These days, clients expect software developers to deliver software quickly without compromising the quality. From a client’s perspective, this might look easy but from a developer’s perspective, striking a balance between rapid delivery and quality software is a big challenge. Moving too fast can lead to a lot of bugs and performance issues while focusing wholly and solely on the quality can lead to delayed release.
Although this is a challenging feat, it is certainly not difficult and with the right strategies, you can strike a balance between both timely delivery and quality. So in this regard, we have discussed four practical tips to help software teams maintain high standards without slowing the development process.
Plan Ahead
If any software developer or team wants to balance both quality and speed, they need to plan ahead before even starting the project. It is necessary that you create a clear and realistic plan for your upcoming project along with defining the objectives, goals, deliverables, milestones, and deadlines for the project. Without defining all these important points first, you cannot expect to deliver a project that balances both speed and quality.
Break down your entire project into manageable chunks and assign them to various members of your time. While doing so, make sure that you estimate the time and resources required for each task. This will help you and your team stay on track and follow a deadline without compromising on quality.
Test Often and Prioritize Automated Testing
When it comes to software testing, then most software teams usually treat it as a secondary task and don’t give much heed to this. Although these software teams have dedicated testing processes in place, they still don’t pay much importance to testing, rather they focus on adding new features and patching bugs. Testing your code early and often is important to identify and fix any errors, bugs, or performance issues before they can cause major problems.
One of the reasons why testing is considered a secondary task by many developers is because most of them perform manual testing, which is a slow, tedious, and error-prone process. If any software team wants to achieve both speed and quality in software, then it needs to ditch the old practice of manual testing and prioritize automated testing to validate assumptions, verify app functionality, and ensure its compatibility with different platforms and devices.
WinZo, a popular mobile app uses automated testing to ensure both speed and quality. You can Download the app from App Store for free.
Refactor and Reuse
Software development is a complex process and doing everything from the very start can take a lot of time in some cases. In instances where you are short of time and have to deliver a project within a given time period, consider refactoring and reusing a code. Refactoring refers to the process of improving the quality of a source code to improve its readability, reusability, or structure without affecting its intended functionality.
The benefits of refactoring and reusing are that these can not only help to remove duplication, inefficiency, and complexity in your code but can also help you save time and avoid writing code from the very start. You can refactor and reuse code from any of your previous projects, open-source libraries, or frameworks that suit the needs and standards of the project.
Most of the apps these days on Play Store, App Store, or the Vivo V Appstore follow the practices of refactoring and reuse. You can download it and see it for yourself.
Delegate, Collaborate, and Outsource
Remember, if you want to ensure both quality and time on a project, then you don’t have to do everything by yourself. If you are doing a development project on your own, then consider delegating and collaborating with your colleagues or team members to distribute the workload, leverage their skills and expertise, and have the project completed at a time without any compromise on quality. The reason why you should delegate and collaborate is that it can help to avoid burnout, stress, or isolation that can affect your productivity and quality.
Similarly, if your team is working on a complex project that is difficult to tackle, then instead of trying to tackle everything on your own, consider outsourcing some parts of the project to an external development team. The benefit of outsourcing will be that you will be able to complete the project on time without any fall in quality and prevent your team from getting burnt out.