Employee Blog Layout Perfect Software Delivery

In the software industry, there is always the pressure of delivery. ‘Ship out faster than perfect’ they say.

Companies are often in the search for improving their workflow and task management to make the process and deliveries efficient. This is one of the reasons that we see evolution in project management tools and techniques all these years. While there is continuous improvement, the perennial question that often pops into any founder’s mind is

Now, quality is something one cannot forget and speed cannot be forever increased. After all, you cannot just add people and get more work done. The answer to this paradigm eventually lies in the balancing of the three factors. Ideal software practice would keep the quality high with optimal speed and would save costs by removing waste and rework. This is what I consider the perfect software delivery.

The problem is that software is built under such an agile environment with continuous feedback and changes in priority that a 100% predictable process is next to impossible. The changes are inescapable too as companies move closer to user feedback as they build and users always surprise.

Thus, the same plan cannot work every time. There will always be sudden demands as the company gathers feedback. Hence, priorities would change, and architecture may change and even the tech stack could be required to change.

Bringing predictability to software delivery cannot be solved like one solution to complete software development but is more like fixing the smaller components to make the individual sprints be delivered on time and with expected quality. These smaller improvisations can then add up to form a process that makes software delivery predictable.

In fact, the predictability of software delivery isn’t limited to the delivery of software at all. It is based on a variety of factors such as

• The time it takes to change the status of an update i.e. from its starting to its completion
• The average time taken to fix a certain bug
• The failure rate of a certain process
• The frequency of deployment
• All these factors contribute to the predictability of software. With all of the above in mind, let’s dive into further understanding of what derails project delivery and how to fix it.

What Derails Software Delivery?

Now, quality is something one cannot forget and speed cannot be forever increased. After all, you cannot just add people and get more work done. The answer to this paradigm eventually lies in the balancing of the three factors. Ideal software practice would keep the quality high with optimal speed and would save costs by removing waste and rework. This is what I consider the perfect software delivery.

The problem is that software is built under such an agile environment with continuous feedback and changes in priority that a 100% predictable process is next to impossible. The changes are inescapable too as companies move closer to user feedback as they build and users always surprise.

Thus, the same plan cannot work every time. There will always be sudden demands as the company gathers feedback. Hence, priorities would change, and architecture may change and even the tech stack could be required to change.

Bringing predictability to software delivery cannot be solved like one solution to complete software development but is more like fixing the smaller components to make the individual sprints be delivered on time and with expected quality. These smaller improvisations can then add up to form a process that makes software delivery predictable.

In fact, the predictability of software delivery isn’t limited to the delivery of software at all. It is based on a variety of factors such as

• The time it takes to change the status of an update i.e. from its starting to its completion
• The average time taken to fix a certain bug
• The failure rate of a certain process
• The frequency of deployment
• All these factors contribute to the predictability of software. With all of the above in mind, let’s dive into further understanding of what derails project delivery and how to fix it.