Quinoa Salad And Other Ways To Choose The Right Software Development Process

Innovation Quinoa Salad And Other Ways To Choose The Right Software Development Process Sterling Lanier Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Sep 30, 2022, 07:45am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Sterling Lanier is the CEO of TurnKey , which helps startups build and scale dedicated offshore software development teams.

getty Every startup or high-growth company faces a critical choice: Should they include quinoa salad in the free lunch for the staff or not? Then, with this decision in hand, they move on to easier questions like which software development process to use. Unlike the heated debate about quinoa, almost every tech aficionado agrees that an agile methodology is pretty much the only option on the table. This is because unlike its predecessor—called “waterfall”—agile breaks up the software development cycle into separate and more frequent releases of deliverables.

This allows you to collect real-time feedback as you go and course correct whenever needed. Waterfall development, by contrast, means the engineering team builds a monolith that releases in one big bang, raising the risk that you spend years of development time only to have the product be dead on arrival due to changes in the market or customer needs (or just bad code that’s accumulated over time). You don’t need to be a lifeguard to realize that playing in waterfalls comes with a high chance of drowning.

Instead, the real process pickle when it comes to software development relates to what steps to include within your agile methodology. And here’s what separates the quinoa from the plain rice: Great software development teams have a process that focuses on the “what” and the “when” and not just the “why. ” MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event Say what? Let’s break it down.

There are three key elements that every software development process should include (but most don’t): Step One: What features should we build? High-performing product development teams work closely with their customer-facing colleagues to understand which new features have the best prospect of resonating with their core audience. Doing so ensures that the development team doesn’t have a “build it and they will come” approach, which has been a historical (and occasionally justified) knock on software developers writ large. Step Two: When should we build these features? After the proposed features have been stack ranked based on how much value they potentially bring to the customer, the best software development teams then filter this list based on the complexity of the build and the resources needed to complete each feature.

In a perfect world, development teams would have unlimited time and unlimited money—and quinoa salad would taste like ice cream—but alas, neither are true. So, this stage helps you determine which features can be built that will have the biggest impact. Step Three: How should we build these features in the most efficient way? This is, unfortunately, where most development teams start (ugh).

But it really should be the last stage in the process rather than the first; only after you’ve completed the hard work of vetting and assessing all proposed functionality should you start putting code into the database. The main activity in this step is to craft a thoughtful plan that outlines scrum cycles and key milestones and aligns the relevant team members around a common goal. And then you give all your developers a pony keg of coffee and gently tiptoe out of the virtual room.

Ok, let’s say it one more time in case you were skimming this article (how dare you!): The biggest error that most software development teams make is not spending serious time and energy on the first two steps of understanding what to build and when to build it. And if you’re on the fence about whether you’re buying what I’m conceptually selling, ask yourself one simple question: Have you ever heard of a startup or high-growth company that failed because it couldn’t deliver its software in time? Except for the rarest of examples, the answer is a resounding no. Instead, startups fail when they deliver a product that no one wants.

Or, as translated into boring Silicon Valley jargon, they fail when they don’t achieve product-market fit. This is why the first two steps of the software development process are so important. Skip these and you may end up building a digital bridge to nowhere—and soon you won’t even have free quinoa salad to complain about.

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