- What is Software Product Development, and Why Does It Matter?
- Engineering Excellence
- Adopting an Agile Mindset
- Digital Infrastructure
- Data-Driven Product Management
- Benefits of Software Product Development
- Better Scalability
- Meet Changing Customer Needs
- Optimized Business Processes
- Improved Productivity
- Software Integration
- Enhanced Reliability
- Constant Technical Support
- What Are the Indicators for Software Product Development Necessity in Your Business?
- When Your Business is Expanding
- When Your Supply Chain has Bottlenecks
- When Your Customer Base Grows
- Things to Consider Before Starting with Software Development
- Technical Expertise
- Ability to understand the user’s demand
- Setting Your Priorities
- Software Hosting and Distribution
- Deployment
- Post-Launch Maintenance and Support
- Types of Software Product Development
- Application Development
- Frontend Development
- Backend Development
- Security Software Development
- Database Development
- Embedded Software Development
- How to Create a Custom Software Product?
- Idea and Concept
- Define Your Goals
- Planning and Feasibility Analysis
- Proof of Concept
- Design
- Proof of Value
- Development and Coding
- Quality Checking and Testing
- Deployment and Implementation
- Marketing Strategies
- Maintenance, Upgrades, and Enhancement
- How Can an MVP Approach Make the Software Development Process More Effective?
- How to lower the Software Development Time and Cost
- Step-1: Turn to Outsourcing
- Step-2: Leave No Room for Assumptions
- Step-3: Testing is the Key Element
- Step-4: Prioritize the Must-Have Features
- Why do you Need to Hire a Dedicated Software Development Partner?
- Benefits of Building Software In-House
- Benefits of Outsourced Software Product Development Projects
- Tips to Hire a Software Development Company
- Conduct a Background Check
- Check Their Abilities and Technical Knowledge
- Check the Type of Services They Provide
- Check Their Experience in the Market
- Check Their Software Development Methodologies
- Check on the Cost of the Project
- Software Product Development Best Practices
- Identify the Target Audience
- Define and Design Your Product Roadmap
- Take User Feedback
- Go For Beta-Testing
- Create a Buzz With Social Media
- Popular Software Development Methodologies
- Waterfall Model
- V-Shaped Model
- Incremental Model
- Rapid App Development Model
- Agile Model
- Why Does Appinventiv Trust Agile Development Approach?
- The Path to Success
- FAQs
Creating a product that can gain instant traction in the market is seldom a straightforward process. Unclear objectives, vague user personas, inadequate documentation, and a range of other obstacles often impact the progress of ambitious businesses. As a result, about 35% of projects encounter significant setbacks and fail to overcome the challenges of the complex development process.
By embracing a systematic methodology and establishing an appropriate team framework, it is possible to streamline a significant portion of the software product development process. This approach not only puts your project for success but also enhances the ability to deliver high-quality results.
This digital era requires businesses to anticipate and adapt to the constant disruptions that arise in the industry. Organizations must shift towards digital product development to stay ahead of the competition while ensuring time-to-market is not compromised. This requires a forward-thinking approach that prioritizes innovation and embraces change.
Software product development can empower businesses to design innovative solutions that cater to their target base’s ever-evolving needs and expectations. Developing custom software products allows companies to capitalize on technology to boost productivity, streamline workflows, and provide exceptional user experiences.
In this dynamic business landscape, keeping pace with emerging trends and technological advancements is vital for businesses to remain competitive. Software product development enables organizations to do just that by offering opportunities for growth, revenue generation, and market expansion.
Organizations can improve operational efficiency, streamline business processes, and provide better user experiences by utilizing the latest technological advancements.
According to recent reports, the global custom software development ecosystem was valued at $24.46 billion in 2021 and is expected to witness a CAGR of 22.3% from 2022 to 2030, reaching $146.18 billion in 2030. The expanding market size can be attributed to various factors, such as the growing demand for enterprise apps that require real-time data analysis, the need for flexible workspaces to boost productivity, etc.
This software development guide will pave the way for a better understanding of software product development, what it entails, its importance, types, and much more. So, let’s get started!
What is Software Product Development, and Why Does It Matter?
Software product development is the process of creating a software product, including requirements gathering, design, coding, testing, and deployment. Software development methods must be well-planned and organized to be effective, with clear objectives and milestones in mind.
It is a well known fact that software development has touched all the aspects of modern life. It’s not just about the smartphone applications and online marketplaces; it has also got us innovative solutions like blockchain, AI analytics, and IoT.
It has transformed how people access information and make purchasing decisions. And, of course, it has completely changed our way of working fundamentally.
Software development is crucial to businesses as it helps them automate their processes and reach a larger audience. Custom software development accentuates user experiences as it brings feature-rich products to the market, thus making setups more productive, safe, and efficient.
If you, too, are planning to develop a software product, here are the four constituents of a well-defined software product development strategy:
Engineering Excellence
To develop an innovative work culture, it is crucial to establish a collaborative environment that enables self-managed teams to produce unconventional ideas. Encouraging an engineering-focused culture can drive product advancement and provide an ideal ecosystem for brainstorming innovative solutions.
Adopting an Agile Mindset
Adopting an Agile mindset is vital when building products from scratch and accommodating ever-changing requirements. This methodology emphasizes delivering value through flexible, customer-centric strategies. Furthermore, it is crucial to acknowledge that the success of an agile development strategy is dependent on considering it an overall team-oriented approach rather than an isolated operation.
Digital Infrastructure
Your technology stack should support efficient process management and enable adaptability and flexibility for making safe and sustainable changes in production. Microservices architecture, cloud computing, and open-source APIs are highly adaptable digital components that allow your team to make changes efficiently and effectively. These components help your business stay ahead of the competition by catering to customers’ evolving needs and capitalizing on growth opportunities.
Data-Driven Product Management
To ensure that your development team is independent and focused on achieving key performance indicators (KPIs), monitoring and visually representing enterprise software product development metrics that gauge delivery performance is essential. These metrics might include deployment frequency, lead time, and other indicators that demonstrate how well your team is performing. By tracking these metrics, you can ensure that your team remains on track and constantly works to improve its delivery processes.
Understanding that these requirements can be catered to effectively by outsourcing your project to a dedicated software development company with years of expertise in the field is vital. But, before highlighting the benefits of outsourcing, let us first look at the few advantages of developing a custom software product.
Benefits of Software Product Development
In today’s digital landscape, businesses can reap numerous benefits from software product development. Custom software solutions that are developed from scratch can be tailored to meet specific business needs, thereby increasing overall operational efficiency, and productivity, while offering a competitive edge. Companies can leverage technology to their advantage and gain greater control over their operations by investing in custom software product development. Let us look at the benefits in detail below:
Better Scalability
As your business grows, so do your requirements. Off-the-shelf software solutions can become expensive due to licensing and support costs as your business expands. Developing a software solution from scratch is a cost-effective way to accommodate business growth and scale business operations.
For instance, Pizza Hut did not have a well-performing digital framework. Their app did not have a scalable architecture, leading to a poor user experience. This is where Appinventiv’s experts came into the scene and revamped their existing app, making it fully functional and highly engaging.
The users could now experience a scalable, glitch-free, speedy, and easy-to-use food ordering and delivery app.
Meet Changing Customer Needs
As business requirements evolve and change, the software products used to meet those needs must also be able to adapt. By utilizing a process of continuous software product development, businesses can ensure that their products are always up-to-date and meet the latest customer demands.
This approach allows regular tweaks and updates to be made to the product based on feedback from customers and users – ensuring that the result is exactly what is needed. Ultimately, this leads to a better overall customer experience and increased satisfaction.
To quote a software product development example, JobGet, turned to Appinventiv’s assistance to meet the changing needs of the customers and make the job search process more efficient and simplified. Our efforts reduced the job search time for blue-collar workers from months to days and placed 150,000 job seekers through the app.
Optimized Business Processes
When it comes to business, time is money. The faster your processes are optimized and running smoothly, your company will be more profitable. Many businesses are turning to software product development to streamline their operations.
A custom-made software tailored to your unique needs can help you optimize everything from sales and marketing to accounting and HR.
To quote another software product example, IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, to optimize its business processes, took Appinventiv’s help to build an ERP software product. Our efforts made customer onboarding easy and resulted in a solution touted as the biggest source of calculating ROI by IKEA.
So if you’re looking for a way to speed up your business process, consider investing in some good software development services.
Improved Productivity
Businesses relying on off-the-shelf software solutions, which do not offer the full capabilities and features the company needs, often experiences disruption compared to businesses using customized software.
Having software developed that meets the unique requirement of the business helps the employee work more productively and efficiently. Also, employees can complete their job duties satisfactorily because they have proper software supporting the job requirements.
Software Integration
Utilizing custom software development, you can integrate your new software with an existing one to enable continuity. Custom software mitigates or lowers the chances of integration issues and can easily fit into the software ecosystem of any kind of business. Custom software development helps businesses with outdated systems easily update the business process and shift to the cloud and mobile.
Enhanced Reliability
Purchasing off-the-shelf software makes a business dependent on the company that has developed it. The terms and conditions, pricing, and the future of the business all go out of your hands. If that company suddenly stops updating the product, you will have a limited time to get a hold of a new software provider. Therefore, with custom software, you can utilize it as long as it is required. Of course, there will be maintenance costs, but overall, you will have to worry less about it.
Constant Technical Support
No matter how good a piece of software is, it will always encounter bugs or might require updates. When this happens, contacting customer support for proper assistance becomes crucial. With custom software development, businesses can get constant support from a dedicated team of IT professionals who are always available for post-launch maintenance to minimize downtime and keep the business processes running efficiently. Sometimes, businesses outsource technical support to a specialized company to ensure access to the latest technology and expertise.
What Are the Indicators for Software Product Development Necessity in Your Business?
Every business in today’s fast-paced world requires software products, which help companies gain momentum and competitive advantage. Here are some common scenarios indicating why your business needs software product development:
When Your Business is Expanding
When you start noticing visible growth in your business, it’s time to automate it. You must ensure that the quality of your production services is of the highest standards. Product development can help you evaluate the quality of your products and services, comply with government regulations, and deliver quality-based products and services. With software development solutions, you increase your chances for better returns.
[Also Read: How Custom App Development Increased Our Client’s Profits by 23%?]
When Your Supply Chain has Bottlenecks
A dissatisfied customer will quickly move to your competition. Bottlenecks created by miscommunication, surges in demand, carrier disruptions, etc., in the supply chain processes can lead to loss of opportunities. Custom software development can help you effectively manage your supply chain challenges while increasing the overall efficiency. Furthermore, it can optimize your supply chain and help you make informed decisions.
When Your Customer Base Grows
When you experience exponential growth in your customer base, handling the data becomes complex. Those customers’ data need to be organized so that you can utilize it to make better business decisions. Software product development can offer you visibility and insights into your customer’s data, thus contributing to the financial health of your organization.
[Also Read: The New Product Development Process: 7 Essential Stages for Success]
Things to Consider Before Starting with Software Development
To ensure the success of a software development project, it’s crucial to plan and evaluate several factors beforehand. Rushing into the development process without proper consideration can lead to unfavorable outcomes. Let us look at the multiple factors to consider in detail:
Technical Expertise
Technical skills are something that should never be forgotten. Often, it becomes difficult to manage things internally due to the lack of technical expertise. To extract the highest value of technology into your business, you need to hire a reputed product development company that can fulfill your technical needs.
Ability to understand the user’s demand
For any software development plan to succeed, understanding the user’s demand is a must. Consider validating your idea by creating an MVP. MVP is the first version of your product with a basic set of features. This helps generate valuable feedback for your product through which you can build a cutting-edge app that meets the user’s demand.
Setting Your Priorities
Understanding what is important for you and what you couldn’t do without. Knowing what is more or less critical for your business can steer the best possible plan for your project. Also, you must list down your software product’s tangible and intangible benefits to set your priorities right.
Software Hosting and Distribution
Before launching your app, you must know where to host it. You will host and distribute it in the app stores if it’s an app. If it’s server-based software, you must choose cloud services. The server needs to be configured and managed to remain stable and secure. You must also consider whether you have sufficient resources to handle this internally or need to hire a software product design and development company.
Deployment
For the software deployment process, you can either choose a soft launch with targeted uses or simply go for a direct launch. You will need to consider cloud data migration and be ready for the obstacles that might come your way during your deployment process. You can also schedule extra buffer time during the planning the stages of product development.
Post-Launch Maintenance and Support
Post-launch support is an essential aspect of customer care that begins after the launch and lasts for a few weeks or months. Its primary objective is to evaluate and oversee the performance of your platform’s features and functionalities. This includes technical support, data integrity assurance, and customer service inquiries management. The ultimate aim is to keep the software error-free and bug-free, which eventually helps in reducing the downtime.
Types of Software Product Development
Software development is the crux of the entire IT industry. Here are a few types of software development processes:
Application Development
Application development is a generic software development type. Fundamentally, it characterizes the development of a computer program, or a setup program meant for performing a particular task. Application development follows gathering requirements, designing prototypes, programming and testing the application, and the final launch.
Common programming languages used: Java, C/C++, C#, Python, etc.
Frontend Development
Frontend development is a crucial part of software development that is immediately visible to the users as it includes graphical elements of a web application, mobile app,, system, or website. It involves managing user-side behavior and building interactive user interfaces (UI) that are crucial for making the software appealing to the end users.
Frontend development is also called the ‘client side’ of the application. It includes everything the users can experience directly, like the images, text, styles, buttons, graphs and tables, navigation, menu, and colors.
Common programming languages used: JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
Backend Development
Backend development includes integration of server-side functionalities, application programming interfaces, and other internal structures that are crucial in the product development process.
Here the end-users do not see what is happening on the backend. The backend server handles requests, API integrates associated software, and the database stores the user data and other relevant information. Backend development drives the entire software development as a whole.
Common programming languages used: Ruby, Python, and Java.
Security Software Development
The “white-hat” ethical hackers, penetration testers, and cybersecurity experts work diligently to safeguard the company’s data and systems. The cybersecurity team mainly develops software to protect company assets from hackers, thefts, viruses, and other malicious attacks. The penetration tester attempts to ‘hack’ the system to find any vulnerability’s location.
Common programming languages used: NodeJS, ReactJS, jQuery
Database Development
Almost every software application requires an organized database and data collection. A DBMS or Database Management System interacts with applications, end-users, and databases to capture and analyze data. The software development team uses DBMS for setting up and tuning legacy applications.
Common programming languages used: Python, SQL, and PHP.
Embedded Software Development
Embedded software development is booming with the upsurge in Internet of Things (IoT). This software development focuses explicitly on coding skills required for embedded systems like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Beaglebones, and it is dedicated to specific software running on the machine.
Common programming languages used: Python, C, C++, Arduino, Assembly
Also read: IT infrastructure software development – The why’s and how’s
How to Create a Custom Software Product?
Developing a successful custom software product requires a systematic approach. The potential benefits of creating a solution that is tailored to the specific needs and requirements of a business includes increased efficiency, productivity, and a competitive edge. It is crucial to plan and evaluate the development project thoroughly to ensure its success. Let us look at the software product development steps in detail below:
Idea and Concept
The initial product development process steps start with an out–of–the–box concept and validating your application idea, but it is recommended to document everything from the very beginning.
Avoid keeping your software product design and development ideas just inside your head. The concept should be carefully thought out and brainstormed to be executed. Here are a few things that you can probe upon:
Define Your Goals
During this phase, you have to:
- List out the features your software will have
- Research other software products
- Figure out how your product will stand out
- Discuss the target audience
- Sketch out what the software product will look like
- Put together a user story
These simple steps will help in accelerating your software product development life cycle and make the software product development process smooth right from the start! This also defines a clear plan that you have regarding the product.
Planning and Feasibility Analysis
While analyzing and validating your ideas, use software development consulting for feasibility analysis.
Feasibility analysis, an essential part of the app discovery process, will help you determine the technical and economic aspects impacting your software product development process. While planning your product’s roadmap, you must remember a few things, like time, resources, essential tasks, estimates, ROI, etc. An adequate amount of analysis and planning helps foresee the risks that can occur during the software product design process. It will help you get ready with risk mitigation strategies.
Proof of Concept
Once you finish your second step, you can start with a proof of concept (POC). POC is one of the most critical steps of the software product development life cycle. This stage comes into existence way before the custom software product development process starts. It will help you validate your idea, and will help you establish product-market fit. It will confirm technical feasibility and possible expectations and determine the potential blocks and the scope to accomplish them.
Design
Software product design is one of the integral software product development stages. Once the POC is successful, the design team conceptualizes a detailed software architecture hitting the bull’s eye regarding the software’s features. Finding the right software design steps and strategies is about balancing user needs and business goals and not losing sight of either during the SDLC.
The product design of your software will include prototypes and the final mockups, ensuring they are exceptionally customer-centric. So the wireframes, standards, workflows, and end goals should be defined, keeping user interaction and final output in mind.
Proof of Value
Proof of Value (POV) dives deeper into what the product means to your business, and it helps you determine if your goals are achievable! Through the POV process, you can easily take a single case from beginning to end to inspect all the elements and understand the gaps along the way.
A POV provides a better understanding of the predicted value that the products will bring and measure success.
Development and Coding
Once we have all the vital elements like the POV, design document, and functional requirement specification document, we can start with coding and development. It is all about giving life to your product! The custom software product development engineering team has to ensure that their coding process is accurate since it is potentially the riskiest step of the SDLC. Once the complete architecture that includes the database, application programming interface, and planned functionality of the solution is built, we can move toward the testing stage.
Quality Checking and Testing
Since the team is developing the software, quality checking and testing are essential agile software product development processes. It’s always recommended to test, track and fix bugs simultaneously. However, once the product is developed successfully, you must also have final testing.
You can start with these simple mobile app testing steps:
- Releasing the product to a small group of beta testers
- Use UX product development software tools to track how the users interact with your product.
Deployment and Implementation
Once you finish the product development steps like designing, coding and testing your application, now is the time to install the crafted product. The application is now moved to production, including data and components transfer. However, only some specific changes will be deployed during the subsequent releases. At this stage, end-users and system analysts can see, use and experiment with the ready application.
Marketing Strategies
Simultaneously, the marketing team will keep developing a multi-platform approach to turn the spotlight on your product. It is imminent that the out-of-the-box strategies will focus on telling the product’s unique story, understanding the competitive analysis, investing in digital marketing, and creating social media and SEO master plans to enhance the product’s value.
Maintenance, Upgrades, and Enhancement
IT is vital to understand that the software development process is not over after the deployment phase, and the final stage includes maintenance, operations, and regular updates. Being the last, yet important software product development stages, this process starts with post-launch support. Remember that customer needs are evolving daily, therefore, maintaining the software as per those requirements is rather essential.
The product will be upgraded, maintained, polished, redesigned, and enhanced according to the feedback of the customers and the rapid development in the IT sector. This would be a perfect time to modify the application’s functionalities to improve performance. This way, you will be able to meet the actual needs of your target audience.
Also Read: How to Develop a Pharmacy Management Software – Features, Process, Costs
How Can an MVP Approach Make the Software Development Process More Effective?
The MVP(Minimum Viable Product) will help you gain the user’s perspective. How? Below are some important pointers for you to keep in mind:
- It is a ready–to–launch version of your software product with a sufficient amount of features that are enough for the initial users.
- Once the feedback is received from the initial users, only then the final product is designed with all the elements.
- The MVP process is cost-effective as it saves time and accelerates the development process.
Building an MVP is not the only important task; testing its viability is just as important too. A custom software product development consulting company may think that the product can satisfy the customers’ needs, but nothing can be predicted until and unless the MVP test is run.
How to lower the Software Development Time and Cost
Undoubtedly, the custom software product development cost can vary between $45,000 to $300,000, depending on a number of factors like the location of the software development team, the type and size of the project, the features to be integrated, the tech-stack used, the UI/UX design of the software, etc.
However, certain steps can be taken to lower the cost of product development software. These include
Step-1: Turn to Outsourcing
Outsourced software product development services results allow you to optimize the overall development costs. Here are the few reasons to consider outsourcing:
- Initial in-house cost-cutting will save you a lot of money in the form of on-shore salaries, benefits, taxes, marketing and management costs, etc.
- Zero pay-out on software architecture
- You can choose designers and developers based on technical knowledge, relevant experience, and budget criteria.
Step-2: Leave No Room for Assumptions
You should not be ambiguous about what you want regarding product development! If the requirements are unclear, your product can become a disaster because of haphazard design, unplanned functionality, and the lack of distinctness.
Documenting every requirement and expectation regarding your product will help eliminate the room for vagueness. This will reduce the overall software development costs and save time for you, helping you focus on other important business problems and solutions.
Step-3: Testing is the Key Element
Ensure that the testing team is involved every step of the way. Successful software developers reveal that they started testing for red flags, errors, or bugs right from the design phase.
If the errors are found at a later stage, the intensity of rework increases! The quality check team will save cost and time by reducing the chances for mid-project redesigning and avoid sub-optimal application quality. By making software testing your ‘mantra,’ you will throw light on potential risks and surface functionality conflicts.
Step-4: Prioritize the Must-Have Features
We all buy gadgets and do not use about 50% of the features; the same is the case with software products! They have a lot of unessential functions that your target audience might never use. Such features increase the development time and maintenance cost, so ensure that your product has the most viable features.
We advise you to start with a smaller chunk of money and create a basic product. Once it turns out to be profitable, you can always expand the functionalities of the product. This step will save you time and cost. Also, conduct market research to determine and forecast what your clients embrace about your product.
Now that we know how to lower the costs of custom software product development, let’s move forward to learn the software development methodologies.
[Also Read: Software Development in the Middle East – Benefits, Use Cases, Process, Costs]
Why do you Need to Hire a Dedicated Software Development Partner?
Businesses usually have two options when they get to the technical part of software development – in-house development vs.outsourcing.
Benefits of Building Software In-House
You can create a team from the ground up
When you opt for in-house software development, you can control who works on the project. You can look for professionals across different domains in the market and then hand-pick them to work on your project.
You get a fully dedicated team
With an in-house team, you get the guarantee that the team will be working whole and sole on your project and won’t be distracted by other projects. The downside of it can be that once the project is completed, it becomes difficult to retain those employees in-house.
You have control over product direction
Building it in-house would be your best choice if you need complete visibility and control of every aspect of the product’s development. You can sit with the development team and work on every element and feature set that best defines your product’s vision and end goal.
Benefits of Outsourced Software Product Development Projects
Not limited to a region
For a business in the US, the best approach would be to expand the search and look for software developers in both – other Western nations and Eastern nations. By not limiting themselves to one region, they will be able to get specialized software developers at greater skillset and competitive rates.
There are several benefits that remote software developers bring to the table. Benefits range from a new mindset driven by geographical differences, competitive prices, and opening up of the business to a wider audience. However, it is important to consider factors such as development costs and effectively managing time zone differences to fully harness these benefits.
Competitive pricing
The price of software development varies greatly between Western and Eastern nations. The hourly cost of development starts at $100-120 in the US and the UK while it varies between $34-40 across Asia and Eastern continents.
The prices, however, cannot be the only factor behind choosing a custom software development company. There are several software development outsourcing tips that businesses should consider.
Fast project delivery
Outsourcing software product development can greatly expedite the time to market compared to in-house teams. Building an in-house team requires going through the complexities of recruiting, training, etc., which can be time-consuming. While on the other hand, a reliable software development outsourcing company can build a minimum viable product (MVP) in around 12 weeks by adhering to a nimble, agile approach.
Focus on key business
By outsourcing software product development, businesses can free up their time and resources to focus on core business activities like brand building and R&D to give value-driven services to their customers.
As for the technology section of software development, it can be best to leave it to the outsourcing firms who can advise business leaders and help them through new-age technologies like data analytics, cloud computing, AI, and Blockchain.
Tips to Hire a Software Development Company
Choosing the right partner is an important decision that should not be taken lightly. After all, you will spend your hard-earned money on a project you have always dreamt of. Check out the top tips for hiring the right offshore software product development company:
Conduct a Background Check
To validate a company’s experience and other professional trajectories, contact those businesses that have hired your preferred partner earlier. You can also check their testimonials, which will give you insight into the client review. This will help you know their experience and the outcome they have received.
Check Their Abilities and Technical Knowledge
For your product to be of top-notch quality, your software development partner should have the ability and excellence in modern software development. Find out if they have proper knowledge about the technology and industry. It is always good to hire a software development team that has worked with various industry verticals and different components of various software.
Check the Type of Services They Provide
Before deciding to pick your software development partner, you need to clearly understand and define the needs of your project. Once you have done that, you will know exactly what services you require from the custom software development company.
It is vital for you to check all the software product development services which the company provides. Working with companies that offer a full-service cycle like software development, testing, and design is more convenient. Also, you need to know if the company will be providing the necessary support and maintenance post the software launch.
Check Their Experience in the Market
Experience is one of the important things in the modern software development process. You need to cross-check the years of experience an organization has in the industry and the type of projects they have worked on. Check on the directory site like Clutch, where you can find the complete details about the company, including client testimonials and reviews. By knowing your experience, you can justify if the company suits your software development needs.
Check Their Software Development Methodologies
Each software development company has its unique process of developing intuitive software. Usually, companies follow flexible approaches to methodologies. For example, most software development companies rely on an agile software product development process, which makes the entire process adaptable to changes that can happen when re-developing an application. However, a few stick to a limited number of methodologies. Companies these days either prefer Agile or Scrum methodology for software development.
Check on the Cost of the Project
One of the first questions you ask while closing a deal is the pricing. The cost of developing an application depends on the size and type of the project, along with the size of the software development team. Other than that, several contributing factors like technology stack and feature implementation exist.
Software Product Development Best Practices
Software development practices are constantly improvising and evolving. 2023 marks when we need to rethink the industry workflows, new custom software product development strategies, and guidelines and embrace a wide range of new tech solutions. Let’s check out some of the software product development best practices for building the right solution:
Identify the Target Audience
For any product development process, you must first develop a systematic vision of your product. This vision includes a deeper understanding of the market trends and conditions along with the features to maximize income and minimize the time to market. Best practices, along with proper technology in place, can help develop a great product. Ask these questions to identify the target outcome:
- What opportunities are you trying to capitalize on?
- What problems are you exactly trying to solve?
- What will success look like?
- How do you see your product within the context of a shorter and long-term strategy?
In other words, you need to understand the ways of successful product development.
Define and Design Your Product Roadmap
Design and architecture still matter a great deal. Therefore, defining your design roadmap or software design steps early in the process of software development can help you achieve the desired outcome. Describe your system architecture as a Minimum Viable Product or MVP. This will help you to build an architecture roadmap.
The benefit here is twofold. First, the stakeholders gain complete visibility of where their project is standing while the development team learns the next steps they need to take. Beyond architecture and design, you will also need to define your technology stack at this stage and determine the skills you will be required to cover across the development process.
Take User Feedback
After you’re done with your research part, test your prototypes with your potential users. Testing your app with real users is extremely vital for your app. You have a clear idea of what your app is all about. But how sure are you that your app appears viable to others?
That is the reason why getting better feedback from your users has become so vital. Undergo a user testing process where the users will utilize your app and inform and talk about their experiences with you.
Go For Beta-Testing
Beta-testing is another crucial step before your app launch, ensuring that your app meets the necessary requirements and functions smoothly. This is another way to know how your app will perform in the app store.
Why beta testing?
It is done to find the bugs hampering your app’s user experience. The beta testers help detect errors in your app’s beta version. So before your app launch, ensure that you are solving all the bugs and issues associated with your app.
Create a Buzz With Social Media
Social media is one of the most amazing mediums for creating hype amongst users. This is also one of the greatest options for building a strong community of your users. Choose a few platforms where you can find many engaging audiences.
Keep posting blogs or any other posts related to your app on various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Popular Software Development Methodologies
A team picks a specific set of product development software tools and procedures for the software product design, testing, management, and other software development processes. These choices rely on the aim that stands before the team and the objectives of the product that is to be built.
Here are the most well-known software development models used by various experienced teams across the IT ecosystem.
Waterfall Model
This model presumes that each stage is finished before the beginning of the next one. For instance, QA engineers begin testing solely after programming is done.
V-Shaped Model
It is much like the waterfall model with a slight difference – the testing co-occurs with the other major stride of the software development process.
Incremental Model
This model is split into builds. It implies that the product is developed with discrete squares/parts. In other words, the product is built like an enigma.
Rapid App Development Model
In this model, the project development is split among small teams who work simultaneously.
Agile Model
It is an incremental model where each delivery focuses on better software quality. This methodology is broadly spread amongst teams and customers as it displays consistent processes and fast results. The time taken to each build can be measured by weeks rather than months.
Why Does Appinventiv Trust Agile Development Approach?
The agile software product development process and its most popular methodology – scrum, give you an interactive and dynamic experience. Agile product development methodologies will give you the power to collaborate with customers, interact with individuals, stay in constant touch with the team working on your project, and produce sustainable, profitable, and successful products.
It is all about accelerating the process, making it more efficient, and responding to the real needs of your customers, even if it does not align with your initial product development plan. The agile product development process helps you go with the flow and move in one direction, understanding that you’ll change course along the way because of the constantly evolving technology and requirements. Also, this is the reason why the agile approach is practical when it comes to startups.
The Path to Success
The most important outcome of availing of custom software product development services is that it will give the project execution process a much-needed fluency. It is further vital to understand that the SDLC can be structured to the needs of a particular project to deliver the best product possible.
However, for a seamless software product development that can help you gain instant traction in the market, you must search for a reliable custom software product development agency that is capable of incorporating the latest technologies for your product to facilitate market disruption.
Appinventiv is a distinguished frontrunner and a dedicated custom software development company. With our proficient product development team at your service, we possess the expertise to execute requirements analysis, design, development, testing, and ultimately, the evolution of your product. Our software development process is intricately woven with the principles of lean methodology, ensuring optimal efficiency and efficacy throughout the entire journey.
At Appinventiv, we excel in client satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and efficient workflows. Contact our experts now!
FAQs
Q. What is software product development?
A. Software product development refers to the end-to-end process of creating and refining software applications or systems. It encompasses stages like defining requirements, planning, programming, testing, and launching the software. The aim is to deliver a functional, reliable, and user-centric product that addresses particular needs. Teams often employ methodologies such as Agile or Waterfall to manage the development efficiently and ensure a high-quality final product.
Q. What is software development outsourcing?
A. Outsourcing custom software product development is about delegating software development activities responsibilities to a particular vendor. It covers the lack of internal expertise or resources that support business growth and other digital transformation activities.
Q. What are software quality standards?
A. Software quality standards are different rules, specifications, or guidelines used to ensure that developed software products fit the quality parameters. For example, ISO/IEC 27001 is an international standard for information security.
Q. What is the role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in software development?
A. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning software solutions are widely utilized in various business domains. The role of such advanced software product development solutions is to improvise business processes, reduce manual work, and help achieve better business results.
Q. What is a software development methodology?
A. Software development methodology can be defined as the process by which software is developed. There are a number of different processes that the developers follow – agile, waterfall, lean development, etc.
Q. What are the different software development tools?
A. There are multiple software development tools that the developers make use of to streamline the process of application development. Some of the most time-tested ones of those are
- Jira
- GitHub
- Jenkins
- Stack Overflow
- Docker, etc.
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