A Quick Guide To Optimize Software Development Lifecycle

Business globalization and workforce featuring latest technological advancements have significantly strengthened the market competition. As a result, a wide range of new software applications and products are being launched day in day out in order to match the changing business requirements. Which also means that the pressure on software products time-to-market has grown higher than ever compelling businesses to shorten their product life cycles. A number of innovative strategies such as agile and iterative software development lifecycle models have been emerging. Meanwhile, the dominance of traditional software applications is successfully being disrupted by the new-age solutions such as cloud, SaaS, mobile apps, service-based apps and so more. The new technology is rewriting the rules on ideation and development of applications.

The traditional procedure itself reveals some of the major bottlenecks that can cause adverse delays in the development life cycle. Irrespective of the strategy, the following post explores a careful scrutiny of the software development lifecycle process due to which it can be shortened and well-optimized for future endeavors.

Waiting Time

Increase in the waiting time is most probably due to having excessively interdependent multiple teams. A delay at one end can lead to the dependent side wasting a lot of time. There are times when teams are waiting for the infrastructure, i.e. the hardware and software needs to be set up to begin their work. Further, the application needed by the software development team may take a long time for deployment, in case if done manually. In other scenarios, teams are waiting for other teams to complete their work which includes, deliverables such as requirements, design documents, code, test plans, and test reports. Since the team members are scattered

Solution: Automation can help by reducing a relevant amount of waiting time. It may quite interest you to know that cloud technologies have made it possible to fast-track development where the infrastructure is available well in advance, reducing the initial wait-time. Moreover, these tools can help coordinate and track availability of applications, information, documents, review comments and other artifacts which can be shared smoothly across all locations of the scattered team.

Hand-Offs And Task Switching

Handoff is said when a piece of work is passed from one team member to another or a task-switch –a team member moving from one task to another. While these procedures, a precious time is lost in realigning key information, familiarization and rework. In fact, many times these changes may not be documented well enough for the new personnel to understand. Moreover, while handling a developed application to another team, there could be a significant amount of delay and reduction in its reliability.

Solution: by using tools for automatic deployment, such tasks can be reduced in the context of time. It means, when a team member can view changes done by other team/members, time can be saved as all information and status is readily visible. Numerous tools can be used to save context-based documents grouped and linked along with their relevant metadata. After all, relating people and business processes to documents for requirements such as design, code, plans and test reports ensures smoother and faster task switches as well as minimizes dependency on a particular individual.

Motion

This happens when everything is moved physically from one place to another in order to share, discuss and interact with other team members/business heads. A significant amount of time is lost in travel and long meetings. Further, it reduces productivity and additionally causes fatigue especially while carrying out face-to-face discussions.

Solutions: This bottleneck can be reduced by using a couple of tools which allow smooth content-based information sharing. Artifacts, business cases, and documents are visible to all stakeholders at their place of work reducing the need for meetings or clarifications. Automated review and discussion boards even allow a person to multitask and hold a conversation with another remote team member while working at his/her desk.

Extra Features

At times, extra functionality is built into the software that offers little or no value to the software development company as well as the end users. Again wastage of time and effort.

Solution: The good news is that there are several tools available that trace and align each feature to business ideas along with prioritizing and seeking documented approval right before starting the development. By doing this, it can be ensured that only useful features are focused upon.

Defects

Defect reporting can be pretty expensive especially during the later stages. Delaying in defect reporting and fixing can lead to heavy time and penalties. Plus, the fix may or may not work correctly. Now, testing depends on the readiness of dependent services especially during integration testing, conducted at a larger stage of development.

Solution: It is pretty important to test bugs as early as possible in the development lifecycle. Agile helps to check partially developed systems in simulated integration environments.

Join Forces With Development – DevOps

By using tools and techniques of DevOps, one can carry smooth communication and collaboration between software developers and other stakeholders such as testers, business leads, etc. This results in better integration, automation and provides a clear picture to all stakeholders for measuring and monitoring the entire development lifecycle procedure.

Build Intelligence Into Lifecycle Development

Having a united platform leads to smooth communication within the team. And inculcating processes and attitudes can really help in changing the entire business scenarios. In today’s era, developers and testers need to map functionality to business goals to incorporate the change in the software.

Final Verdict

In the current digital era, companies need to be more and more conscious of the inadvertent delays in their Software development lifecycle and adapt technologies/methodologies that help to reduce them. Although the initial investment may seem high but trust me, it will turn out as huge time saver while developing multiple software product developments where the tools can be reused.

I hope the post did provide some help. Keep watching the space to know more regarding software development.

Dhrumit Shukla is Business Development Manager with TatvaSoft - a custom software development company. He writes about Technology Trends, experience working with B2B and B2C clients.