Vidyut Joshi

Leader, Cloud Practitioner, Delivery & QA

Software  |  Technology

15 Best Practices to Develop Software Applications for Startups

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Developing software for an established business or organization is quite easy or not much bothersome job, but for a startup, it is a bit challenging and different thing. It is because startups have little operating experiences at one hand and high aspirations for a groundbreaking software solution at another end.

The thirst for rapid growth leads startups to investigate innovative and out-of-box software solutions that are resulting in the same patent registrations in the numbers that the big brothers or enterprises do.

These facts regarding the USA startups lead us to infer that startups are equally scrappy to have software solutions for their bespoke needs as their counterparts established businesses are.

If you are a software developer or an agency working on offshore destinations, which are famous for providing outsourcing solutions, some predictions regarding IT skills and job work scopes are encouraging.

For instance, the USA Department of Labour has released an estimation of IT skills demand. According to it, computer and information technology occupations is projected to grow 12 percent from 2018 to 2028, much faster than the average for all occupations. Besides this, Gartner has also estimated that universities and colleges in the USA are able to provide skilled talents to fill up only 30% vacancies.

Thus, the big question is that how to meet the remaining jobs or work demand. In due course, Deloitte has provided a viable solution in its surveys on IT outsourcing by estimating the potential of offshore outsourcing hubs to provide 60% demand of the USA market.

It means outsourcing hubs at offshore places have to face the software development requirements of startups greater than the established organizations. Thus, offshore software development companies need to know how to develop software for the startup businesses to assure high success rate. Here a couple of tips and tricks to do it. and fast growth.

1. Select Appropriate Software Development Framework for Startups

Software development framework determines the speed of the project, quality, and overall cost of the software. For a startup, enterprise-ready framework proves a mature choice, as

  • It provides multiple modules
  • The fast deployment with minimum time
  • It works right out of box

For instance, selection of the Angular JS is a right choice against Expresess.js framework because the latter is a mature and feature-rich platform for specific project development.

Make sure, no matter what framework you choose, but it should be scalable, multi-function, and user-friendly. These three factors will help you in creating a perfect software application for the start-up.

Hire on-demand dedicated developers of desired skill & experience.

2. Define Short Iterations with Specified Outcome for Startup Projects

If you scrum two-week sprints with specified end-results in your software development project for startups,

  • It provides project discipline
  • It assists in shaping goals
  • It rules out the possibilities of random development

According to the experienced software development company, going ahead with small iterations is the best option while developing a software application.

3. Avoid Writing of Tests at Early Stage of Startup Software Development Process

You should never consider the writing of tests at the early stage of the software development process. Why? Because…

  • At the early stage of startup software development, technical requirements are often changing as per the study in the market.
  • Startups looking for the shortest timeline
  • The statement of work becomes a dynamic document, as it tends to change as per the market demands, trends, and expectations of the end-users.

4. Select Lighter and Flexible Software Development Framework for Startups

You should always go with a framework that is lighter, easier to understand, and flexible for software development. Especially, when it is for the startup company. Why is it so? A startup has the highest chances of growth.

Your framework should allow changes easily and add features as well as functionality quickly to maintain the refactoring. In due course, heavyweight corporate frameworks, which mostly based on Java and .NET technologies prove a bottleneck. Against it, open-source PHP-based and other technologies-based lightweight frameworks prove the excellent choice.

5. Allocate Time for Refactoring in Software Development Process for Startup

Refactoring – one of the most important phases of software development. Hence. Allocate the time for refactoring to fix the issues and add features quickly. Why do you need this?

Coding errors or coding debt is a norm in startup projects because developers are always under pressure to accomplish tasks rapidly. To overcome technical debt and decrease software entropy while applying changes very often, refactoring with enough time is essential. If the project has not an operational strategy, it hardly fits in development methodology.

6. Select Cloud-based Development Server for Software Development Project for Startups

You might be thinking why are we telling you to opt for the cloud-based development server? Well because there are possibilities of,

  • The server crashes
  • The unavailability of data or real-time data updates
  • The loss of data
  • Server-related other issues when you run a local server with inferior setups and securities

To overcome these all, you must use cloud-based servers or web services for development and deployment and AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the best and affordable choice.

7. Hire the best software development agency for Startup Software Development Projects

We all know the importance of technical knowledge when it comes to development. You don’t want a newbie to ruin or compromise with your software development’s vision. Right? So, to keep the thing on track and straight to the point go for the company having experience in the software development field.

They will cost-effectively manage the server and deployment-related issues described before and end up with high ROI and the success of the project in the long term.

8. Apply Analytical Tools for Startups Software Development Projects

Whether you are running a website or dealing with software development projects, there’s one thing that you need to apply – Analytical tools.

The advantages of the various analytics software in a software development project are immense, so for the startup’s projects, it helps in

  • Tracing and tracking the behavior of end-users
  • Helps in analyzing the process of development
  • Assists in the adjustment of application to meet the requirements of end-users

9. Provide Room for User Feedback on Startups Software Products

You might have run research on the market and target audience requirements at the beginning of a software development project. However, the chances of changes are high because the market is always dynamic so software product requirements are changing rapidly.

Therefore, based on the experiences of experts, we can advise software developers for startups that they should make provision for end-users in the first version of the software to provide actual feedback.

You can offer them a set of features, interface, and other design and interaction elements with options to test in their specific scenario and can provide you feedback. You should extend your reach to listen to them and consult them for more feedback.

Thus, you will able to redesign the next version in more meaningful ways.

10. Constantly Analyze Software for Problems and Learn to Deal with It

Despite too much care, sometimes the software proves inadequate to deal effectively with a real-life scenario. If software owner and its maintenance team is active enough and constantly watching its performance in the market, they can catch the issues upfront and find out a strategy to deal with it through some temporary changes or change the application process of the software in real life.

11. Dealing with Technology Constraints

With the pace of time technologies changes and startups have to adopt the most trendy technologies and tools in the form of software to thrive in the fiercely competitive market. At present, mobiles are in trends, and even web has to be mobile-friendly.

Similarly, loT, LBS, AR, and AI like innovative technologies are gaining ground in mainstream rapidly and adopting those proves a costly affair for startups if they want to bank on such innovative technologies.

Therefore, the smart software developers find easy and affordable solutions for them or design software with room to apply it in the later stages when startup matures and can afford it.

12. Dealing with Human Resources Constraints

Many software operations and maintenance demand involvement of trained and tech-savvy staff. The present market is experiences of such human resources to deal with it. In due course, today we have AI, and machine learning technologies to aid the startups stunningly and software development team for startups should know and implement it.

For instance, for an ecommerce store, providing the live chat service round-the-clock is a daunting and demanding job. However, integration of AI-powered tools like Chatbot may prove a blessing for a startup against hiring costly human attendants.

13. Dealing with Security & Compliance Constraints

With the proliferated digitalization and penetration of the web through mobiles has posed unimagined threats to the software connected to the web or operating through a mobile network.

Therefore, attending safety and security-related threats and issues become vital for startup software development. It becomes intense more when monetary transactions involved in the app functionality and payment gateways have integrated.

Software development companies for startups must learn the security compliance prevailing on the international level as standards and should implement it. Encryption like SSL technologies must implement in appropriate software to establish trust among the end-users. Assure startups and their end-users regarding the security of info and sensitive data while integrating external services.

14. Dealing with Scaling Constraints

The success rate of startups in the USA is noteworthy. Therefore, startups grow rapidly, and their software needs changing with the pace of time. Thus, it is mandatory to accommodate software design and code to deal with the scale-up process in the near or distant future.

Moreover, some startups have seasonal businesses and their websites, mobile apps, and internal software system experiences magnitude of traffic or interaction spikes and lows. You must consider the scalability while developing software for them.

Hire dedicated team for your next web development project.

15. Dealing with Cloud Constraints

Today cloud computing is a buzz on the market, and every startup is thinking of leveraging its advantages. However, there are limitations to adopt cloud services in a broad term.

For the software development niche, the cloud is still a new thing, and it is hard to find an expert cloud architect at an affordable rate. Therefore, over dependencies on the cloud and its offerings may prove impractical as well as costly affair for startups with limited budget and resources.

If startups need cloud services, defining server, storage, and data handling policies for them prove a big challenge for the software developer to manage the constraints.

Conclusion

At the end of 15 tips on developing a software application for startups, we would like to say only one thing – Always consider quality, rather than quantity. We hope this article helped you in getting the right direction. Also, go with the Perception System. It is a custom software development company providing fruitful and efficient solutions to all your problems.