Software Development Process Improvement: The Time is Now

For far too long, the general demeanor for software development lifecycle (SDLC) process improvement initiatives has been something like, “We are too busy – we can’t do a project like this now.”

But meanwhile, as the industry has been stalling on process improvement attempts:

• Applications have become more complex
• Industries have become more regulated
• The financial risks associated with software failure have increased
• The budgets for software development have decreased

With companies now expecting more from fewer resources, software development process improvement has become a must have.

Policy-Driven Development

One proven way to make such process improvement a reality — even within the constraints of today’s environment — is Policy-Driven Development. Policy-Driven Development helps organizations rapidly establish, manage, and sustain development processes that are truly optimized for efficiency.

Policy-Driven Development is NOT a methodology.  It is a continuous process improvement approach that complements any software development methodology from Agile, to hybrid, to strict waterfall. Actionable and measurable policies are adopted in order to incrementally improve the process of developing software — increasing productivity and reducing the inherent risks associated with applied technology. 

Software Development Management

Years ago, we adopted this approach at Parasoft for our own development efforts, and experienced such successful results that we decided to develop a product that helped other organizations adopt similar approaches. The result is Parasoft DTP (originally called “Concerto” when it first came out), a complete Software Development Management (SDM) platform that ensures quality software can be produced consistently and efficiently, in any language.

Although I’m the CEO of Parasoft, I also run the global development team. I use Parasoft DTP’s objective, quantitative analysis of my software development processes to determine in real-time:

• Will I be on time?
• Will I be on budget?
• Will I get the correct functionality?
• Will the application work as expected?

Answers to these questions are critical — it’s shocking we ever operated without answers to them.

In the next few posts, I’ll highlight how SDM solutions like Parasoft DTP help organizations optimize their software development processes to improve quality and efficiency, even as they are rapidly evolving their applications in response to constantly-changing business needs.

Learn more:

• What is DTP and why is it so powerful?
• Put the agility back into agile development with Change-Based Testing