I was curious. What does it take exactly to get a product up and running and see it through when it needs some oiling or needs to be boxed up condemned to be in the attic forever? So, I did a lot of needling around and found that I just needed four things to align themselves one behind the other and I have a straight line to product success. I don’t want to get into the argument about whether a straight line is often the shortest distance between two places. But for the sake of this argument, let’s say Yes.
My blog is not going to take you through a certain way of developing great products, it is going to be talking about how to create a way of working that will ultimately result in a great product, it is going to be telling you about why you need to understand what Modern Software Engineering really is.
Four stages in the Modern Software Development Process
Modern software engineering essentially is combining all the latest technologies together with your traditional set of software development practices to finally realize your dream of a successful product.
Stage 1: Going from Idea to MVP
I have already spoken about Turning your ideas into reality in another blog, to make things easier we even got a video out there (to tell you what I spent all week writing in the shortest and most acceptable form of art).
But let me all the same take another crack at it. Modern software development is all about taking your idea, getting a nice, trusted team to listen to it, then waiting – as the team totally transforms your requirements by brainstorming, coding it, and then testing it, and finally delivering a great product that satisfies all your customers.
An MVP is the halfway mark where you have walking talking product, but it can’t stand on its own yet, it needs to be more concrete. It’s just a taste test after all you see.
Stage 2: Building with Product Engineering
So out of your idea phase and into the building phase. This is where you will have to do a lot of design thinking, use all the latest technologies to come up with a product maintaining the customer satisfaction quotient you had when you started Round 1.
Your team needs to have the right set of competencies in analytics, have technology roots that go deeper than Google servers that are underwater, have a rich domain expertise, and should be able to research on the unknowns and tell you all that you may encounter even if you think you won’t. No, I am not talking tarot cards here.
So as far as the product engineering part of Modern software development is concerned, it is going to take your team to be familiar with using tools like Microservices, REST/GraphQL, make visualizations richer with data engineering, innovate using technologies like Blockchain, and make work easier through automation.
Stage 3: Testing with Quality and Reliability Engineering
All the coding is done, some analysis is underway, your testing team speaks the language and has good knowledge on the technical stacks – you are sorted so far.
Getting a quality engineering service done for your product will only quicken your test activities, reduce all the efforts that goes into an otherwise chaotic time, improve the coverage of tests, and seal your pockets so no penny falls out.
How is reliability engineering different then? Simply put, it is going to be looking for ways to make your application or product perfomant, functional, give out that exceptional user experience you are targeting for, and at the same help you scale.
I do know all this sounds like I am pitching our services but the angel in me says No, I only want you to be aware of what you need to do for your product to reach unimaginable heights.
Stage 4: Revamping with Product Modernization and Maintenance
No matter how fast your vehicle runs, it needs a service station after it completes 5000 miles. So, your product needs to go under the scanner if not the hammer, it will need some oiling – architectural changes, flashy designs, intuitive UI to get your old customers to take another look and new ones to smile about.
Modern software engineering rates product modernization with equal points as it does to product engineering because this stage if not anything else is a re-engineering of sorts to empower you to run farther and faster with your 2.0 version. What it involves is everything from migrating to the cloud, to technology or infrastructure modernization, to product customization, or even workflow automation.
The hammer that I was talking about, kind of your own Mjölnir, the Product maintenance hammer, is for all those times when you see minimizing failures as pivotal, when consistency in performance matters, when you definitely feel like an upgrade would make it all good.
Product maintenance is all about making those minor enhancements – preventive, corrective, adaptive, or perfective ones. Having the right team that can offer you the right kind of L1, L2, or L3 support or the not so pleasant end of product life support can go a long way in being true to the purpose of creating your product in the first place.
In all of this it is hard to know how to manage time, how long will each activity need, when should you stop making those minor tweaks in your codes, when to take a different path, this is what Modern Software engineering is all about – getting you to care for not only your application or product but also along the way thinking for and on behalf of your customers.
Do write to us in case you have queries about our services.
