Software development is a complex and rather lengthy process fraught with many pitfalls. Both external and internal factors can influence its effectiveness. How to increase productivity and speed of work without losing quality? Read the article below.

1. Expanding Your Team

You can increase the speed of developers’ work by adding new employees to the existing team. With raising the number of human resources, you can count on the project being completed ahead of the planned time. To do it, your software engineering company has three main options:

  • Hire new people. It’s a time-consuming process as you need to find, interview, and train new employees. That is, it’s not the best approach if you want to finish the job as soon as possible.
  • Agree with freelancers. Thanks to modern platforms, you can access freelancers with a wide variety of qualifications and from different countries. The disadvantage of this method, as a rule, is the low involvement and motivation of such employees.
  • Refer to team extension services. This approach minimizes the disadvantages of the previous two and guarantees seamless onboarding. You get high-quality professionals who have the skills you need and a dedicated manager that helps you supervise an expanded team.

2. Priorities Determination

In work on any project, there are major and minor tasks. If you need to release a product as soon as possible, you can take some of your resources from developing secondary elements. For each project, they can be different, for example, a nice 404 page or a pop-up window with a welcome. Attention to detail and beautiful nuances are what can make your product unique. However, if the priority is the speed at the moment, everything that is not important can wait. Now, it’s better to focus all your attention on what your project cannot exist without.

3. Avoiding Technical Debt

When identifying the primary and secondary tasks, it’s essential not to go into the so-called technical debt. It’s a situation where you throw away too many challenging points to get a product out as soon as possible. If such a step is part of your long-term strategy, it’s acceptable. Otherwise, if you are chaotically trying to cut corners by increasing work speed but losing quality, it might end badly. In general, when drawing up a roadmap, you can lay down several scenarios for the development of events, one of which provides for a slight decrease in quality temporarily, with its subsequent replenishment.

4. Getting Early Feedback

If you develop custom software, getting customer feedback as early as possible is vital. If you already have something to demonstrate, do it. It’ll help avoid global fixes in the future. Besides, it’s recommended that you regularly conduct A/B testing to see which things users like best. Gather a focus group with people outside of product development and ask them to test your software and share their thoughts.

5. Preparing for Mistakes

In an ideal world, development takes place without problems and force majeure situations. In reality, anything can happen that slows down the overall work process. That is why, when forming a long-term plan, you should plan for possible mistakes. If you are prepared for errors, you can quickly eliminate them if they occur.

Achieve a Balance of Quality and Efficiency

Of course, the sooner you enter the market, the less likely someone will take your place. However, in your desire to increase the speed of work, you should not forget that it is necessary to maintain the quality of a product and, at the same time, prevent employee burnout. You should pay equal attention to the technical part and concern for the comfort of employees.

Please share your tips to improve developer speed and efficiency. Which methods do you find most effective?