Software Product Development

Every project or project iteration (If you work under the Agile methodology) in the field of software product development starts with the stage of requirements gathering and analysis. During this stage, a Business Analyst (BA) communicates with the Customer to determine product features to be developed.

There is a common problem of lacking the BA or a certain level of BA qualification in your team. During the software product development process this specialist should cover:

• Interaction with the customer to elicit their requirements.
• Conversion of the business terms into detailed technical specifications for the technology team.
• Requirements analysis and management.
• The developed solution verification before handing over to the customer for User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Coordination with the customer team and the technology team to facilitate UAT.
• Creating a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document.

If these activities are not completed properly, the project becomes chaotic and there is barely anyone who knows what you are doing and for what purpose. The Project Management Institute reported that 39% of failed projects tank because of failing the work with the requirements.

Of course, you can oblige your Project Manager (PM) to complete the BA part. And this approach can even work well for small software product development projects. However, will you be sure of the high-level results, causing no harm to the actual project management part and your PM’s constant efficiency in this way?

As a professional software product development company, we recommend dedicating a BA specialist or a BA team (depending on the size of your project). For instance, at TAGSoft we have experienced BAs that have mastered market researches, different types of analysis and modeling, interviews/workshops providing, and efficient requirements management. Integrating their skills into the software product development we facilitate smoother operations and make sure the project meets the requirements.

Every unsolved issue at this phase leads to the inability to complete or test certain features or makes you developers solve problems that they usually wouldn’t face. And for you as a customer, it means increased costs and time to market. It’s important to remember that applying changes to your product is inevitable but investing in qualified professionals to develop a proper design prevents expensive and risky issues as well as the costliest design changes from occurring during the further software product development process.

Here is a useful check-list for you to make sure your designing phase meets its goals. If your development process lacks any of these features, do not hesitate to contact TAGSoft.

Testing is an essential part of every software product development phase. Actually, when we talk about software product testing as a distinct stage we bear in mind testing single modules, their interaction, and the system as a whole. All the discovered defects are reported, tracked, fixed, and retested until the product meets the quality standards and acceptance criteria described at SRS.

What can be tricky at this stage of the software product development process? 

Well, a Unit Testing technique applied by your team may not detect all the defects. Later unfixed mistakes can lead to unexpected errors that will be way more difficult to track. That’s how choosing a not optimal Unit Testing approach results in missing or working wrong software product functionalities.

Also, the change of requirements should result in changing the tests. There is no secret that tests are being developed alongside the software product development process after submitting the SRS. If your development team makes changes to the requirements but the tests remain the same they are checking not the system you need. So you don’t get the desired software product at the end.

When the coding and testing phases of the software product development process are completed it’s time to deploy your system. During this stage, the software product is being delivered to you, deployed into the production environment including data and components transfer, and put to use. A common practice is for the system to be initially available for the limited user segment to provide a User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

Of course, you should be aware of the problems possible here. Mainly, it’s about software product-environment interaction because the installation process may affect the environment and it’s not usually welcomed by the users. If the change has to be done, it’s better for you to make it insignificant. Also, it goes the opposite way: sometimes the time from requirements analysis to the software product deployment is enough for the hardware to change so your system cannot be deployed correctly. 

At the end of the day, your deployers should be experienced enough. Especially, if the system is large, complex, distributed, or the environment is challenging. Otherwise, the lack of expertise might lead to difficulties during the installation process or incorrect deployment.

However, when your software product deployment is delivered smoothly you might be able to get the UAT results quickly and use this feedback for your decision-making process and further product improvement.

The common opinion is to think about Product Development Consulting services as a tool you put to use when a fresh look is needed. And it’s mostly true because the goal of consulting is to facilitate the process of inventing, planning, and realizing new solutions to the existing problems or to the ones you can foresee. Thus, we can say the implementation of Product Development Consulting leads to discovering new ideas and starting projects. 

However, there is a risk of consulting services costs being out of your budget or other trouble. According to the Harvard Business Review, there is little agreement on what factors influence most on transformation initiatives. Their research on Amazon.com revealed 6 153 books on “change and management”, each with a distinct take on the subject. Basically, it means that a suggested approach to your problem depends on the person you ask. So, here you face the question: “Are there any tools we can apply by ourselves?”.

It’s important to know how to solve this problem because the lack of work put in on the planning stage results in underestimated or unpredicted risks, bigger spending of money and time, or even a product that doesn’t have the market fit.

As a professional Software Product Development Company, we recommend completing these steps before starting the development process(see it right)

This work makes sure your product development plan is economically grounded and includes user interaction, scope, and risk mitigation strategy. Throughout the 12+ years of dealing as a development partner TAGSoft passed these steps more than 1000 times and our specialists gained strong expertise in strategic consulting.