Smart Methods for Value-Driven Software Development
Reading Time: 10 minutes
For any business, be it in retail, banking, healthcare or even manufacturing industry, software development has become a critical process that generates assets to add value to it.Apart from keeping themselves in pace with the rapidly changing trends in their respective industries, more and more organizations are investing big time in software development. Of the global population of 23 million software developers, it is estimated that more than half of them are employed in industries other than technology.
The technological abilities of the organization impact its overall performance in various aspects – directly or indirectly. No matter, what software initiatives may the organization implement, they may lose the grip, if the encountered problems are not tackled the way they should.
The business automatically loses value!
What Generates Value – Output or Outcome?
Some businesses are not even able to identify and measure the value, as they focus simply on development, testing and deployment, and so are not able to derive value.
They commit, develop and deliver, yet are not able to perform, can you guess why?
It’s because they focus on the output and not on the outcome!
Their entire operations revolve around development and delivery, and not on goals, objectives, and strategy. And that’s why they stay within the thick chunk of average performers struggling to sustain and stay in the show.
Shifting the focus from simply generating outputs to envisioning the business objectives and thereby, designing strategies to work accordingly, paves the path to deriving value for the business.
Operations Authority Under Siege
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a value stream, you don’t know what you’re doing,” state Karen Martin and Mike Osterling, Value Stream Mapping (a fundamental tool meant for the improvement in development processes and their implementation.)
Well, it has become imperative for business authorities to identify the requisites for generating business value, which involves the enhancement of the development environment by sorting out the problem areas like, limited input from the customer, inadequate communication, coordination, and alignment among the team members and teams, dependency on separate data sources, lack of adequate planning, inability to implement agile methodology, unfavorable environment for developers, and lot more.
That’s Developer’s Velocity!
Well, understanding the brevity of situation, many organizations have shifted their focus on developing the capability to establishing the right environment for developers, to enable them to envision, think, innovate, and develop what delivers value. The capability is termed as Developer Velocity. The term ‘Velocity’ does not just refer to the speed, but is also about the adoption of agile methodology, which plays a very crucial role in unbridling the developers’ capabilities.
Achieving higher Developer Velocity Index (DVI), which refers to derive maximum potential of developers, shows up automatically on growth charts.
As reported by McKinsey, companies that had higher DVI outperformed their competitors considerably well, as shown in the figure below.
Source: McKinsey
Their ability to manage the talent, establish brand perception, achieve customer satisfaction, and innovate, stays relatively higher, which are some of the key business performance indicators of leading the competition.
Some Wise Value-Driven Implements
The most important ingredient in the value-driven software development management curry is a shared vision. Right from business development team to the software development, testing, and deployment team, be at any level, every team member should have a clarity about the vision and objectives of the company. Irrespective of the size of the organization, there has to be a shared vision and a collective approach.
Alongside, there are many other wise practices that are implemented to develop a smart framework that organizations can leverage, for improving their performance.
Determining the Benchmarks & Measurability of Value
The league of software development companies may be focused upon various factors to deliver what they call as ‘best.’ These factors are mostly, the technology implemented for development, resources exhausted, the time required to complete the project – all that can be measured in units.
They focus on product delivery catering to the demands of the user, and somehow forget to include value as a parameter in the product delivered. That should not be so. Well, they are certainly not at fault, as they focus on what is easily measurable, while there are no metrics that determine value, or measure it. That’s why, the units of the value delivered need be defined, which will make value as the determining factor of their performance.
Every company can do so in its own way, creating their own units for measuring the value, for example – total time saved or the economic value generated with deployment of a product.
Improvement of Developer’s Velocity
Anyone needs the right environment to perform, and this applies to the creed of software developers as well. By providing them the access to competitive tools, culture, and enabling them to manage the workforce with a single mission, the businesses can empower them with an enhanced work environment.
Along with getting the developers the choice of best in-class tools to providing them the environment where they are allowed to experiment, take risk, and perform without getting apprehensive about failures, are other ways organizations can extract out the maximum potential of their developers.
A sky-diver or a gymnast attains perfection in acrobats on trampoline much faster than while learning to perform live. A trampoline allows them to make mistakes and fall on a safe surface that enables them to bounce back and try for more. The same way, organizations need to provide such a safe platform to their developers, though it may quite be challenging for them to do so.
They may set up such a platform by controlling the released products, enabling and disabling the features without having to recode and redeploy, and deriving the rollbacks, so that the teams step back at any point of time, and analyze what went wrong, and the corrective measures that can be implemented.
It is very vital for organizations to improve Developer’s Velocity, to be able to amplify productivity and perform, as desired.
Inspiring the Developers to Focus on Business Value
Think about a software developer or a coder.
What image emerges in your mind? A spectacled bearded jerk with messed up hair, wearing a hoodie and a pair of worn-out jeans, with his mind dug deep in the codes, who talks only in 1s and 0s, isn’t it! Or something similar to this?
It is a hard-hit fact that without even realizing, the companies tend to segment the developers as ‘technical people’ and exclude them from ‘non-technical people,’ who engage in business talks that include planning, brainstorming, and creating strategies to meet business goals. They just consider the developers as ‘coders.’
Developers, in fact, are blessed with a better capability to think, analyze and present some really great insights which may be beneficial in strategy making process.
To maximize their potential, organizations should take them out of their silos, and inspire them to think not just of codes, but of objectives first, and then create action plans aiming at generating value, and not just the products.
Developing custom software, after understanding the custom requirements of every individual customer, helps in infusing values to their businesses.
We offer impeccable custom software solutions. To know more, click here
Integrated Systems for Unrestrained Development
The integration of software subsystems into single unified system, ensures the unrestrained process of software development. This collaboration of not only software systems, but also of business objectives, approach, efforts, delivers collective potential at an astounding level.
Interestingly, 91% enterprises state that software integration is critical to simplify IT.
(source: core solutions)
Organizations are now opting for integrating their diverse systems for unrestricted and automated developmental process flow, that promises maximum output with operational excellence.
Agile Practices for Software Development
The software development industry has been evolving quite fast, giving a way to various developmental methodologies that have been transforming the development process, time to time.
Agile development enables to develop flexibility required to quickly respond and adapt to the challenges led by dynamic and rapidly transforming industries with latest trends that ought to be aligned with, for optimum performance at constant level.
It is however, interesting to note that different organizations carry different approach towards the methodology, as according to them, “Agility is about letting the bad things happen, and then responding to them.” Some even refer it to simply performing impromptu actions, without any planning. While the reality indicates that agility calls for responding to change in order to sustain even in the turbulent business waters.
It allows the software development teams to act as Barbapapa, who can take any form, any shape to overcome even the most challenging of situations.
Application of Analytics to Development
Performing analysis of previous data through statistical techniques, can help in taking more informed decisions for strategy making and software development. Organizations are already leveraging the accumulated data and are relying upon predictive analytics, to function.
It is expected that the software analytics market will grow by USD 11.5 Billion, between 2017 and 2023.
Source: Market Research Future
Not only the right strategies are designed, but also the speed, ability, and outcomes are predicted, leading to the development of high-quality software. By performing software analytics, the organizations are allowed to prepare strategies based on various scenarios, so that they can determine the best of them. They can considerably remove the sources of constrictions wherever they find.
This helps in ensuring the optimum quality of the software delivered to the customer.
Incorporating the Inputs Received from Users
Obviously, software developers know the best. With their ever-expanding knowledge base, skillsets and, their quest for staying updated about the latest advancements in the world of technology, they would certainly develop what suits best for the users, in terms of functionality, and its ability to integrate with existing systems.
Yet to create technological marvels and grow in this industry, they need to be aware about exactly what the users expect from them. Most of the users may be reluctant to share their vision and ideas, unless they are subjected to curious questions like where is the product going to be implemented, or why are the specific features required, or how are they going to generate value for the business.
Apart from just the development work, developers need to have a clear picture about how the software created by them is going to make a difference for the users, in their respective scenarios.
All the inputs received will allow you to take informed decisions, thus enhancing the development process, and hence the product.
Know about Top 9 Software Development Trends in 2020.
On a Final Note
Apart from many other aspects, the process of software development should be driven towards generating value. For that, the value-based goals should be determined. To achieve these goals, collaboration is the key. The entire team including the IT staff, strategists, and project managers should come together to identify the goals and vision, plan strategies, initiate the process in an integrated environment, monitor the progress, and enhance the process by tracking and modifying it accordingly. Measuring the value throughout the entire software development process, enables the companies to demonstrating value for business in the product they deliver.
Tarika Technologies develops custom software that are aimed at generating value for businesses, apart from being assets for their efficiency.
Know More…
