Best Practices for Developing Software Solutions

Implementing best practices while developing any software is a necessary phase of the software development process. Whether you need software solutions that are small or complex, using software development best practices will streamline the development process.

Many software is developed with the help of outdated techniques. These projects will sooner or later require updates. So, when someone else is appointed to take care of your existing software, they can easily maintain it, if the project is developed using best practices.

Here, we will see some primary best practices for unique software development or other project development. Implementing these practices for development will contribute to making your software according to proper standards. Let’s begin then!

Why are software development best practices essential to implement?

Here are 5 major reasons to implement best practices while developing any software:

• It helps developers to minimize the errors in the project
• Customers get delivered with high-quality projects
• Cost-effective software development
• On-time delivery of the project
• Enhanced security of the software

There are many reasons other than those mentioned above that signal towards using best practices for software development. So, let’s move forward and learn more about some important best practices for software development.

1# Keep the code simple and easy to understand

Simple and organized is the new key. The simpler and more structured the code, the easier it gets to manage it. Simplicity in your code will definitely reduce the project’s complexity.

There are two different techniques that will help you in making the code simple and easy. DRY and YAGNI are the two important techniques that one can follow for easy code writing.

DRY means Don’t Repeat Yourself. You should avoid duplication in the code that has specific functionalities and appears only once in the app. However, code duplication is acceptable up to a certain limit. So, don’t worry that each line of code should be unique.

YAGNI means You Ain’t Gonna Need It. Following this technique, you should avoid writing code you do not need now. When needed in the future, you can keep the code handy. So, that decreases the load time of the code at that time.

2# Define the requirements clearly

Software development process can be different. But this best practice is a must to follow for every team member while developing a project. One such best practice is to prepare a software requirement specification document (SRSD); which has details regarding the software design specifications based on the requirements of that project.

SRSD of the project should include the following details in it to make the requirements clear for developers:

• Software design
• Decisions
• Design diagrams
• Constraint, if any

If the SRSD is made clear and up to the mark, then each team member can clearly find their tasks. Also, the project demands are made 100% clear when a proper SRSD is made.

3# Work in a team and not alone

There was a time when developers used to handle everything independently. But the time has changed now. Managing different things alone can be really hard. Instead having a whole team working on developing a single project is quite easy.

Following this best practice can ultimately help the developers to focus on the core development of the software; while other team members will look after their allocated tasks. Front-end development will be managed by front-end developers, similarly to back-end, while the management is done by the project manager and team.

It’s like a complex business cannot be successful without a whole team working behind it, similarly, successful software development also requires a whole team to work tirelessly for designing, development, testing, and maintenance process.

4# Have a backup plan

Changing and experimenting the things as you proceed forward with the project is a good way to develop your project. Sometimes it may happen that experimenting can take your code in the wrong direction. So, keep a backup plan ready for this situation.

To avoid such circumstances, one has to commit to their work regularly and more often. This practice will help you rewind to the place where your code worked perfectly fine.

This best practice is widely not appreciated well until developers feel that it was too late to not follow this practice. If you do not perform ‘commit’, you will definitely sometimes lose your days or months of coding output in just one go. So, try to implement this best practice and always have a working backup of your software.

5# Version Control

Version Control is the best practice that is implemented for managing and tracking the changes happening in the software code. It is very crucial to follow version control when a team of developers is coding on similar software.

With version control best practices, new bug fixes and features can be done simultaneously. And the chances of developers working on someone else’s code also minimizes. Tools for version control allow you to fetch previous versions if huge mistakes happen in the new version.

Git and GitHub are some of the most popular version control systems that are web-based hosting services. GitHub pulls various requests to enhance version control. Other version control tools are SVN, CVS, Mercurial, etc.

6# Stick to Proper Naming Conventions

There are certain best practices to follow while naming different functions, variables, types, and entities in the source code of your software. It might happen that developers use extra abbreviations, letters, skipping underscores, funny names, etc., but this costs you extra effort and time in the future.

Accurate naming gives accurate information about the function, variable, etc. It allows you to easily enhance readability. Even if someone else reads your code, they can also understand what function is supposed to do in the code. If you own complex software, it may be hard to look for a misnamed function or variable in the code and it will unnecessarily waste resources.

7# Conduct a strong code review

Code reviewing is a procedure where developers’ software code is further examined by some other developer. It enhances the overall quality of the code, identifies bugs, and also minimizes the work required for code optimization in the future.

Analyzing the code takes more time and the time required depends on the project size; it’s the only downside of this practice. However, it is worth it to implement this best practice, as this can not be performed using a program or a tool. Developers need to follow this practice for easy code optimization.

The software solutions team of developers should also check:

• Naming conventions
• Design
• Styling
• Fulfilled requirements
• Test app and coverage
• Optimization

8# Do not add too many features

Adding too many features that are mostly unwanted can make your software look too heavy to use. Users might not find it attractive to use your project and ultimately it will cause you a great loss. Instead, you should work on balancing the features of the software with refactoring. Refactoring any code is an essential part of the software dev process.

When the software becomes complex and bigger, features may change, models and libraries may get outdated, and code has to evolve. These are some potential issues that need to be monitored or it may cause huge technical debt for the business. Hence, developers need to keep minimal features in the beginning and increase them as and when needed. This practice will make the development process smooth and easy to carry out in the present and future as well.

Concluding Words

These are eight software development best practices that are a must to follow while developing any business software. These practices make development easier and quicker. Also, the code is made future-proof; even if any other person updates or works on your software in the future then they can easily understand what is the actual function of the code.

There are many best practices for implementation, we might discuss them in another article. However, if you are having any queries regarding this article, let us know in the comment section. To learn more about such amazing best practices, keep in touch with us, and happy reading!