- Software Development
- 4 Aug, 2022
- Marcia Barron
Table of Contents
In today’s brutally competitive market, creating software or an application that satisfies specific business criteria is essential for survival.
The custom software development services include creating, planning, constructing, and deploying software expressly for a single person, a select group of employees at a company, or a third-party contract known as custom software development.
What is Custom Software development?
Let’s say you or your company wants software that can satisfy its present or future needs. The entire procedure is called custom software development, after which you must proceed with specific additions or other software customizations.
The process by which a particular piece of software is envisioned, developed, released, and maintained to carry out a specific operational task is what we refer to as the custom software development process.
Steps for Custom Development to Ensure the Best Outcome
There is no one rule for any process. Especially when you are creating custom software, you will need to alter this process according to your needs. So, work accordingly, but before you plan, ensure you completely understand the business needs.
Even if you hire someone for custom software development services, you will still need to be clear about your project.
1. Identify Your Business Challenges
We all know that each organization has specific needs and demands for its working procedures. A single piece of software cannot meet the needs of any business.
As a result, each business-related problem needs a unique or specialized solution. Choose which company issues aggravate you the most before you begin to develop your own unique software program.
2. Gather All the Details & Conceptualize the Plan
Establish your high-level objectives before beginning the software’s detailed design. This might, for instance, involve simplifying existing procedures, automating laborious manual operations, or raising productivity.
Determine quantifiable indicators you may use to gauge the project’s progress concerning your top-level objectives after you’ve defined them.
It will help if you put all your ideas on the table while creating custom software. By the end of this step, concentrate on a specific plan that has been filtered via multiple sub-stages.
3. Analyze the System
System analysis is to analyze the idea of software development from the viewpoint of a business executive trying to stay away from a bad investment.
Essentially, you may use this feasibility analysis to determine the viability of your project. You need to develop other parts of the idea along with new arguments.
The majority of this phase consists of outlining the later design and development stages.
4. Watch out for the Scope
The management of a software development strategy should be mindful of scope creep because it might cause delays.
It alludes to possible changes that could occur during the course of the project if the plan was poorly written. This can occur from the beginning of the plan until the end of the development cycle.
You must concentrate on the primary objectives of the initiatives with this. Build only what the project allows.
5. Make a Realistic Plan with Set Milestones
To lead and guide the overall endeavor:
- Form a team including your engineers, subject-matter experts, and a project manager.
- Make a project road map with your coworkers.
- Make sure it’s doable; a sophisticated workflow and shipping system are impossible to develop in a week.
To keep the project on track, create milestone plans.
6. Create the Prototype or MVP
This is most significant for custom software development.
You can make your preliminary research real and determine whether your ideas are practical via a prototype or minimum viable product (MVP).
Both alternatives are for testing so that you can change your project quickly and efficiently while using fewer resources.
7. Development and Implementation
Executing the plan should be simpler and quicker once elements such as system requirements, architecture, and the wireframe are in place.
An agile development methodology that includes brief iterative sessions where each development team member communicates hiccups and concerns discovered during the process is strongly advised.
This method increases productivity and promotes the efficiency of workflows.
8. Usability Testing
The last check before developing a software application is usability testing. It entails showing your product design to a group of end consumers so they may evaluate its usability, precision, and efficacy.
By conducting it this way, you may examine your product’s use by actual customers more closely. This saves a tonne of time and work because you can rebuild any features in light of new information and only start coding after everything is perfect.
9. Keep Future Improvement in Mind
You’ve created your product and released it. There will always be room for development; therefore, it won’t be ideal.
The iterative software development approach assumes you’ll need to start with the list of prioritized items or, occasionally, even the strategy for new features.
Remember that you should consider the suggestions made by customers.
Top Mistakes to Avoid in Building a Custom Software
Learn how to use custom software development to avoid common pitfalls so that you may become an innovation leader who leads your business to long-term success.
- Adding up unnecessary complexity by creating wrong features.
- Not keeping the clients or other stakeholders in line for constant feedback.
- Deciding on all decisions without proper planning or brainstorming.
- Not leveraging off-the-shelf software solutions.
- Trying to take full control of project scope without including team.
- Denying to provide clear acceptance criteria for features.
- Concentrating too much on individual features.
Wrap up
No doubt that custom software development has several benefits. With the companies constantly evolving, they need scalable software from the start. Custom software has become essential for most firms due to the rising specialization of enterprises and the complexity of internal systems.
Always make a great plan for custom software development services. To avoid the risks, keep your questions ready for the client. If you are a client, don’t forget to ask your questions for better clarity about the process.
Marcia Barron serves as a publisher at unleast. She thrives on technologies and keeps herself updated on almost every advancement and progress in the market. She loves to pen down her thoughts on various tech domains.
Social Join To Us
Write for us
Top companies
Table of Contents
Can you imagine your life without softwares?
It wouldn’t be an overstatement if we said that the modern human is more dependent on software than anything else today. The software industry not only employs millions of people worldwide; it also provides solutions to every other industry on the planet. Whether it is oil exploration or manufacturing or tourism or finance, softwares have made lives more comfortable, processes more efficient and businesses more productive.
The thing is that today for every business function like production, marketing, customer relationship management or accounting, you have multiple softwares. People are spoilt for choices when it comes to softwares. As so many people are vying for a place in your desktop/laptop system, you will need to pay attention to the software quality. It is because you do not want a low-quality software system running the show when it comes to business. A low-quality software system can seriously affect your revenues.
What is Software Quality?
Before we move further let us clear the air on the fundamental question, so what is software quality.
The most simplistic parameter of software quality would be that if the software functions as intended, then we can say that it is of high quality. If parameters of software match with the wants of the user, the software is considered to be of high quality.
What are the factors that affect software quality?
The following factors have an overbearing effect on software quality.
Good UI/UX
Well, designed software will attract the users and make it easy for them to navigate through it. The elegant design will make the software a charm to use for the users, and they will derive more benefit out of software which they like to use as opposed to one they don’t.
Reliability
The software should be reliable, meaning that it should function without any hiccups. The software which hangs is not able to return the desired data or breaks down frequently is of no use.
Versatility
Versatility means that the software should be able to perform on all platforms and devices. Versatile software will help your team in this digitally connected world. If the software performs well on desktops and is unable to perform well on tablets, then it can create problems for people who are on the move.
Easy to maintain
With time and (updates!), bugs start appearing in every software. A high-quality software should be easy to maintain, meaning that the bugs should be solved quickly as and when they appear.
Why does good software quality matter?
Remember the year 2000? Apart from the fact that it was the year when the millennium changed, 2000 was also the year when the virus Y2K raised its ugly head. The bug terrorized the world and exposed vulnerabilities in softwares all over the world.
Does the name Arianne 5 ring some bells? Well if you are a space enthusiast, then it would certainly do. It is the rocket that was developed by the European space agency, a rocket whose life was short-lived 1 minute to be exact. Due to an internal error in the software, Arianne 5 exploded mid-air just 60 seconds later it took flight blowing up ten years worth of hard work with it.
What a small bug in the software can do!
These examples depict the importance of having high-quality software. Because software is the brain that runs an organization and you do not want a faulty brain running yours, do you?
The thing with quality in software is that the cost of low-quality software is not accounted for and budget cuts in software seldom have unfavourable consequences in the long-term.
Bad quality software can ruin your reputation in the market, expose your systems to hackers, resulting in lost business due to complaints and returns, and could even lead to lawsuits.
As consumers, you might have faced the ill effects of low quality in software, like in banking transactions, ticket purchases and so on. Due to bad software, the response times are pretty long leading to an unprecedented loss of time and money.
Software Quality Standards you need to know.
The quality standards that your software vendor follows should be one of the core criteria for selecting your software development company.
Mentioned below are some major quality standards.
There are five standards within the ISO/IEC 29119 international software testing standard:
- ISO/IEC 29119-1: This is a standard that deals with the concepts and definitions of software.
- ISO/IEC 29119-2: This standard deals with the processes of testing in software.
- ISO/IEC 29119-3: This is a standard that deals with test documentation.
- ISO/IEC 29119-4: This Standard deals with the techniques and strategies used in software testing
- ISO/IEC 29119-5: This standard deals with keyword-based software testing
ISO/IEC 9126
This ISO standard deals with the following key aspects to determine the quality of a software application −
- Defining External metrics and internal metrics
- Quality standards used in metrics
ISO/IEC 25000:2005:
It is a standard that replaces the old ISO-9126 and ISO-14598 standards and helps in setting the guidelines for software quality requirements and evaluation(SQuaRE).
SQuaRE is further divided into sub-parts like
- ISO 2500n − This is the Quality Management Division
- ISO 2501n − This one pertains with the Quality Model Division
- ISO 2502n − The Quality Measurement Division
- ISO 2503n − This standard details the Quality Requirements
- ISO 2504n − This one is concerned with the Quality Evaluation of software
The following are the main contents of SQuaRE.
- It covers the Terms and definitions used for the product.
- It clarifies the Reference Models used for development.
- It acts as a general guide for the users.
- It covers all standards related to Requirement Engineering (i.e. specification, planning, measurement, and evaluation process)
ISO/IEC 12119
It is a standard that is related to software packages. It details the instructions on how one should test a software package. The following are the main things that the standard covers.
- Establishing the requirements for software packages.
- It guides the testers by providing detailed instructions for testing a delivered software package against the specified requirements.
IEEE- Standard for Software Test
IEEE(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has defined a set of standards for testing any software.
- IEEE 829: This IEEE Standard defines the format of preparing the software testing documentation.
- IEEE 1061: This is a standard that defines the process to be followed for identifying and validating various software quality metrics.
- IEEE 1059: This standard pertains to software verification and validation.
The final test
Quality plays a significant role in software development. In simple terms, quality ensures that the software works as nobody will buy software that does not work. The software developers should ensure that quality is maintained in every step of software development.
By using the practices and methods and by following the laid down standards stringently, you will be able to ensure that the end product is of top quality. The quality standards will also aid your software developers in improving their level of productivity.
Hire top custom software development companies to ensure that your software is built, keeping in mind the highest quality standards. Our analysts on various quality parameters vet these companies, and we can assure you that if you choose to work with a company from this list, then you will be proud of your decision in the future.