Are you about to bring to life your business idea by launching your own digital solution but don’t know which approach to take? In fact, end-to-end planning of the software development process is mandatory if you aim to implement it within a certain budget and time frame. Below, we will talk about how the full cycle software development approach can help you with this.
What Steps Does This Approach Include?
The goal of the full cycle product development is to ensure that when creating, maintaining, and improving software, you have the opportunity to save resources (time, financial, and human) as much as possible. Specifically, full cycle product development services imply performing the following steps:
- planning. Proper planning of the functionality and requirements analysis plays a key role in the entire project. This is similar to writing a custom research paper because you must be well-prepared when working on such a project. If you overlook this essential planning step you do not feel confident in your project. However, prior to designing a product, this planning is rather formal since it is impossible to know the exact course of development at this stage;
- design. This stage is the responsibility of UX/UI designers – specialists who create user interfaces. Specifically, designers analyze user behavior and build a human-friendly interface. Together with them, system architects work on the project, deciding how the links between the individual components and information structures of the project will be arranged;
- programming. At this stage, developers follow one of the generally accepted methodologies, for example, Agile, “building up” lines of code on the finished design;
- testing. As the individual modules of the project are ready, they are subjected to different types of testing. The product also goes through comprehensive testing after the final assembly;
- deployment and support. Once the project meets the requirements defined at the beginning of the cycle, it is ready for deployment. After that, it will need tech support (updates, elimination of possible technical malfunctions).
How Can You Achieve Cost and Time Efficiency?
In general, two parties are responsible for ensuring the cost and time efficiency of a project implemented according to the full cycle software development approach: system architects, who have a general idea of appropriate performance and desired results, and the project owner, who evaluates the viability of the project. That is why it is so important to establish transparent cooperation between these parties.
In particular, to ensure open communication during full cycle software development, it is essential to hold regular meetings, as well as have convenient tools for remote interaction, from working messengers to more specialized solutions such as version control systems, project management tools, time tracking tools, reporting tools, etc.
Depending on the complexity of the task assigned to the full cycle product development company, the introduction of DevOps practices and automation can also contribute to expense reduction. However, this is only necessary when working with long-term projects to speed up release launches. In particular, DevOps engineers connect and synchronize all stages of software development, from the preparation of technical specifications to release. Thus, product versions are launched at the required frequency and at minimal cost.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, in an average full cycle software development company, transparent, end-to-end, and regular communication, as well as, optionally, the introduction of DevOps and automation practices, are responsible for cost reduction.
