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When was the last time you told your team to slow down and take all the time in the world to finish a task? Never right? That's because time is hardly ever on your side. Besides, who doesn't want heightened productivity? Aside from cutting costs, saving time is one of the primary reasons business owners hire offshore development teams. Moreover, finishing your product on time will end up impacting the overall amount spent on the project.
What's more, you'll arrive at the software market early enough to make some of the money you've invested and also stand a chance to claim a considerable market share ahead of your competitors.
Before we look at the tips needed to increase your team's software development speed, it's essential to understand that it isn't ideal to expect an unrealistic speed level from them without considering the factors that determine how fast a project can move. With that in mind, here are some factors that determine the pace of a software development project.
This factor is pretty straight forward. Look at this way; you can't expect your team to design Uncharted and Candy crush in the same allotted time. The more complex the software, the more the hurdles and difficulties your coders will have to surpass. Achieving that will impact the overall project speed.
Just as the project's complexity impacts the speed of delivery, the number of developers working on a project will equally affect the time of completion. Don't get it wrong; five advanced coders can work faster than eight entry-level software developers. However, with the same level of skill and proper management, larger teams will achieve a higher speed than a smaller group.
Let's not beat about the bush; high-quality code takes more time to write. If the project happens to be massive, you should expect that it'll take some more time to write the code.
Unlike machines that function at a linear rate, once they are programmed to do so, a team of humans may not deliver the same output. If you are lucky to have highly-skilled team members, you'll likely achieve faster turnaround time than you'd do with less-skilled coders.
Now that you understand the factors the speed of a project anchors on, here are the tips on how to accelerate your software development.
Does the first tip sound like a cliché? Well, you'll be surprised that some people go on a hiring binge without clearly establishing the project's demands. It happens when they have the advantage of hiring from a developing country where the wages are cheaper. It can't be emphasized enough; a large team doesn't always translate to faster project completion.
However, with a compact group and a clear understanding of the project's requirements and goals, the team lead, or project manager will save time on fixing errors and organizing meetings. Whether the project has smaller milestones or not, each member must understand the deliverables, the standard of quality, and the roadmap of how to achieve them.
You won't always need to bring in more hands to accomplish faster turnaround time. Sometimes, you just need a small number of advanced level coders to get the job done. However, if you find yourself trying to beat the competition and it's clear your deadline doesn't sync well with the project requirements, then more hands-on-deck is the obvious solution.
You'll need to be specific about your hiring. Don't just go on a hiring spree because you have a short deadline. Check out the project's requirements; if you realize you have more code to write, it makes more sense to bring in more coders/developers and a few test engineers.
Sometimes, you may not know that you are working behind schedule until the countdown starts. Because large projects usually involve writing a large amount of code, it is quite common for project managers to start monitoring developers' progress using "line of code." Line of code simply refers to the amount of code that has been written. Here's the flaw with adopting this method to monitor progress.
A developer can write a 1000-line code in 12 hours, great, that's a lot of code. However, if it doesn't execute more than a few real operation tasks, the actual productivity is almost next to nothing. However, you can monitor and ensure speed by measuring performance indices such as velocity (value of work done within a period), cycle time(the time it takes to accomplish a task), work in progress(a measure of pending within a period).
As mentioned earlier, hiring a large team of developers will not get the job done on time if there's no planning. It might be ideal to have a few highly-skilled team members. However, if it's necessary to have a large tech team, a recipe for productive software development is splitting them into smaller independent units.
Entrust small components of the development process to smaller groups and vice versa. With process automation, integration of each unit's work will ensure you accomplish things a lot faster.
Multitasking is great, but not every team member can achieve efficiency by combining multiple tasks. An unskilled developer may even end up with many mistakes when this route is explored. If you do not adequately monitor your team, your productivity will drop significantly because the number of unaccomplished tasks will increase.
An easy way to keep your work in progress low is to use the "Kanban board” since it limits the total amount of tasks per column. This way, your team will clear pending jobs quickly.
It's not uncommon to adjust large software projects as they progress; however, changes can impair project speed significantly. You might think the change you are trying to initiate is small, but it could very well end up crippling the system. When introducing change, doing it before the start of the project may help integrate any possible alteration. Also, it's advisable to avoid frequent changes as they will end up affecting completion time.
Automation is a smart way to work. In reality, you can't automate software development; however, you can adopt approaches to make the process easier.
Automation helps you strike a balance between speed maintenance and quality. Without having to repeat steps manually, you can run tests as the project is on-going. You'll also have enough time to work on new features as previous tasks would have been automatically checked.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery are approaches in development where software developers integrate their codes multiple times a day, or week, into a shared-repository. It allows tech teams to detect any existing errors easily and release software automatically.
CI/CD pathway helps to achieve faster software development by eliminating manual errors and encouraging instant feedback.
TB in software development is the outcome of adopting a not-so-great coding approach to achieve a faster turnaround. Simply put, it's a trade-off between quality and saving time. If you can strategically do it and correct it later, that's fine. But if you don't, it'll eventually create complexities in your system—the best approach is to use the best method the first time.
Looking at how to improve software development speed is one thing; achieving it without shaving the life off your team should be the aim. You must have heard this tip before; you won't gain more in the long run by putting your team under undue pressure; it's a counter-productive move. The truth is, software development is a creative task; you need your developers to be sharp, and on top of their game.
Coding for long hours will likely not produce the best result. There's no point in creating software that will probably have too many bugs to fix at the end. If there's too much left undone, outsource some development processes.
Another tip on how to improve software development processes is to adopt a lean style of operation. It simply means focusing on what matters. If it's not totally compulsory, i.e., part of the established goals, leave it until you've completed the main task. For example, quality is an essential factor; however, you may be working on a project where quality isn't as important as reaching the software market on time. Therefore, it's not a terrible idea to leave the bulk of the testing to the users and get their feedback before the final launch.
Establishing project requirements and goals might be one of the ten tips of this article; however, getting it right is the best way to accelerate software development before it even starts. Without proper planning, there'll probably be too many adjustments on the way. That will end up affecting your team's creativity, while also increasing the cost of development and time for your product to reach the software market.
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