What Questions Arise When Creating an Effective Software Development Strategy?

A successful software strategy is not only about choosing the right methodology and finding experts who will implement it in practice. In particular, you will need to find out a much wider range of aspects that are relevant to your project. They will be discussed in our article.

8 Questions to Consider When Creating Software Development Strategy

So, let's find out what questions will help you form win-win software strategies for your project.

How will my interaction with the development team be organized?

The first thing you should start with your software development strategy is understanding what kind of team of experts you are going to form: in-house or outsource. The second option is more preferable for startups and projects for small/medium enterprises since the outsource team will start working on your project immediately, unlike a local team, for which you still have to hire employees and then organize their workflows yourself.

Can I reduce the project’s budget?

When you create software development strategies, you must be prepared for the fact that even with careful planning of your budget, you may still have unforeseen expenses that will greatly increase the final cost of the project. Therefore, to have a margin for these "pitfalls, " you need to consider how to reduce planned costs.

In particular, you should start testing your solution as early as possible to prevent significant bugs in the final stages of development (usually, fixing them in this case, is much more expensive).

You should also consider integrating off-the-shelf components so that your team doesn't have to spend time developing trivial things from scratch.

Finally, you will need to consult with your team about the choice of development tools – it is better to choose those that do not require you to pay for the use.

To achieve the best possible results, the Chief technology officer (CTO) can be added to your team and also can be hired through outsourcing. Cooperation between the software strategist and CTO will be the most efficient way to achieve the best possible result.

What are the requirements for my project?

If you have a well-defined list of requirements for your project, and it is not the embodiment of some innovative trends and technologies, your team can safely choose a linear development model for your application development strategy to ensure the predictability of the budget and the final result.

But if you plan to work on a startup or a large-scale project that will adjust throughout the development process, an agile methodology will suit your IT development strategy, as it will result in a product whose final concept has formed over time. However, remember that this approach will require you to be more involved in the project and interact regularly with your team.

Does my project need to comply with any standards?

Another extremely important aspect is to first identify a list of standards that your product must meet. These can be generally accepted user data security standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc., as well as industry standards specific to particular business niches like ISO, GAMP, GMP, etc. Probably, you will have to consider the use of development plan software like Cascade, Hirebook, ClearPoint Strategy, etc., to close this issue properly.

Read more:

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How to ensure the quality of my project?

Of course, software developers have their own metrics for evaluating code quality, and you don't have to be familiar with all of them. However, there are also key project quality guidelines that you should keep in mind to be more productive with your team.

As for particular software development plan examples, your team must understand what level of project accessibility will be acceptable for your target audience and, if necessary, provide for the possibility of interacting with it offline without losing the already processed data.

In addition, you should decide whether you need to use additional data storage to ensure timely backup if something goes wrong with your project.

Am I going to scale my project in the future?

As the next software development plan example, we would like to talk about letting your team know before the start of your project whether you are going to scale and/or modernize it in the future. This will help them create a well-formed architecture that either takes longer to build but adapts to upgrades, or is fixed but hard to change.

How can I ensure competitiveness for my project?

This development strategy example is dedicated to the analysis of the market.

To understand what factors will determine the longevity of your project, you will need to analyze your main competitors and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Note that the analysis should be carried out not only from the point of view of the user but also from an expert point of view, which will determine the viability of analogs in the long term (since there are always successful one-day projects, the relevance of which fades over time).

How can I quickly get feedback on my project from the target audience?

If you are going to work on an MVP or a startup, you will need to get feedback from your target audience as early as possible to understand if your team moves in the right direction. That is why it is essential to think over user testing scenarios that can be implemented even at the pre-release stages of the project. For this, you may need additional development strategy software.

Final Thoughts

We hope the above questions have shed some light on how to define software development strategy to get the best results. And of course, do not forget to back up your success with the right choice of strategy development tools and development team itself – for example, among the Visual Craft experts