Software Development – Several billion euros in budgets spent, several million developers worldwide, ever more innovative technologies, increased user and customer expectation. With less time and less budget.
Software development refers to the entire process consisting in building any reliable and efficient computer applications and goes from the study of the customer’s need, through the design the implementation, to the maintenance of the application. These various stages are possible thanks to a specific computer language or rather thanks to several languages. And to developers mastering these languages.
Table of Contents
The Different Steps
To designate the different stages of software development, from its conception to its end of life, we speak of the ” software life cycle . ”
This life cycle is a set of phases of software development, in particular:
- Customer needs analysis,
- Choice of architecture and technologies,
- Development related to data storage and manipulation
- Development of specific business code and associated services
- User interfaces
- Integration of developments
- Interoperability with an existing one
- Securing the code
- Tests (unitary, integration, ramp-ups)
- Correction of detected faults,
- Documentation
There is a multitude of answers to each of these aspects: business modeling, application architecture, coding of each layer (and choice of the number of layers for an optimal division), X or Y implementation technology, automation but also agile methodologies and DevOps approaches , team management… Choosing the right combination of responses for a project is a real challenge and will have an influence on its chances of success.
Current Trends
The internetization of the whole company has forced companies to quickly adapt to the latest technologies (including social media) and to open their systems to the outside, growing from a few hundred to several million users of their application. .
In addition to the importance of user interfaces , the arrival of touch screens in the professional world and the rise of mobile devices are giving more and more importance to digitalization.
The virtualization of servers paves the way for their outsourcing and the cloud. This is the beginning of the transfer of certain applications to large data centers. Although complex, also makes it possible to absorb momentary traffic peaks without having to review its entire infrastructure.
Finally, there is a strong emergence of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence requires computing power that could, in the not-so-distant future, be limited by our current IT architectures. Quantum computing, whose supremacy seems finally proven, would it be the new stage?
Software Development Today
Software is everywhere, its size and complexity are increasing exponentially, quality requirements are increasingly drastic. Although, the software crisis that appeared in the 1970s is still not really resolved even if great progress has been made. carried out in many areas. And also, The most efficient companies sometimes get by simply with colossal human investments.
And yet, there are keys to increasing the chances of successful software development.
Two roles are particularly critical to the success of a development project: the project manager and the architect.
- The first must have real project management skills, and the human qualities to lead technical teams. However, he will need a minimum of technical respondent to be credible in the eyes of the teams. His role is distinct from that of the architect, but must rely on the latter to carry out arbitrations and forge his opinion on the quality of the developers and their commitment.
- The second is arguably the most difficult profile to find. Because the architect must be able to design the technical solution as a whole, choose the technologies or products to implement and lay down the development rules. Taking into account the continuous and rapid evolution of technologies. It is a real challenge to find the optimal mix allowing to optimize the equation of the project. In addition, before buying a project management tool from basecamp, you may get a question that is basecamp free?
The Methods
Even as projects become more complex, as the pace of renewal and evolution of web applications accelerates. As the race against the competition is a constant battle, the company must take advantage of all methods, to gain in quality and productivity.
The fundamental methodological element is the cooperation with the functional team. This is the reason why the DevOps approach is becoming essential. Like the ability which has gradually been installed and which has today become undisputed.
Today’s tools are not yet capable of directly translating a functional need or an update of this need at the implementation level.
The Tools
The tools to carry out a development are of several natures: development tool, design tool, tests, code analysis, life cycle management, components, frameworks, code libraries, repository or software factory.
There are many benefits linked to the industrialization of developments and associated processes (industrialization of processes and generation of part of the code). We are obviously thinking of reducing deployment times and therefore the costs of development projects. The challenge is also to reduce human intervention on repetitive tasks, limit the risk of errors. And, above all, allow developers to focus on tasks with higher added value.
Software development includes multiple stages from creation, establishment of specifications, through implementation to continuous improvement. Several languages need to be mastered as well as their evolutions but also the optimization of resources and the improvement of quality. Knowing how to surround yourself with the right people is more important than ever .