The Ideal Strategic Plan for a Successful Software Development Initiative

Establishing the right strategic plan can have an immense impact on your organization’s ability to succeed in its software development initiative. But how do you know what approach to take? What are the common mistakes that people make?

When you’re working on your software development plan, you need to do a lot of research & take a lot of notes. Think of what you want to happen with each piece of your project, how it will work, why it will work if anyone has tried it before, how you will measure it — you get the idea.

When you complete each piece, review your notes to ensure that nothing is missing or out of place. The global revenue for enterprise applications software is to reach $271 billion by 2021, as per Statista.

Source: Statista Software Revenue

So, the market is ideal for investing in software development. However, before you can start strategizing about how to plan out your software development initiative, you’ll need first to define what exactly qualifies as a software development project.

After all, simply saying that any software initiative involved in fair game isn’t good enough. Instead, it should be specific enough to focus your efforts on areas of improvement and success rather than including everything under the sun.

What Defines a Software Development Project?

A software development project is an endeavor undertaken to create a new software product or service, and it can also be an ongoing activity that produces software as an output. In some contexts, such as research and small-scale operations, development is synonymous with programming.

In others, such as maintenance, development means any enhancement or alteration to existing software — including modification of source code, adding new features to an existing application, and even mere configuration of already-written code — without regard to ultimate compilation/execution.

Project leader plays an essential role in any software development project. Therefore, it is ideal to have a project leader that develops a practical approach for the stunning success of the programming project.

Here’s a detailed discussion for creating a practical approach to the project by the Team Leader or Project Manager

Software development managers will need to plan which employees should work on specific phases of a project — for example, choosing where to place developers who excel at design versus better at building and testing software.

And understanding if each employee is taking on too much work will help maximize everyone’s efficiency. It can be helpful to set targets or quotas for individual employees or groups of employees as deadlines approach. Still, it’s also critical to realize that there are always unforeseen circumstances — that’s why planning ahead is essential.

If possible, include time in your plans for large projects to review and adjust if unexpected delays arise. Remember that unforeseen challenges happen; however well-prepared you might think you are, issues could still occur out of nowhere.

So carefully outline expected deadlines and add 10 percent more time and money than you planned to give yourself breathing room. Ultimately, when successfully implementing your strategy, you’ll want to evaluate whether people are working in an area they love or feeling dissatisfied with their current role.

As managers of software development teams, it’s important to give team members tasks they feel good about instead of expecting them to perform detailed grunt work they don’t find fulfilling continually.

There will likely come a point in every manager’s career when someone quits over their lack of professional growth: make sure you’re encouraging staffers’ natural inclinations and helping them grow by providing new responsibilities and training opportunities along the way.

Creating a plan that enhances success is not easy unless you have the right expertise and follow the industry-standard code of practices. The ideal standard of creating software involves putting dedicated efforts into the different phases of development.

However, what happens during each stage of SDLC? You might be wondering that right now. How long does each phase take? What does it include?

You can find the answers to these queries in the different software development life cycle (SDLC) stages. These steps include initiating, planning, designing, implementing, testing, and closing the software product or service you’re trying to develop.

Creating a Successful Strategy via SDLC Stages

• Requirements Gathering or Ideation Stage

Before diving into creating detailed project plans, it’s critical to spend time figuring out what your business wants. Requirements gathering is a process by which you can learn about your business’s vision, needs, and objectives.

Asking questions helps determine who will be using your software, how often they need to use it, and other details. Once you understand what’s necessary for your software, you can decide how it should work.

This stage involves thoroughly analyzing all aspects and factors relevant to developing an appropriate solution for your business’s needs. It is where you figure out your business’s specific requirements, how to reach your goals with technology, and which technology best fits your company’s needs.

Here are some practical tips for making the most of the ideation phase:

• Try to learn as much as possible regarding the customers and their pain points by reading and interviewing.
• List out everything you think is needed and ask: does it solve a problem?
• Be sure not to fall into any gaps in requirements.
• Analyze aspects such as: what if we do X instead, what else might be needed, how do we handle Y case.
• Designing Stage

The design seems like one of those magical steps in software development. But if you know what to look for, it’s not so mysterious after all. From gathering user requirements to wireframing, developing design specs, and creating designs, numerous activities occur during the design stage of SDLC.

Essential tips for the designing stage of software development includes the following:

• Do not design your software on paper or in your head!
• Start by creating wireframes to have a blueprint of how you plan to layout your app. You can create wireframes using PowerPoint, Visio, or Balsamiq.
• What kind of prototype do you need? It can range from sketches to high-fidelity prototypes that are more visually appealing and closer to what will end up in production.
• Prototyping largely depends on your unique project needs.
• If you’re working with an outsourced designing team overseas, it’s wise to make sure everyone speaks the same language.
• Avoid miscommunications or misinterpretations that could lead to problems down the road.

It is usually helpful to create some visual guidelines for each phase of your app’s lifecycle — what your designs should look like at different points during development.

• Implementation Stage

Sometimes referred to as development, implementation is where you create your solution for whatever you’re selling. Think of this stage as implementing your idea into a tangible form, whether program code or web design.

This stage usually takes a long time, depending on what you are doing and how large the software is. It could last months, but if you have team members involved, it can be finished quicker.

• Always ensure you have thoroughly planned out what needs to be done before writing any lines of code because mistakes will cost money.
• Identifying issues earlier means you can iron them out before significant resources go into producing them, so errors won’t cause as much chaos as they would otherwise do later down the line when being deployed.
• There is no real sense in rushing anything here, especially since testing will happen anyway during development and then testing again after production code implementation if that is how it goes.
• Testing Stage

Testing is an integral portion of creating any software. It allows developers to ensure that they’ve made their product correctly and that it does what it’s supposed to do, without any errors.

Without testing, even minor errors could result in potentially catastrophic results. When developers test their products, they look for anything that doesn’t work as planned or expected; if they find something wrong during testing, they make fixes before moving on to subsequent stages of SDLC.

• Deployment Stage

The deployment stage is where you’re ready to deploy your application. It may seem like a cut-and-dried stage, but don’t be fooled — it takes time to perform QA testing and prepare for deployment in any environment.

It’s also vital that you review your code one last time before release, ensuring nothing major got overlooked in all of the other steps. It provides any kinks that get resolved before you finalize deployment.

Tips for successful deployment of the software involve Pre-production testing as well. Testing pre-production involves testing applications in an environment that is not identical to your production system. A staging server is a great place to stage new features before releasing them into production.

It provides you with a secured environment where you can do some final QA testing before exposing your customers or clients to new features. It also helps separate development and production traffic, making it easier to isolate issues when they arise.

Software development life cycle (SDLC) models are valuable tools for businesses interested in developing new software products and enhancements to existing products.

There is nothing as a perfect design or methodology; any approach will yield varying degrees of success. Every company has different needs and capabilities; it’s essential to determine which method works best for your organization before committing to a specific development process.

Source: Statista Software Methodologies

This list of the top SDLC models highlights some of the most critical aspects of each model and how they can benefit your business strategy. Based on your project & team compatibility, you can choose the best of them.

Top 5 SDLC models for your project

DevOps Model

DevOps is a software development model that focuses on communication, collaboration, & integration between software developers and information technology (IT) operations professionals.

Source: Statista DevOps Evolution

It aims to facilitate an organization to rapidly produce software products and services while increasing system safety and security. The three characteristics of it include DevOps infrastructure as code, velocity, and visibility.

While infrastructure as code focuses on managing infrastructure using automation techniques instead of manual procedures, velocity focuses on quickly delivering new features or bug fixes at any time to increase revenue by reducing downtime in production environments.

Finally, visibility enables users to observe what changes occur in production environments to identify when issues arise. The DevOps model’s notable benefits include faster deployments, increased efficiency, and quicker problem resolution.

Also, user experience improves since deployments happen more frequently and with less downtime that will impact user experience.

Agile Model

Some IT professionals prefer an agile model because it does away with specific steps or processes and allows for flexibility, frequent changes, and collaboration. This model is appropriate for smaller companies that may not need to go through as many layers of approval for their projects.

Agile models are flexible because they can be adjusted based on company culture and process. The benefit of using the Agile model includes cost savings, early market penetration, customer satisfaction, and real-time feedback.

However, it is not scalable and lacks predictability. To overcome these limitations, companies need to adopt a hybrid approach. In most cases, businesses use agile with iterative or incremental development models based on Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP).

Kanban Model

Source: Kanban Tool

Kanban is a model of software development and project management. Proponents advocate that it brings more predictability, simplicity, and sustainability to software development than other models.

Kanban takes its name from its association with lean manufacturing techniques. Visual control limits overproduction by signaling when materials need to be replenished and quickly revealing and rectifying production errors.

Waterfall Model

The waterfall model, a sequential method of software development that proceeds from one phase to another strictly, is among the most prevalent of all software development models.

There is no overlap or backtracking; progress must move forward at all times. With such a structure, it’s easy to see why waterfall models are rigid and inflexible: any changes made later in development can cause unexpected and disastrous effects on previous phases.

The clear advantage of waterfall models is that you can execute them quickly. Because each phase is planned and organized, moving from one stage to another takes less time. This efficiency makes waterfall models more effective than other methods for fast-paced projects that require completion in less time.

Furthermore, such a format allows for early assessment of risks and challenges; because each task leads directly into another. You can identify and resolve problems immediately rather than processing them with multiple steps.

Scrum Model

Source: Scrum.Org

A high-energy, fast-paced model that encourages collaboration between all members of a development team. It centers on face-to-face meetings in which small groups quickly develop features based on requirements.

It allows for a quick turnaround time when dealing with changing market conditions or technology advancements. While it’s vital to deliver features to customers promptly, it’s also essential to ensure quality is up to par. Scrum, therefore, requires that unit testing occurs after every iteration.

Having gained insights into software development, let us now explore the beneficial tips that you can implement into the entire development process

• Establish a Foundation For Success: Before you even begin your software development initiative, you’ll want to carefully consider all of its aspects — including team leadership, project management, and technology.

It is where choosing a strategic software development partner comes in. We’re not just talking about experience and reputation. You need a custom software development company that fully understands your business goals & knows how to meet them within your budget.

• Get Everyone on Board: If you want your software development initiative to succeed, everyone involved must be committed and onboard. You’ll need to sell those around you on why they should contribute and put forth their best efforts to make your project as successful as possible.

Be sure to clearly explain how each person contributes their skills and expertise and how they will benefit from doing so. Remember: Be clear about what’s in it for them!

The more everyone is on board with the initiative, from top to bottom, and across departments, groups, and individuals, you’ll have a much better chance of success.

So it’s worth the time to discuss the initiative with those who will be affected — both who have input into or can affect your initiative & those who don’t.

Involving others in your plan helps them feel invested in its success and gives them a stake in helping drive that success.

• Share Knowledge: The software development process can be both simple and complicated, depending on how you look at it. It’s an activity that often involves multiple people, making it essential to communicate clearly between all parties involved.

It means creating an atmosphere of cooperation and collaborating with your peers to ensure everyone’s on board with what you’re doing. All too often, software development teams divide into departments that each have their own set of objectives.

• Have Healthy Meetings: It’s important to collaborate, but no one likes meeting after a meeting that doesn’t get anything done. There are many different kinds of conferences and many kinds of work, so it’s up to you and your team to decide what types of meetings make sense.

If your job requires lots of interaction with other people (say, you lead a development team or help plan corporate projects), then you’ll need plenty of meetings.

• Think Out of the Box: When it’s digital development, look at things from different angles. Instead of thinking about competitors or challengers, take an open approach and look at them as potential allies.

You will surely get surprised by what you learn about your field when you go out of your way to spend time with other innovators!

• Use Feedback to Help Drive Decision Making: With every design iteration, use feedback from real users to refine your solution. It will ensure that you build what they need and want.

In addition, by soliciting regular feedback from users throughout an engagement, you’ll be able to see if their needs are getting fulfilled as quickly as possible.

Wrapping Up

Every business is different, but all enterprises get driven by people — people who are inspired to create, develop and produce. If your company is feeling discouraged or stagnant, it may be time to change strategies.

By encouraging your employees to think out of their comfort zones, you can enhance productivity and guide them toward success. Empowering them to take risks can lead to innovative ideas that will make your company more robust in many ways.

So don’t miss out on opportunities — and put fear aside to foster creativity!