Driving down the costs of software development is something which every developer should be
eager to do, yet without the right strategies and solutions it can be tricky.
To address this, here are just a few tips on how savings can be made without having to make compromises or sacrifices in terms of the quality of the end result.
Implement testing sooner rather than later
While it may be tempting to leave testing until much further down the line, it is far better to put in-development software through its paces during the earlier stages of the cycle.
The reason that this is a cost-saving measure is that it can be far more time consuming and expensive to re-design everything later in the day if a major flaw or bug is discovered, whereas if you use TestProject, an incredible testing tool to automate and orchestrate this closer to the start of development, problems will be revealed sooner and fixes will be quicker, easier and cheaper to implement.
Harness DevOps to streamline communication & collaboration
Developers do not work in a vacuum, and generally need to communicate and collaborate with other departments in order to bring a project to fruition.
Having an effective DevOps policy in place is a good solution to the usual hurdles which exist in this context, allowing specialist developers to convey ideas and provide progress updates to those elsewhere in the organization, as well as to third parties like clients, without being hampered by miscommunication and misunderstandings.
Indeed factoring this into the cost of building an MVP will be especially impactful for start-ups, where budgets may be tight and yet good DevOps can make a big difference to the streamlining of projects.
Opt for open source solutions
Development costs can rise rapidly if you are reliant on the use of licensed software packages that require significant fees to be paid on a regular basis.
The affordable alternative is to leverage open source equivalents which do not have any costs to cover. This may not be ideal in the long term, but it is a worthwhile step for smaller development teams that want to maximize their effectiveness without tearing through a limited budget too quickly.
Assess the market accurately
Arguably the most important part of the software development process is market research, and like testing this is something which should be relied upon from the earliest stages if at all possible.
This is not just about looking into what competitors in the same space are doing, but also about establishing the needs of prospective users and extrapolating actionable insights from this, so that the end product is more likely to strike a chord and connect with customers.
This research will also let you work out whether your project is moving in the right direction, or if it is perhaps following a dead end path, so that course corrections can be made if necessary.
Finally, remember that there are no real shortcuts, and that sometimes spending more early on will result in savings in the long run.
