8 Best Practices for Successful Software Development Projects
Software plays a significant role in modern society, be it leisure or business. Nowadays, the dependence on technology comes from the guarantee that software utilities and apps are reliable and safe.
From the other viewpoint, software development is a briskly sprouting industry, due to this demand and present gaps in the market. The rivalry is high, therefore there are many software development companies trying to create their innovative solutions to get the prominent share in the market.
However, a majority of the software efforts are wasted. Studies have revealed that more than 805 of the software development projects flop because of incorrect functionality, resource and budget constraints, poor execution, and wrong foresight.
Keeping this scenario in mind, here is the list of 8 best practices for successful software development projects.
1. Employee the Right Resources
There are two types of resources:
> Capital Intensive: This includes finance, machinery tools, and equipment
> Labor Intensive: This includes your workforce
The first thing to ensure your project’s success is to recruit talent with best-suited skills and experience. Allocating the right task to the relevant resource is also very important. For this, you have to invest in tools that improve and grow team productivity.
2. Select the Appropriate Development Process
Some of the proven ways of attaining success encompass; iterative spiral approach, agile methodology, and waterfall model. Choosing the best-suited tool for your project plays a very significant role. The real devotion to and the implementation of the opted procedure is what plays out in the success of the project. Exploring a new technology and creating a small prototype to study feasibility is always a good idea.
3. Try Making Accurate Estimations
The most prominent reason behind project failure and its exceeding deadline is the poor estimation. Proper planning heavily relies on efforts, resources, budget and appropriate estimates for schedules. It is always considered best to utilize established forecasting techniques. Modifying estimates to whimsically short-schedule will most likely end in disaster.
4. Define Smaller Milestones
Major milestones and bigger projects should be accompanied with mini-milestones to deliver improved control, tractability and enhanced risk mitigation. The stakeholders can arrange meetings to align and discuss these mini-milestones with bigger-milestones to decrease interdependency delays and meet the overall schedule.
5. Outline Requirements
Actual requisite collecting forms the foundation of supporting the completed product with the business aims. Agreement and discussion on documented requirements amongst the stakeholders (i.e. customer, business leadership and team leads) are imperious.
There is a requirement to describe main, consequent and implied necessities, both non-functional and functional. Functionality can be apprehended through the use-case situations. Architectural requirements, design, system, tolerance, fault, and performance should also be well-addressed.
6. Describe System Architecture
A respectable system engineer will guarantee that the appropriate architecture opts, keeping in mind the necessities, limitations, and restraints if any. Anti-patterns in the system and threat identification are the best practices that are very helpful.
7. Elevate Design
The design must be optimal and modular. Distributing and balancing functionality over modules can make your project a successful or unsuccessful one. Aim concerned approach is one such method that guarantees modularity. It is up to the designers to safeguard that the designated method is applied well so as to attain “maximum unity, minimal connection”. Code reusability is the much underutilized characteristic that can save a lot of cost in the long run.
8. Effective Code Application
Consuming smaller modules that are implicit, unit tested and uninterruptedly combined is a best practice that is used extensively. Mechanizing build tools and automatic running of regression test suites for each encompassed functionality is also recommended to guarantee that present functionality is not broken.
Article By:
Ray Parker is an entrepreneur and internet marketer with over 15 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization, Creative Writing and Digital Marketing with IQVIS. He has worked with several clients from all over the globe to offer his services in various domains with a proven track record of success.