Software Development, either as a team or individually, always has an underlying question as to how team efficiency and work productivity can be improved.
Having a close-knit team of ingenious professionals is half the thing, as there stands a massive question as to how productivity can be enhanced? Being able to accentuate your productivity will permit you to stay focused on your objectives and finish the project deliverables in a timely fashion.
In the fast-paced software industry, the paramount key to success lies within the judicious planning and preparation of your work. And there are several factors that need to address in order to achieve optimal outcomes.
Here are the top 5 tips to help you make your next software development project a mega success.
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Clear work environment
Having a distraction-free, positive and healthy work environment is essential to improving productivity at work. By clear work environment, we mean much more than just clearing up your tangible resources and assets.
Keep your bay clutter-free, unsubscribe from those unwanted marketing emails gorging over space in your inbox, and ensure you turn off or mute all those social media notifications while you’re at work. Block up specifically tempting websites while in the office also does make sense.
In today’s age of digital media, the web is full of distractions that constantly bombard you. These distractions can be divided into 2 main categories: distractions from outside sources, and that from ourselves.
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Wearing earphones at work may help you avoid getting distracted by colleagues. A continual workflow is far more productive.
There’s even a handy plugin for Google Chrome that blocks specific websites like Facebook and just allows you to access a few selected websites for a few hours. Such tools can truly help you stay focused while in the office and thus, get more productivity.
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Manage your priorities effectively
Improving your planning and documentation, and making sure everything is prioritized and up-to-date will offer great assistance in your development process.
If a team member needs to be notified regarding the highest priority tasks of the day, having a set platform for all plans and documentation will ensure everyone is on the same page.
We are now in an ‘app age’ and there are several handy and effective apps available for Desktop PCs as well as mobile devices that can help you collaborate effectively with your team, ensure all tasks are managed as per their priority, and that the reporting is seamless and intuitive.
Asana, Slack, Any.do and Todoist is some of the tools that are top-rated in the field of project management and team collaboration.
By the end of the day at work, try making a small list of priority tasks for the next day. Highlighting just a few vital action items for the next day helps you come to work the next day with a more focused mind.
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Plan the development process
Before even your fingers touch the keyboard, you must get to the drawing board and plan out how you will be handling the task at hand. A lot of programmers devote hours on a whiteboard before getting on to the code, as it saves time in the longer run.
Determining the patterns in the first place and doing modular code will come in handy in simplifying your development process and enhancing reusability. It’s good to identify and plan out smaller functions that can help complete a task in an easy manner.
Proper planning can help developers write code that is reusable and efficient.
Devoting to planning these abstract ways will help you develop patterns and transmute problems into solutions.
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Avoid overworking yourself
Working beyond your productive point is a sheer waste of time. Crunch time is, certainly, an inevitable part of the software industry; however, it’s also the most tiring thing on one’s brain, reducing concentration and thought-process capabilities.
Fixing mistakes that you committed earlier by overworking is again multiplying your original efforts and demotivating yourself.
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Being able to switch between work and taking short breaks after a set interval of time will be immensely beneficial for your mental health and overall efficiency. It’s imperative to take physical breaks as well, along with switching to alternate tasks.
So, just make it a rule to stand up after 45 – 60 minutes to stretch your body; it will help your muscles relax and ease out.
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Go for agile development
Agile development is an alternative to a waterfall or traditional project management that is focused on being an iterative and incremental process. It is essentially an umbrella term that covers leading methodologies such as Lean Development, Scrum, and Crystal.
Agile project management methods stemmed from software industry professionals who had experienced and realized the limitations and challenges of traditional management. It delivers a lightweight framework to help teams stay focused and build a continually evolving technology landscape.
Consider using specialized software applications that are built specifically for Agile teams such as JIRA and QASymphony for managing Agile workflows, development, testing, and documentation.
The bottom line
Creating your work environment to be more efficient and productive will vastly benefit your company and services. It should be a vision for each custom software development company to spend some time daily focusing on increasing team collaboration, mutual understanding, and team efficiency.