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January 9, 2022 - by Manan Thakkar
Building a high-quality product is the end goal for any organization, but the software development process is evolving while automation is becoming rampant, and new tools and libraries are emerging daily.
A process as complex as software product development comes with its own set of challenges – challenges that you might encounter every day. These software development challenges need to be addressed almost immediately to reduce the impact they have on your end product.
So, we’ve identified the biggest issues for software product developers, but what can you do to overcome them? Let’s take a closer look at the common challenges you may face throughout a software development project and what to do next.
An unestablished project environment is a common software development challenge in terms of its impact on project delivery. If the environment is not available, then there is no way you can proceed with your project on time and under budget.
Solution: To ensure efficient software project development, test and pre-production environments should be made available during the development, testing, and user acceptance testing (UAT) phases. Invest in a solid IT infrastructure upfront to create a better software development environment.
A major reason for the complexity of software development projects is the constant changing of requirements. Not surprisingly, 33% of the respondents of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey consider building products with unspecific requirements as their biggest challenge. Requirements gathering is a lot more than a handful of business consultants coming up with their ideal product – it is understanding fully what a project will deliver.
Solution: To ensure that the product outcomes align with expectations and requirements, a solid process and line of communication need to be established. Remember the following best practices.
Not reviewing code, or suppressing errors are a means that software developers use to save time and meet deadlines.
Solution: Following a formal quality assurance process is imperative for a successful launch. If you witness developers trying to cut corners in the software product development process, discourage it immediately. Encourage them to use the best code development practices to meet the requirements sooner and more efficiently.
Defect identification is inevitable during functionality testing, even if the product has been through thorough unit testing during the development phase.
Solution: When you come out with the test approach, scenarios, conditions, cases, and scripts, make sure your test plan covers all the requirements that are to be delivered by planning several cycles of testing.
Catering to the latest technology requirements such as mobile-first or mobile-only or desktop-first is often challenging. If you don’t have resources with hands-on experience in the latest and trending technologies, it is sure to impact your time to market.
Solution: Make sure your resources constantly polish their skills to remain relevant. This means staying up-to-date on market trends and exploring insights into the new technology and software trends that are out there.
Problem: Product designs are under constant influence from stakeholders, the development organization, and other internal and external factors. Managing these influences is essential for maximizing the quality of systems and their related influence on future business opportunities. The increase in easily accessible, simple applications has resulted in user expectations growing exponentially.
Solution: Make sure you streamline your design and offer a consistent experience across devices, operating systems, and form factors.
Problem: There are thousands of different technologies, systems, and applications available for businesses. Integrating third-party or other custom applications, such as your ERP systems, website, or inventory management database adds substantial complexity to your project. And the bigger challenge with application integration is that they remain hidden throughout the software development process – and surface only at the end – you will find they lead to extra costs, delays, lowered quality, and sometimes even failure of the project.
Solution: To conform your software solution to the external constraints of other systems, you should:
Very often multi-tasking might give you more trouble than expected. Resources cannot focus on a single task or module if their manager bombards them with tasks.
“To be successful in project management you absolutely have to be an excellent planner,” says Ryan Chan, founder and CEO of UpKeep Maintenance Management.
Solution: One obvious way to be an excellent planner is to leverage project management tools like Project Pro in O365 and keep projects, resources, and teams organized and on track. Stay on track, meet all deadlines, work seamlessly across applications, and efficiently and effortlessly manage your projects. Always keep task allocation sequential rather than parallel and encourage resources to give their best in whatever they do.
Problem: Testing a software system in a controlled environment is difficult since the user is not immersed in a completely realistic working situation. It’s impractical to gauge how a user will really use the application in different situations on a regular basis until it’s deployed. However, with software applications for both B2B and B2C segments becoming more and more diversified than in the past, controlled testing is not sufficient.
Solution: Testing the software, application, or product in a separate real-life test environment is critical to your software’s success. This will allow you to see what is working well and what is working poorly in a vacuum vs real-life use.
Security breaches are on the rise; a recent study estimates that 96% of all web applications contain at least one serious vulnerability. How do you cope with evolving security threats? How do you keep each layer of your software or application secure?
Solution: Cybersecurity is not just the responsibility of the software engineer but also the responsibility of all the stakeholders involved including the management, project managers, business analysts, quality assurance managers, technical architects, and application and developers. If you want to keep your infrastructure and company safe, remember the following best practices:
No matter how big or small, solving software development challenges never comes easy. From challenges in requirements to integrating new technologies, from ensuring end-to-end security to challenges of duplicating efforts – software product development requires you to be clear and focused on the problem you’ve set out to solve in order to achieve what you’ve set out to achieve.
Learn more about how Synoptek can assist in your journey! Contact a software product development expert today to discuss how software product development services can benefit your organization.
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