Software development is a necessity for all companies, but costs tend to skyrocket. As these companies seek to build cutting-edge software to drive growth, determining the overall budget becomes very tricky. Therefore, having regular interaction and obtaining a budget estimate from the software development team is highly recommended. This helps make room for additional expenses that may suddenly arise in the software development process. Besides a cost estimate, here are 10 ways companies can minimize expenses in the software development process:
1. Implement DevOps
Implementing DevOps is important because it helps achieve higher functionality, better speed, improved quality, and enhanced performance. Also, DevOps will help create better communication and collaboration between software developers and stakeholders. Overall, DevOps leads to better integration, automation, measuring and monitoring of the software development lifecycle.
2. Adopt Agile
Adopting the Agile software development approach creates better collaboration and communication among stakeholders and developers throughout the entire development process. As a matter of fact, Agile facilitates the addition of new features on the go and allows changes at any stage, which for some, maybe inevitable. Then again, allowing customers to provide product insights and feedback is important for product revisions and improvements. Utilizing Agile allows for changes to be done during the whole process.
3. Utilize Manual and Automated Testing
Utilizing manual and automated testing from the beginning of the development process helps prevent human error, assist in completing tasks, and aid in building scripts and performing quality assurance testing. Both manual and automated testing are critical and help simplify the software development process, in terms of time and costs.
4. Launch Product with Essential Features
Launching a product with essential features based on usability over visual impact can help narrow the focus of the design process and adjust the development budget by as much as 10%. Launching with minimum functionality and determining whether there is a demand in the market for those secondary features is best. In addition, consider implementing additional features when there is proven ROI or an increase in the number of users. Also, avoiding complex and expensive features that will not provide value to users can be critical to keeping the budget in check as well.
5. Utilize Existing Solutions
Utilizing existing solutions to enhance UI or for payment services is common. For example, UI features can be implemented by using pre-built templates that can easily be customized. Also, there are third-party service providers such as WaaS, SaaS, and BaaS, which offer solutions for a reasonable fee or even free of charge. There is no need to develop these ready-to-use solutions since there are existing solutions available for use.
6. Utilize Open Source Software (OSS)
Utilizing OSS wherever possible is recommended. Open Source technologies are generally free to use and usually do not require payment for licensing fees. Besides the extreme cost-benefit, OSS provides flexibility, freedom, security, and accountability in comparison to proprietary software solutions. OSS also provides long-term life and is constantly on the leading edge of technology.
7. Provide Clear Requirements
Providing clear requirements to software vendors is vital to receive accurate quotes. Properly translating the project scope to the vendor eliminates the guesswork. Therefore, articulating app functionality, business logic, screens, and system behaviors can help vendors provide a more exact quote.
8. Unify Application Life cycle Management (ALM)
Unifying ALM to share information within one unified platform is necessary. ALM ultimately helps manage an application, tracks modifications, and documents everything during use. Furthermore, connecting leads, analysts, project managers, developers and testers helps reduce gaps and create clarity and traceability across the product’s lifecycle.
9. Build Intelligence
Building intelligence into the lifecycle will help react to constant business changes. Giving developers and testers the flexibility to map out functions based on business goals helps build intelligence. So, testers can predict change or functionality during the development process and provide test setups and plans to test a particular change.
10. Leverage Testing
Including test engineers early-on in the software development process is vital for feedback on feature scope, architecture, and continual development. The team of test engineers can be accountable for the test automation framework and provide answers to the development team upon request. Inspiring creativity and flexibility among a team will allow new ideas and exploratory testing to be done.
Final Thoughts
As companies continue to drive business forward with compelling software development, adapting technologies, and methodologies that help reduce costs becomes very important. Alongside this, embracing best practices and lean development cost-saving measures also helps in evaluating the time and budget required. These ten ways will not only help minimize costs but ensure the delivery of a sophisticated product at the right price and in the least amount of time.
Learn more about strategically planning your software development process with the help of an experienced technology partner.
