Vishal BhatiaAmazon changes their software every 11 seconds. This culminates in an average of 8,000 changes daily. Is this possible because they’re Amazon – the online giant, or because they know certain tips that their competitors do not? You can bet it’s the latter.
Thankfully, you don’t have to be Amazon to get access to these tips, they’re provided below.
Have a Well-Defined Product Development Strategy
This is where it all begins. The outcome of any software product development is contingent on the strategy in place. No matter how skilled or proficient your team is, if the roadmap is not in favor of accelerating the process, the project cannot be completed in good time. The software product development strategy should outline the steps, plan, and the process of implementing it.
In order to come up with an infallible strategy, three things are required.
1. Identify the market
Before the product hits the market, it’s imperative that research is done to assess the existing market and how the product will perform. Surveys, one-on-one correspondence, feasibility studies, and other means of research will be employed.
2. Fix a Time Frame for Each Project
Each milestone should have a stipulated timeframe as this will set the delivery of the software product development services. It’s advised that this timeframe should be both realistic and flexible. This is an avenue to improve the efficiency and productivity of the team.
3. Selecting the Best Practices to Follow
An important part of strategizing entails apt and swift decision making. Are you going with wireframes or prototypes? This is one major consideration of software development companies in the USA. What are the requirements of the product? Try to make this clear when you request software product development services so there won’t be reasons for delayed delivery. It’s also important that you define the testing strategy.
Implement Continuous Integration
Several software development companies in the USA are turning to agile methods of custom software development as it’s yielding good results. Even though there are several agile forms, the outcome remains the same: always incorporate iterations and feedback into the development process. If you want to accelerated product delivery, your software product development should encompass continuous planning, recurrent testing, continuous integration, and continuous evolution in general.
The interesting thing about agile development is that it empowers the team to collaborate and make decisions without slowing the development process. It also ensures that quality isn’t sacrificed for speed. Software product development companies in the USA are now incorporating continuous integration in their operation and issues are detected early on.
Limit the Amount of Pending Work Per Timeframe
Now that the strategy is well-defined and agile methodology is employed, the next line of action is to limit the work in progress. As you advance, remember that the enemy of productivity is multitasking. There’s nothing else to it. The idea of taking on more jobs, completing more tasks, and even setting new deadlines seems quite appealing. However, it might be a disservice.
The key is to specify the maximum number of tasks allowed per timeframe. This cap should be both rigid and workable. Rigid in the sense that it’s ideal to work with and not prone to incessant changes. Workable as in it should be feasible to adhere to. In essence, you reduce the number of almost-completed projects and you’re able to devote ample time and effort to the tasks that matter.
Dictate Development Standards and Enforce Strict Adherence
Usually, software product development services are expected to meet a particular standard. What many people don’t know is that there are inherent principles which cause these products to be up to par. Ensuring that these standards are well defined and followed closely will eliminate the need for revisions or redeployment of solutions.
These standards should also emphasize code documentation and code review, as a lack of documentation will only make it more difficult to track the progress of the project. Imagine trying to complete an improvement in quality and then you keep getting stuck just because the codebase is not properly documented.
Periodic Automated Testing
It’s important that before a software product development project is completed, regular tests are conducted. As a new line of code is added or modified, testing should be carried out to ascertain the compatibility on supported platforms. However, it’s not possible to do this manually, especially if the project is enormous.
Software development companies in the USA usually employ automated testing systems for this. Before now, the process used to take weeks but now it can be completed in a few hours. Not only does it save time and effort, automated testing potentially improves the depth of the tests, thereby engendering a better quality. It also ensures that you have accurate insight into the behavior of each product and the accuracy of the software can be improved.
Eliminate Unused Code
This sounds obvious, right? But you’ll be amazed at the number of software development companies in the USA that skip this. For software product development services on a large scale, it’s possible that the code changes hand. If this occurs and the new people in charge proceed to work on the project without eliminating the unused part, complications will arise eventually.
Points to Consider to Accelerate Software Product Development
To summarize all that has been said, let’s go through some valid questions you should ask and points to take note of.
- What is happening in the industry at the moment? Is there any favored technology?
- Is the technology adaptable for new software product development services?
- What is the adoption lifecycle of the technology in question?
- Is the software development technology free to all or open source?
- Is it profitable if you leverage third-party code?
- Will execution and scalability pose a challenge?
Conclusion
It’s vital that the time to market is reduced and there are ways this can be achieved. Agile methodology, automated testing, debugging and continuous integration are some of the effective techniques discussed in this post. If you want to speed up your product development, you can speak to Dedicated Developers here.
