Workflows for software development may significantly affect the effectiveness of your team and the quality of your products. Your developers won’t be able to complete their task on time if your software development procedure isn’t streamlined. They are also less likely to be involved and in sync with the objectives of your company.
Learn how to design an efficient software development process by reading our tutorial. We’ll go over the essentials of software development workflow, six strategies to maximize your flow for ongoing development, and typical obstacles Agile teams encounter. By the time you finish reading our guide, you will also know how to hire a committed crew to enhance your productivity.
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Components of a Workflow for Software Development
The process components for software development include a significant number of technical components. Before we talk about how to improve your software development, let’s talk about them.
A software development workflow, sometimes called an SDLC (systems development lifecycle), is a procedure for organizing, creating, testing, and releasing software applications. In order to produce software of the highest quality in the quickest amount of time, your team must adhere to an approved SDLC.
Organizing and Designating Positions within Your Development Group
Roles in your development team are planned and assigned as the first phase in the SDLC. To make sure you have everything you need to begin the project, you must check the following:
What features and functionalities are necessary for the software, website, application, or service that is being developed? These are known as the product requirements or scope. What is the client’s or your desire? Exist any particular branding rules?
Alignment: How does the project relate to the overall purpose and objectives of your company?
Project timeline: What are the start and finish dates of this project? On this project, how and when will your team work together? Do they intend to work on it daily? Every two weeks? How does this project fit into the other projects your team is working on at the same time?
Allocation and availability of resources: Take a close look at your current workforce. Can you handle this project with the skills and resources you have? If not, is it necessary to add more members to your team or bring on a new development team? You can notice this more clearly if you create a resource strategy before the project begins.
Estimated cost: What will the project cost? Provide an itemized list of projected expenses.
Requirements: You must also comprehend the project’s technical specifications.
Pose inquiries about the project’s particulars, such as:
Which issue is resolved by the project?
What purpose will the product be used for, and by whom?
Do you need new application programming interfaces (APIs), platforms, or tools for the software development workflow?
What type of input or output of data is required?
How are you going to manage security and privacy?
Role assignment: After deciding on the aforementioned factors, it’s time to give your development team duties. Examine each member’s background, inclinations, character, and abilities, then consult with them to determine the most suitable function.
To get off to a good start is the aim of the first phase of the SDLC. As a result, you must get feedback from every department that this initiative will affect. Usually, this comprises:
Services related to information technology (IT)
creation of products
Assurance of quality (QA)
Activities
Business expansion
Marketing and sales
Supervisory
By the time this phase is over, you need to have enough data to draft an extensive scope of work (SOW), which is a narrative description of your project that outlines deliverables, deadlines, and activities unique to it. An effective SOW will:
Assist you in meeting deadlines and goals on time and ahead of schedule
Avoid scope creep, which occurs when features and additions go beyond what you had originally planned.
Make things clearer and maintain everyone’s understanding
Building the Software Development Environment and Its Design
The software development environment (SDE) must be designed and created next. A set of hardware and software tools for creating software systems is called an SDE. It’s everything your development team needs, to put it simply, to finish their task. Although an SDE’s contents might vary depending on the project and the company, most SDEs will include the following:
Here is where your developers create, modify, and save the code for your project: the code editor and compiler. The code editor and compiler should be able to compile code if your programmers utilize compiled languages such as C++ and C%. Sublime, Atom, and Visual Studio are just a few of the code editors and compilers that many businesses utilize.
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Command-line interface (CLI): Team members may access the file system and create and remove folders using CLIs. Compared to graphical user interfaces, they are much more accurate and potent (GUI). TEXTREME, PowerShell, and Git Bash are a few common examples.
Version control system: With the help of these tools, developers may save their work, collaborate on projects, and keep track of various build versions, allowing them to reuse and alter portions of the code base as required. GitHub is a prime example.
The hardest part of the SDLC is perhaps using the SDE to construct the product. In particular, if your team is using sequential project management techniques like Waterfall, they may need to go back to the planning step if they make a mistake while developing the product. Your team should so adhere to the SOW at all times. They won’t be able to prevent scope expansion and keep everyone in agreement if they don’t.
Examining Code for Correctness and Quality During the Code Review Process
Your team will deploy the product into the beta environment for testing after they have completed constructing it. QA and your development team will then collaborate to test, monitor, and resolve issues.
Your team will conduct an additional round of thorough testing when the product is judged ready for release. This might include:
Distributing the product to a limited number of beta testers.
Monitoring and evaluating user interactions with the product via the use of user experience (UX) technologies
It might take a while to test, particularly if your program is complicated. But it’s crucial to make sure you’re not sending clients defective merchandise. Issues with performance, including bugs and slowness, can:
Waste hours of development time that may have been put to better use
Ruin your reputation
Cut down on your ROI (return on investment)
Implementing and Carrying Out Software Testing
When you have resolved all bugs, lags, and other difficulties, it’s time to release your product to actual consumers. The majority of businesses use continuous deployment models or Application Release Automation (ARA) tools to automate this phase.
Still, the SDLC hasn’t ended. You must maintain your software after putting it into the world to guarantee uptime and client satisfaction. Additionally, you must regularly test the software in accordance with the changing demands and specifications of your customers.
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Six Methods to Improve the Flow of Your Software Development Process for Ongoing Improvement
After learning about the components of an SDLC, let’s look at six strategies for improving your software development flow over time.
Using a project management tool, assign roles to team members
Roles are still often assigned by hand in many businesses over emails, phone calls, and meetings. Larger businesses may choose to employ a project management tool to allocate responsibilities within their project teams, even though this works well for the majority of small businesses and projects. With the correct tool, project managers will be able to:
Assign jobs and responsibilities using an intuitive UI.
Make schedules unique to meet the needs of certain tasks.
Recognize and avoid hazards
Make thorough documentation, charts, and reports.
Among the best project management tools are:
Slack
GanttPro
Project Microsoft
Trello
Evernote
2. Stress Code Quality as opposed to Documentation
You’ll save a ton of money, effort, and rework if you prioritize code quality above the creation of documentation.
Even while having a workable SOW is crucial, spending too much time and money on documentation may be inefficient, particularly when deadlines are tight. You won’t have enough time to ensure code quality throughout the development and testing phases if you spend too much time on planning and analysis. This may result in more defects, poor designs, and other pre-production issues, such as preliminary optimization.
You should thus turn your attention to the testing stage. Particularly, you need to concentrate on:
Creating the appropriate test kinds for your product
To identify and address any problems in code contributions, including environment variables, testing and retesting is necessary.
Code review should be integrated into your development process. Ensure that multiple people have reviewed the project’s codebase. This will
Maintain team engagement
Make your codebase stable.
Aid groups in recognizing problems early in the SDLC
Uphold coding standards all the way through the SDLC.
3. Make the switch to an agile or iterative process
The Waterfall process was the standard for most businesses when it came to product development. With this technique, a project is divided into discrete stages, each of which begins only after the completion of the preceding one. Companies that use Waterfall lay out the project in its entirety from the start. They must restart from the first step if adjustments are required.
Although this is effective for linear sectors like construction and manufacturing, Waterfall is becoming more and more disconnected from the digital sector. Thanks to the quick rate of technological innovation, tech buyers are more fickle than ever. To grab and keep client attention, several organizations have begun embracing the iterative method.
The iterative process is a strategy that software developers, scientists, and others use to constantly improve goods and design. Developers build, test, and release a prototype. After getting client input, they edit, test, and release an updated prototype. They will do this at frequent intervals to constantly enhance the product.
Unlike the Waterfall technique, the iterative process can swiftly fix development problems and respond to marketplace changes. It also enables continuous integration and improvement as each iteration lets the team to absorb lessons gained from prior iterations and constantly better the software development process.
Other advantages include:
Cost-effective: Changes to the project’s needs or scope are less expensive and simpler to change than with a Waterfall method.
Collaborative: You don’t have to wait until the end step of the SDLC to show outcomes to customers and stakeholders. Alternatively, you may provide customers and stakeholders with rapid access to outcomes at the conclusion of every iteration, allowing them to see how the project is progressing.
Less likely to cause confusion: Since you can quickly identify and correct errors in each iteration, misunderstandings are less likely to have an impact on the team and the project as a whole.
The Agile workflow, which helps teams offer value to clients quickly and efficiently by delivering work in short increments known as Sprints, is the most widely used iterative approach for product development. Among the most often used Agile techniques are:
Kanban
Programming at Extremes (XP)
Sleek
Scrum
4) Make the Correct Platform and Tool Investments
Make sure to invest in the appropriate software development tools and platforms; don’t cut corners with your tech stack. You’ll struggle to meet your objectives and benchmarks on schedule and ahead of schedule if you don’t have the proper resources. Leading projects and managing teams will also be challenging for project managers and leaders.
Among the most often used SDLC tools are:
Confluence: Teams may use this online platform for information gathering and sharing to manage many calendars simultaneously, assign tasks to individual users, and record project requirements.
Git: The most popular version control system, Git allows developers to keep track of file modifications so they can see what has been completed. Additionally, they can use Git to roll back to particular versions as needed.
GitHub: GitHub offers a free plan for developers and includes an integrated code review tool. Code reviewers can assign themselves to pull requests on GitHub in order to finish reviews. In addition, developers can check the history of changes, resolve straightforward Git conflicts, and leave inline comments.
Haystack: Haystack stores time-series data in Elasticsearch. Throughout the SDLC, developers may use it to keep track of commits, problems, and other events.
LinearB: This platform for real-time performance analysis may be used to track rollups, identify bottlenecks, and notify team leaders of any possible trends. By tracking the amount of time spent on each work by category, it calculates each team member’s speed.
Kanban Tool: To improve team performance, take into consideration using Kanban Tool if you’ve decided to use a Kanban project development technique for your project. Kanban Tool, an online Kanban board with seamless time monitoring, is used by over 25,000 companies, such as Siemens, Cisco, Expedia, and NHS.
5) Create an Agile Group
It’s time to assemble your Agile team when you’ve switched to an iterative or Agile methodology and acquired the necessary resources. How to do it is as follows:
Create two new roles: The Product Owner (PO) and the Scrum Master are the two new roles that need to be created in order to help the development team. Scrum Masters are facilitators that function as coaches for the rest of the team. On the other side, the PO is responsible for creating the priorities and vision of the project. They’re also responsible for developing, revising, and managing the team backlog, which is a collection of activities and materials that have yet to be processed.
Keep everyone on the same page: If you have a small staff, try utilizing post-it notes or a real whiteboard. For big or scattered teams, however, we propose digital methods to keep everyone on the same page. Online Agile backlogs and Kanban Tools are two examples.
Continue developing and refining: At that point, you may begin developing and refining the final product. Consider employing Agile coaches to assist team members who are new to Agile in assimilating the principles of the methodology.
6) Establish Objectives for the Whole Group
Lastly, you must include retrospectives into the SDLC in order to establish team objectives. Every Sprint concludes with a meeting called a retrospective. The team examines how the previous Sprint went by asking the following questions at the retrospective:
What was the team’s accomplishment?
What challenges did they face?
How can procedures be made better?
In addition to retrospectives, you need to do daily standups. Standups are gatherings that include the Scrum Master, developers, and product owners, who make up the core Agile team. While each company’s standup requires a different set of questions, most standups ask team members to respond to the following:
What was my job for the day?
What am I currently working on?
What difficulties am I having?
The Obstacles Teams Face in Agile Software Development
Adopting Agile has several benefits, as you can see. Teams may, however, encounter considerable challenges both during and after implementing Agile frameworks and attitudes. Among them are:
Insufficient Communication
If there is a communication breakdown inside an Agile team, no amount of technologies can help them succeed. Agile teams may have communication problems for a few reasons:
little to nonexistent prior expertise in an agile setting
failing to timely disclose hazards or concerns
Complete situations or information are not shared between developers and testers.
Absence of standups and retros
Insufficient communication between consumers, product owners, and team members
Testing Software Components Continuously
It’s possible that your Agile team lacks continuous reasoning as well—they may not have the knowledge, experience, or time to test software continually throughout the SDLC. They could also be ignorant of the why, how, or how of software testing. It’s possible that some team members are even against the idea of testing at each Sprint.
Shifting Needs and Expectations
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, your team can struggle to comprehend and fulfill Agile’s evolving demands and specifications. This is more likely to occur if:
Your team members are all or most used to working with the waterfall technique.
Leaders of teams and executives are still used to Waterfall culture and are not ready to adopt Agile.
Increase Your Internal Team Size to Streamline Your Workflow
Agile is a fantastic tool for streamlining the software development process. Compared to Waterfall, it is much more responsive to market demands, cooperative, efficient, and economical.
It’s not always easy to create an Agile software development approach that is efficient. At Linkitsoft, Even if Agile development processes are becoming increasingly common in businesses, many developers still favor the Waterfall model.
