How to Speed Up Software Development Without Sacrificing Quality
In today’s tech world it is crucial for every business to be fast. You need to reduce time-to-market or else your customers will switch to competitors that can provide them with new opportunities. This is why speeding up development is an important issue to solve.
Today we will talk about how to meet constantly shrinking timelines and still keep your code quality at a high level.
Design a clear plan and set dev standards
Planning is one of the most important factors in IT solutions development. You can’t achieve success if your goals are too opaque and lack specifics. So it is a good idea to first break up the whole project into small, manageable parts, then set a development timeline for main features with specific deadlines (but it is important to not fall into overplanning here).
Even if you want to speed up development, this does not mean that tasks should be solved just any way possible. It is better to have clear coding, testing, and documentation standards as this will save tons of time in the future and drastically improve the overall quality of the software.
Doing less is better
Having big batches of changes in every release makes it hard to avoid mistakes and meet deadlines. It is better to use short-term development sprints where only a handful of tasks are solved. It is easier for team members to move step by step, solving smaller tasks and releasing new features often rather than diving into the endless development of the stuff nobody knows when will be released.
Code cleanup is a must
Integration of new features with the old ones is a hard task which can’t be done fast. However, often old code might be not needed anymore. Doing a regular code cleanup helps to eliminate chunks of unused code, improve overall codebase quality, and simultaneously speed up the development process.
Test in a clever way
When it comes to speeding up the development process, often one of the first ideas is to reduce spending on testing. This is an obvious mistake that will only lead to poor code quality and even greater time spent on fixing them.
But this does not mean that anything can’t be done here. You can implement a clever approach to testing. For example, it might be worth trying to test things before the development even starts: write tests that need to be passed otherwise features are unable to be accepted. Writing tests and code that will pass them in parallel will result in more reliable code and will also stimulate faster releases.
Use better tools
Task lists, process automation apps, development environments — the better tools you have, the faster and the more productive you will be. This is why it is crucial to build a strong stack of tools used for development purposes.
At 1Ci we and our partners try to build such tools for our customers. Our solutions allow them to solve their tasks with a top-notch code and do it very fast.
For example, NFP consulting company uses the 1C:Enterprise platform to optimize processes, to increase the efficiency of its clients’ business and for fast implementation at customers’ sites. Last year, by using this tool the NFP experts prepared a methodology in order to automate a winery that produces and supplies wine to Michelin restaurants. 1Ci system is straightforward and fast to integrate into both existing and new infrastructures — often a key factor for success.
Another company, AccountingSuite, which is a cloud accounting and inventory software — claimed to save up to 50% of development time using 1C:Enterprise platform.
Axioma, in turn, is focused on corporate projects such as business automation, manufacturing process management, and ERP projects. One of the typical customer requests they receive is as follows: “Remove as many users as possible. Eliminate the human factor. And make sure it happens very quickly, in the most convenient way [..]” To address such requests, Axioma experts used the 1C:Enterprise development platform, automating the marine terminal and providing integration of all equipment into a single system at the port of a city in Poland.
