How to Speed Up Your Software Development Process?

All big or small IT companies are constantly looking for ways to quicken their software development projects to be one step ahead of their competitors.

However, you should never sacrifice the quality of your software for the sake of expedited development. It could be a severe threat to the growth of your business.

So, how do you quicken the software development process? Well, it may be a time-consuming and expensive process, especially if you're not employing the correct techniques and tools to make your job easier.

Thus, in this article, we’re sharing actionable recommendations on how you can improve your software development methodology and optimize overall workflow.

Hire Right People 

When you hire the right people for your software development team, they will always go further together to complete your job. So, it's wise to prioritize hiring skilled software developers rather than devoting your energy to building and leading a sizable workforce.

You can either build a new team or add people to your existing software development team. For this, first, you need to talk to your team and determine if they require more help to build the product; then, you can add more developers. 

Additional team associates mean minor work for each member, directing them to concentrate on their particular task and complete it on deadline. 

Set Clear Objectives and Roadmap 

You will achieve much better results if you take adequate time to plan each step of your software development process. When your development team has a clear picture of project goals, they will quickly determine what to do and when to do it. 

So it will automatically save a lot of time debating what’s next. Also, you can build a roadmap of the complete project and share it with the team before starting the development process. However, your team might still face some challenges along the way, but there won’t be a significant conflict, and they don't have to rewrite the code.

Confine Your Work in Progress (WIP)

Confining the quantity of work in progress can aid you in making your development procedure more efficient. If your developers have too many tasks to do, things will get overwhelming at some point, and it can even put extra pressure on them. 

You can employ various software project management tools like Kanban, Trello, Asana, Zoho Projects, etc., to handle the development process. So with such applications, try to specify the number of daily tasks of each team member. 

Grasp a Lean Approach 

Using a lean approach in your software development process means spending time on building only essential features that the product requires. So rather than wasting time on unnecessary things, you should focus on working on what truly matters. 

To ensure your team is moving in the right direction, you can build your software in small parts and get user feedback earlier in the process. With genuine feedback, you can learn what you need to improve in your product and make crucial adjustments while the development continues.   

Bypass Technical Debt 

Technical debt is a deliberate decision to select a not-so-fantastic solution to speed up the development procedure. It’s not a nasty thing if you do it with proper strategy and has a plan on how to make up for it afterward. 

Otherwise, technical debt can cause system complexness. Even if you save money today, you'll still have to cope with the consequences later. The issue is only going to get worse up to that point. Therefore, whenever it is possible, write good code from the beginning.

Try to Automate Things  

Although you can’t automate everything in your software development project, you can still try to ease a lot of work off your developers. Here are some of your alternatives. 

• Automatic Testing

Automated testing is likely the most profitable path to achieving a settlement between speed and quality. With the repeating scripts, anyone can test for relapse without the necessity to repeat the same actions manually. 

Due to the automatic checking of the outdated features, more time is available for focusing on the new ones. Even though performing numerous tests across numerous devices and browsers is significantly more efficient than manual testing, it still consumes significant time. You might leave testing to the customers when obtaining the product to market on time is more crucial than product quality.

• Continuous Integration (CI)  

Continuous integration is a software development method in which each developer in a team combines code changes in a central repository multiple times a day. Continuous delivery is the pattern of automating the software building process. Executing a CI or CD pipeline can significantly increase your development speed due to multiple factors such as deceased manual errors, giving instant feedback, and enabling quick iteration.

• Workflow Automation

Your team needs to intercommunicate multiple times to discuss aspects of the development process. Tasks, project meetings, workflow talks, etc., seem unimportant, but they might grow to stack up. So by using automation applications like Zapier, Workato, Pabbly Connect, etc., to automate tedious processes, you may save at least an hour per day.

Customize Agile Methodology 

If your team is following agile methodology, it will make purpose to customize the development process per the project's complexness. Your team should focus on agile development to launch the promptest prototype, leading to additional growth. Agile is essential to produce your products on the deadline.

Evade Making Rapid Changes in Project Scope

The best thing you can do as a project manager is to avoid making frequent changes in the project’s scope. When your squad has a precise idea about the project scope from start to end, they will work faster towards achieving a goal. Making frequent changes in objectives might create confusion among them and more complexities than one might think.

Decrease Working Hours

Everyone in the IT sector knows that working fewer hours each day produces better outcomes than practicing for 12 hours each day. Developers require regular breaks to replenish their creative energy because software development is an innovative process. Employees can operate more productively and independently with shorter workdays, producing goods more quickly.

Try Outsourcing Software Development

One of the most convenient methods to acquire high-quality software development at more incredible speeds is outsourcing the development process to an offshore company. Such a company operates according to your deadline and will release your software when you want it. They will even take care of the distinct processes that must be trimmed down or added to enhance the development quickness.

Final Thoughts 

A key element in offering the business a competitive advantage is the speed of software development. How fast your company can fulfill the customer’s necessities determines your success in the market. 

Further, Noetic has the expertise to speed up your software development project without sacrificing product quality. So contact us beforehand.