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Software development is always a balancing act between the quality and the speed. As the proverb goes, “time is money”, and in the case of software development, it’s quite literal.
Faster software development process directly affects how quickly the app will start generating profits. That’s why the question of how to accelerate development without losing quality is one of the most common in the industry.
Today, we’ll discuss what impacts the project delivery speed and give you some tips to increase it.
What influences software development speed?
All of the factors that impact development can be divided into five main groups: project complexity, code quality, scope creep, and a human factor. Let’s start with the first one.
Project complexity
Every challenge encountered during the development will negatively impact the development speed. Such issues can be the result of the following.
Technical complexity
Complex software architecture, third-party integrations, the use of too outdated or recently developed technologies — all of these issues are classified as technical complications.
Addressing them is also not easy. Technical complexity usually comes from “band-aid solutions”—workarounds developed to address issues quickly. In the short term, such decisions benefit development speed.
However, the growing number of such solutions turns into technical debt, which is really hard to solve.
Unclear requirements
Changing or unclear project requirements result in slower software development. The lack of understanding of project requirements leaves developers clueless about what they must do.
Solving this issue sounds simple on paper — clear requirements lead to faster software development. However, to address it, businesses must undergo an extensive discovery phase to clarify any potential confusion.
Harsh deadlines
One of the biggest challenges is deadlines. Although they serve as “checkpoints” for what must be done by a certain date, unrealistic deadlines negatively affect development speed.
Such projects put pressure on the development team, leading to hasty decisions and workarounds. As a result, deadlines may be met, but quality suffers.
Structural intricacy
The more people are involved in the development process, the harder it will be to manage. The lack of control and coordination will result in slower development speed.
This problem usually indicates a lack of preparation before development. The best way to solve this issue is to conduct extensive research to find the most optimal workflow for your team and put credible managers in control.
To sum up
Unclear requirements, technical debt, unrealistic deadlines, and a lack of competent leadership are some of the biggest obstacles to the development process. Addressing these issues requires specialised skills and additional resources.
Furthermore, the overwhelmed developers are prone to making mistakes. This results in bugs that need to be fixed, which extends the development timeline even further.
Code quality
As we said at the beginning, software development is a balancing act between project quality and delivery speed. Code quality is the first one to suffer from tight deadlines and an overwhelming amount of tasks.
Harsh time constrains force developers to take shortcuts, neglecting the code quality. Poor code results in a higher number of bugs, and this results in a longer time to fix them.
Ultimately, rushed tasks end up delaying releases due to the number of issues that need fixing.
Minimising time for planning, analysis, code reviews, and testing in order to maximise the speed of development might look like a good idea from a short-term perspective. In reality, it will catch up to you in the form of bugs later down the line.
Scope creep
Just like with avalanches, even a small change in scope can increase system complexity and might require changes in architecture and design.
While it’s true that most projects are easily scalable and adaptable to changes, developing the new functionality will take additional time, which will cost the business additional expenses.
The uncontrolled expansion of the project scope and the constant increase in features and requirements will quickly deplete business’ resources. If the solution was never intended to have specific features, it would most likely underperform under heavy loads, resulting in a negative user experience.
Human factor
Another factor that directly influences the software development speed comes from the developers themselves. People responsible for the development play the most important role in how fast or slow the development will be.
Skills, experience, and work ethic can also influence development. Needless to say, poor communication results in delays and errors, while effective communication is key to efficient software development.
6 tips to speed up the software development process
Knowing what usually slows down the development process, let’s discuss how to counter it.
Create a roadmap
Prior to the start of software development, think about what is the end goal of your project. Focus on creating a detailed plan of what should be done. Ideally, you should collaborate with the development team to come up with realistic deadlines.
A roadmap will create soft restrictions on the project’s scope and budget, meaning the development plan will be less susceptible to changes and won’t waste any time.
Set realistic expectations
Software development should be a time-restricted process. The project should have realistic deadlines and requirements. These restrictions will stop the project from constant development and funnelling.
Divide projects into smaller tasks
Split complex issues into smaller chunks for the smaller development teams. These teams are easier to manage and are more likely to meet deadlines without additional stress.
Reduce work-in-progress
Despite popular belief that multitasking is an efficient way to solve multiple problems, this is not the case in software development. Having a large number of tasks might overwhelm the developers, and divided attention will result in bugs.
That’s why the best way to approach software development is by assigning only a limited number of tasks.
Utilise automation
Some parts of software development can be automated. A good example comes from automated quality assurance (AQA).
Test automation helps developers check the software’s quality automatically instead of manually. Automated tests are faster and cover more code, making them perfect for anyone interested in accelerating a product’s time to market.
Avoid technical debt
As we already discussed, technical debt results from near-sighted decisions. Since there is no direct way to address technical debt, the best next option is to prevent it from occurring.
Do not compromise the code’s quality for immediate gains that will haunt you in the future.
Final words
In software development, time is money, but also — quality. The key to a successful business is to speed up the development process without sacrificing quality.
Ironically, most of the factors slowing down development are caused by shortcuts and short-sighted decisions. The best way to avoid hurdles during the development process is to conduct research prior to development.
How Altamira can help
As a software development company with over a decade of experience, we know how to deliver quality software quickly. We ensure accelerated time to market and time to revenue:
Thanks to our compressed SDLC toolkits, we utilise ready-to-use components and prototypes that allow us to deliver solutions faster. The sooner your project will hit the market, the sooner it will start generating revenue, accelerating your return on investment.
Get in touch and accelerate your development today!