reimagine the application development space by helping businesses set up with workflow automation, app support, and API Management,” said Amit Zavery, vice president of Google Cloud. He further added, “Customers will now be able to build richer apps that use not only Google Sheets and Forms, but other top Google technologies like Google Analytics, Maps, and Android”.
[Note: As we mentioned above about API management, consider this blog to know in detail about the process and available tools: 15 Open-Source API Management Platforms to Add in Your Tech Stack]
The tech giant expects to employ AppSheet’s ability to power up workplace applications (include CRM, personalized reporting, field inspections, etc.) while keeping Google Cloud’s services focusing entirely on the financial, media, and retail domains.
The Google team also revealed that low-development app development platforms like AppSheet are not going to replace sophisticated development environments. Rather, they will be put into practice to empower mobile app developers to collect extensive, rich data like geographic data and indoor location data from any device and use the insights gained to build user-centric applications. Plus, they will be able to update and maintain the data set in real-time, without compromising on the security front.
The AppSheet team will soon join Google Cloud. But, they will continue to serve their existing new and existing clients and support iOS apps and web-based mobility solutions.
Can great products be built without having any solid development processes? I don’t know but I can confidently say that it’s a definitive topic for a thesis. Well, we decided to do away with all the development processes for one of the coolest products that we are building.
You did what!?
Yeah, Unbelievable but true.
It must be burning in flames, isn’t it?
As a matter of fact, to the contrary, we not only got done sooner but it works great.
You kiddin’ me, right? It ain’t even 1st of April today?
Nope. It’s sad that we have been conditioned to believe the processes are a panacea to all our software problems and helps build product the right way. Come to think of it, it is probably true to a large extent for certain kind of software projects but you can still make magic without it. It is always about the people.
So, what was the darn process? Or, whatever you are calling it?
Actually, we decided to build the software in an extremely simple yet agile way. Really, it was darn simple. We call it “V1P” – Version 1.0 Process.
Ideate
Sudesh and I spent lot of time envisioning how the product would look like. We did lots of wireframes/HTML prototypes before even laying the single line of code or thinking about design. Once we were comfortable with our idea, we decided to put the features in an excel file.
Plan
We created an extremely simple spreadsheet with all the features and task and divided them in 2 week iterations.
White boarding
We did an extensive white boarding of the design and how different components/layers would interact with each other. And, that was our design.
Communicate
As we were working very closely(ahem..I meant we sit next to each other), we used to have informal stand ups. Well, technically, we were always sitting down while having these meetings. So, more like sit-down stand ups – Huh! Oh well. We used to discuss for 15 minutes regarding the progress and any impediments.
Build Trust
We never went back and updated our status. Doh! The source code was the barometer of our progress. It’s funny what all can be communicated to each other when you trust your team mates and build on each other’s code.
Deploy
Sudesh deployed the code every other day so that we could see if anything was broken. Yup, no nightly build process for us. Come to think of it, I missed this the most. I think going forward, we would have some sort of Continuous Integration like we do in our other products.
Fix and Move Forward
We used to fix bugs before moving to any new functionality.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Well, that was our process. You would be really surprised that we got done with the alpha version of the product in straight 3 months. It’s a fairly complex product and I’m sure it would have taken more time if we were to follow everything by the book. I think the thing that led to our success was lot of brainstorming early on and having immense level of trust.
It’s a different thing if the product becomes successful or not. Well, it’s coming soon. Wish us luck!
PS – I’m sure you must be really thinking that it is really applicable for products which are being built in a garage by couple of hackers. Well, may be. It’s not something that we follow everyday but has produced great results for us. Also, I don’t intend to follow it in our products of fairly large size which need lot of interactions but something I’m ready to stick with for smaller teams.
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.
MVP in the field of Software Development stands for Minimum Viable Product. It is a concept developed by Eric Ries as a part of the Lean Start Up method. According to his definition:
“The Minimum Viable Product is that version of the new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about the customer with the least efforts.”
It is based on the idea of Incremental Software Development that renders a product more efficient which is complete on its own with each iteration. A Minimum Viable Product is developed as a core unit of an experimentation strategy. It consists of a basic set of solutions for testing the viability of a business idea and how the customers react to it.
The main purpose of building an MVP :
Deliver a working product that provides immediate value with minimum resources be it money, time or infrastructure.
Create a baseline for future development and clarify the next steps to be taken in the project.
Earliest possible product release.
Minimum implementation costs.
Test the viability of the product before investing large capital and manpower into it.
Identify potential features and failures.
Identify and understand its user base and its preferences.
After receiving feedback, more features can be added. Every new release of the MVP should ensure a better solution for the customers and should be completed rather than a ‘work in progress’ solution. This can be understood better through an illustration by John Mayo in his article ‘Two Ways to Build a Pyramid’.
In a traditional approach, building the pyramid can be started from the base, and a new level can be added on top with each increment. Although this is an incremental process, until the last iteration it is only a ‘work in progress’, as in the image below.
The other approach is to start with a small pyramid. With each iteration, components can be added to increase its size or extend its functionality. Thus, after each increment, you will have a complete pyramid which can be further extended.
The rule here is to add new features gradually with each release of the MVP being a better and faster solution for the agenda under consideration.
Types of MVP
There are two categories of MVPs. Low Fidelity MVPs help you to get an insight into your customer’s problems and the kind of solution that will be most effective for the customer. High Fidelity MVPs are used to find out how much the customers will be willing to pay for the solution. Furthermore, it helps you to optimize your marketing strategy and communication channels along with the best potential growth strategies.
In today’s market where a wide range of services and products are in demand, minimum viable products differ accordingly. The different types of MVPs which can be categorized under Low-Fidelity and High-Fidelity MVPs are as follows:
Low Fidelity MVPs
High Fidelity MVPs
An Honest Customer Interview
Digital Prototypes like wireframes and mock-ups
Blogs and their Comments
3D Models for manufacturing products.
Subject Matter Forums
The Wizard of Oz
Website or an Application Landing Page
The Concierge MVP
Split Testing to measure user reaction to changes
The Piecemeal MVP
Videos
Crowdfunding helps generate funding for the product creations as well as testing its future demand in the market.
UX Prototypes.
Single Featured MVP in order to focus on the most essential solutions that will be provided by the product.
Ad Campaigns for market surveys
Email MVP
User SignUp for an Upcoming Product
Audience building via tests, interviews and questionnaires.
Micro-Surveys
Out of the above MVPs, most of which are self-explanatory, let us elaborate on the following few.
Concierge MVP: Here building a product is not necessary. Here you provide the services manually and analyze your customer interaction. This helps to understand if the customers will use your product or they need an entirely different product.
Wizard of Oz MVP: Here a fully functional product prototype is presented before the user while you are at work behind the scenes providing all that is necessary. Through this type of MVC, you are able to interact directly with your customers and review their preferences.
Piecemeal MVP: Here existing tools and solutions are used to create your product. This involves a minimum or no investment. A piecemeal MVP consists of existing components from multiple third-party sources that are put together to create the product or service.
Email MVP: Here you begin by sending emails with the business proposition to your existing customers. If the feedback is positive, the business idea is worth pursuing, however, if the feedback is bleak, either the proposal is missing something or it does not solve any problem.
Pitfalls
The main pitfall of an MVP is its lack of understanding. More often teams tend to believe it is the smallest amount of functionality that needs to be presented to the consumers in order to understand its viability. It might also be confused with minimum market earning. MVP is more focused on learning from customer feedback. It is very important to identify the set of features that needs to be included for an MVP. Including too many features will overload the MVP, incur cost and time and may fail to succeed. However, filtering features may cut out its key functions. The basic set of solution repeatedly mentioned here, refers to developing a deployable product with the key features which allows customers to access the solution and complete their entire journey towards their goal. Hence, it is essential that before releasing an MVP teams correlate the terms ‘minimum’ and ‘viable’ correctly. Finally, always keep in mind the metrics – Daily active users, maintenance rate and the average time spent with the product in order to quantify the success of your MVP.
Conclusion
Developing an MVP is a strategy to avoid developing products that are liable to be rejected by consumers. It is basically built to test a specific set of assumptions and prove that the product will provide an effective solution. MVPs are effective only when you take into account market feedback. This will help you to understand which features are to be developed and which to be discarded. While developing an MVP always keep in mind the most accurate but least features of the product but not the complete product.
The first time I heard of lean manufacturing was in the context of Toyota in my business operation class. Everyone, like me, who read into lean principle, was completely fascinated by the concept of reducing waste and increasing productivity through an intentional design.
Over time, the lean manufacturing method worked and the lean principles of product development flow was adopted by a number of industries, even outside manufacturing, which included software development.
Lean development principle is an agile approach which was developed on lean manufacturing principles. The same, that is being used by Toyota as a lean development methodology for managing and optimizing the process of vehicle production for minimizing waste and increasing customer value.
I know what you must be thinking. If the lean principles originated around vehicle manufacturing, how does software development fit in?
The connection between lean agile methodology and software development was first introduced in 2003 in a book named “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit” by Tom and Mary Poppendieck.
In the book, Poppendiecks interpreted how the lean principles could be applied into the software development process. Both software development and manufacturing processes follow repeatable structures and rely on high quality standards. They also depend heavily on teamwork to get things done.
The question, however, is how it can be done. In this article, we are going to look into how we align our software development process with lean software principles.
Table Of Content
What are the Strengths and Weakness of Lean Agile Software Development?
The 7 Principles Of Lean Software Development
Tools Used in Software Development Process
Aligning The 7 Lean Principles Into Our Software Development Projects:
Phase Wise Application of the 2 Principles
Overcoming The Challenges of Using Lean Principles
Conclusion
If you still are not sure about what are the lean principles in the software development process, then let me help you out with the meaning. Lean software development is a collection of principles that is used for software development to reduce the programming effort. Lean principles got their start in manufacturing, as a way to optimize the production line to minimize waste and maximize value to the customer.
Repeatable processes
Team collaboration
Uniform standards
What are the Strengths and Weakness of Lean Agile Software Development?
The strengths of lean product development principles include:
A streamlined approach allowing functionalities to be delivered in a limited time
Elimination of unnecessary activities which can lower the cost
Empowerment of the development team, helping them make decisions that can boost their morale.
The flexibility of the project to frequently adapt the project and customize it according to the customer’s requirement.
The weaknesses of lean software development methodology include:
It depends greatly on the involved team, making it less scalable compared to other frameworks
It relies on stringent documentation. Failure on this part can lead to heavy development mistakes.
Planning is necessary before the project is started. Before kicking off the project, you should be aware of the project vision, roadmap, release plan, and iteration plan.
Professional teams are required to maintain workflow coordination and make quick decisions while working.
The 7 Principles Of Lean Software Development
There are seven key principles of the lean software development approach working with the aim of fastening delivery and bringing high value to the end-users:
Eliminate Waste
Create Knowledge
Build Quality In
Fast Delivery
Empower Your Team
Delay in Making Decisions
Optimize the whole
To fulfill these objectives cum principles, we make use of tools such as:
Tools Used in Software Development Process
5s System – It is designed to improve efficiency and productivity through a systematic approach and following its five S’s that stands for Sort, Set, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain.
Inventory management – We follow the practice where we lower the number of operations that are in progress in one go through the application of theory or constraints or queuing theory.
Kaizen – This lean development tool helps in promoting improvement in quality, technology, processes, productivity, and safety. It is most helpful in developing a safe and tech culture.
Kanban – It is a pull project management system, where we limit tasks that are getting completed simultaneously. This helps us in preventing the overload of the development process.
Value stream mapping – It is a visualization method, where we visualize the development cycle – from client request to deployment. This helps us in demonstrating and helping optimize the time spent on holding and on actual processing.
Let us now look at how we align the seven principles of lean manufacturing with our software development cycle in our role as a leading lean software development company.
Aligning The 7 Lean Principles Into Our Software Development Projects:
1. Eliminate Waste
The foremost principle of lean product development that we adopt is elimination of everything which does not bring any value to the end-users. We start by identifying value of the product we have to build.
It makes it easy to identify the waste like unnecessary code, unclear goals, additional features, and extra processes, etc.
Wastes is one of the biggest digital transformation challenges. In our experience, can be found in a number of domains:
Waste of work-in-progress i.e. the partial work. This can be lowered by putting limitations in work-in-progress, through the mode of Kanban.
Waste of overproduction waste. These emerge when the feedback cycles get too lengthy and a series of extra features are demanded.
Processes waste. These are eliminated by our software development company through pair programming approaches and better collaborations.
Handsoff waste. We solve the issue by not keeping our team functioning as silos. We work as a close knit cross-functioning team which helps in enhancing efficiency.
Software defects. Waste tends to seep in when the quality is not made a part of the software development firm process with different balance and checks.
2. Create Knowledge
Software development process, in itself, is one that is heavily knowledge generating one. Anteelo from the beginning has been an extremely knowledge focused company. This is one of the main reasons how we have been able to incorporate blockchain and AI technology in the projects before any other software application development company in the industry.
We align the principle with our development process by implementing some key methods like: code reviews, performing training, code comments, project documentation, pair programming, and sharing sessions, etc.
3. Build Quality In
Our software development team ensures that the focus is always on delivering high-quality products. We always keep enhancing our development process to eliminate the project from the first step to the end product.
There are various lean agile software development approaches that we apply to better the product quality:
Pair programming – to lower the miscommunication waste and maximum output.
Testing criteria – offering the engineers a system ensuring that it meets the requirement.
Incremental development – bettering the quality through timely, consistent feedback.
Lesser wait states – to protect the quality and streamline efficiency while lowering the gap in knowledge.
Automation – using assets like AI and machine learning to lower and eventually eliminate the errors in development processes.
4. Fast Delivery
The agile development basics focuses heavily on the fast delivery of software processes. Lean agile principles, being a part of the approach also put focus on fast delivery. It simply means that the project team would have to deliver the modules according to the milestone plans.
Achieving fast app development time becomes easier when there is a stable workflow that helps teams in understanding the value of the process and thus facilitate fast results.
5. Empower Your Team
This one lean principle is what we follow regardless of the team and project. Our team that focuses on software development for startups understands that when you work together you have to respect each other. And when things go south or not according to plan, the focus should be kept on checking for gaps in the work process that might have led to conflicts and challenges.
Ever since our inception, we have been focusing on the creation of a favorable work environment where we lead by example. To better the morale, we also enable creative freedom to our teams giving them the choice to identify the best approach for any task.
6. Delay in Making Decisions
We know what you are thinking – delay in decision-making has to be a bad idea.
But when we follow the lean-agile principles, we believe that deciding late is not equal to becoming irresponsible. In fact, it encourages the team to keep their options open for a long period of time so that they can gather data which can help in taking important decisions.
The result of this is that our project never suffers from negative impacts which emerges because of bad decision making.
7. Optimize the Whole
We go for the optimization of the complete development process, which is not just limited to the sub-processes. We work with the understanding that if we add value to a specific set of processes, the end product will end up getting affected, and the end-results would be sub-optimized.
To handle sub-optimization, we encourage operating with good work capacities. We optimize the entire process which enables identification of value flows for the entire team that, in turn, promises valuable and timely delivery.
Overcoming The Challenges of Using Lean Principles
Although the article, up until this point, has been inclined towards how lean software methodology makes it beneficial for a smooth software development process, there are some challenges that are prevalent which have to be solved.
The team members have to be self-directed and be able to work as a cohesive unit.
There can be instances where the requirements might keep increasing without a finalization in sight. These have to be managed with delicacy upon talking to the clients.
Lean method is heavily focused on continuous improvement. The timelines for implementations are also generally long. This, in turn, can increase the timeline when you are able to reap the benefits.
Conclusion
Since lean agile methodology presents a customer oriented, adaptable, and flexible system, there is no hard and fast rule to follow the procedures or methodologies. But one can always take note of the given information so that there is no problem while developing a software.
It is always advisable to search for an expert, (who are focused on improving and enhancing their skills) while employing a team to build your application. The best way to do that is to either partner with software developers that are well-adapted with the technology and client’s needs, or you can opt for top companies in your area like top software development companies in USA or software development company in California, if you live in the US. But make sure you choose the best to get quality results.
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.
