How to Create Software
Key Tasks, Roles, Cost Factors
Delivering software development services since 1989 and practicing iterative Agile software delivery since 2007, ScienceSoft helps efficiently plan and build software products.
How to Develop Your Own Software Product: Summary
A development process for new software includes software ideation, planning, designing architecture, UX and UI, coding, testing, and deployment. When creating the lean working version (MVP) first, this process can take just 2–6 months.
A software development project team requires a project manager, a business analyst, UX and UI designers, front-end and back-end developers, QA and DevOps engineers. Depending on the project’s nature, additional talents can be required, e.g., data scientists, 3D designers.
In software product development since 1989, ScienceSoft helps design and build successful software products quickly and cost-efficiently.
Software Development Process Step by Step
Below are described the typical steps we at ScienceSoft take to complete application development projects. Some of the tasks can be skipped when you choose to develop an MVP. Also, different development methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, V-model, etc.) handle these tasks differently – they can be performed iteratively in parallel, or linearly.
1.
Productize the idea
- Conducting competition analysis (competitors’ product features, pricing & monetization models, customer feedback analysis, customer acquisition strategy analysis, product efficiencies and drawbacks).
- Identifying the target audience, understanding and analyzing their wants and needs, creating a software product concept.
- Defining product differentiation and formulating a unique selling proposition (USP).
- Defining customer acquisition, conversion, and retention strategies.
- Defining the software monetization model.
- Describing obstacles that can hinder entering a given market or industry sectors (including regulatory barriers) and suggesting how to address them.
2.
Prepare a project plan
- Defining and prioritizing detailed software features.
- Creating a software requirements specification.
- High-level software design:
- App type/types (mobile, web, desktop).
- Describing a list of software modules to build and specifying what functionality area each module covers and how the modules should interact.
- Describing data and process flows between the target software and other existing software, planning integrations.
- Creating the software development project roadmap with major milestones.
- Drawing up a business case: conducting cost-benefit analysis, calculating NVP, ROI.
Best practice: We start with planning and delivering an MVP and then proceeding with rapid, incremental software evolution based on the frequent feedback from product managers, users, etc.
3.
Design UX
- Conducting UX research to understand the mental models of the target audience.
- Describing how a user will interact with the software product (e.g., what system response the user gets upon different actions).
- Creating wireframes that demonstrate basic functionality and content layout on each screen.
- Combining wireframes into a dynamic UX prototype of the application.
- Performing the prototype user testing.
4.
Design UI
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Deciding on the appearance of user-facing software parts (choosing a color scheme, icons for the buttons, menus, tabs and screen layouts of the application’s GUI).
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Transforming software prototypes into full-color graphic interface mockups.
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Creating a UI kit for the quick development of user interfaces.
We recommend our clients to invest in the unique UI design only if the design is a competitive software product advantage. Otherwise, we opt for default themes and focus on software functionality.
Best practice: At ScienceSoft, we usually take time to plan and ensure user interface consistency in different browsers, mobile versions on different screen sizes, and mobile applications on different operating systems.
5.
Architect the software
- Detailed description of how functional modules of future software should work at the code level.
- Detailed database design.
- Defining integration approaches (point-to-point, middleware-based, iPaaS, etc.) between the different functionality modules.
- Choosing the technology stack for the future software back end and front end.
6.
Code the solution
- Establishing development and delivery automation environments (CI/CD, container orchestration, etc.).
- Writing server-side code and APIs.
- Turning static user interface mockups provided by UI designers into the fully functional GUI.
- Conducting unit testing and static code analysis (by developers).
How to build software faster and at a lower cost?
- Choose the technology platform (it will include a programming language and frameworks, architecture patterns, APIs, and more) based on a careful preliminary analysis of options. The development speed may differ 2 – 20 times.
- Use cloud services (messaging services, analytics and AI services, image processing services, etc.) by well-established cloud providers, e.g., Azure and AWS.
- Use trusted open-source tools and APIs.
7.
Run rigorous testing
- Creating a test plan with a testing scope, test types addressing all functional and non-functional software requirements, reporting procedures, etc.
- Creating test cases and checklists.
- Writing and running automated test scripts (API and UI tests).
- Carrying out functionality, performance, security, integration testing.
- Fixing bugs detected by testing.
8.
Set the ready solution live
- Deploying software in the production environment.
- (often for B2B products) On-site user training sessions.
- Fixing bugs that users discover.
- Planning improvements and new features to be added based on user feedback, product manager input, market trends, marketing strategy, etc.
Note: In iterative development models, all the described tasks will be cycled in 2-week – 6-month releases of new functionality.
Best practice: For our clients with B2B startup, we take time to plan and organize exceptional user support. It's important to get ready to anticipate customer challenges and questions regarding software setup and operations, proactively provide solutions to potential issues, show how users can achieve max value while using your product.
Software Development Services by ScienceSoft
In software product development since 1989, ScienceSoft knows well how to plan and deliver effective, selling software products. Our service offering includes:
Software development consulting
- Software requirements specification.
- A PoC.
- MVP/software architecture design.
- Advice on advanced techs (AI/ML, AR/VR, etc.).
- Security and compliance planning.
- A detailed implementation roadmap.
- Communication with vendors, an RFP, continuous project quality management.
Product consulting
- Competition analysis.
- Solution conceptualization.
- Defining product differentiation and a unique selling proposition.
- Brand health check report.
- Rebranding insights, if needed.
- Visual identity recommendations.
- UX and UI design.
End-to-end software development
- Product idea conceptualization and feature management.
- Software UX and UI design.
- MVP/software development in compliance with industry standards and regulations (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FIPS, COPPA, etc.).
- Testing and QA.
- Integrations with third-party systems.
- MVP/software launch and support.
Why Choose ScienceSoft to Deliver Your Software Product?
- Full-service software development company.
- 750+ experts onboard, including project managers, business analysts, architects, developers, data scientists, QA, security, DevOps, and support engineers.
- Over 3,600 success stories (including projects for Viber, eBay, MTV).
- 4.8 rating on Clutch.com.
- Mature quality management, backed by ISO 9001.
- Robust data security management, supported by ISO 27001.
- Competencies in advanced techs like IoT, big data, AI/ML, AR/VR, blockchain, image analysis, etc.
- Expertise in 30+ industries, including healthcare, banking, manufacturing, marketing, etc.
- For the second straight year, ScienceSoft USA Corporation is listed among The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies by the Financial Times.
Benefits of Software Development with ScienceSoft
Minimum time to market
Code-based MVP will be ready for users in ~ 2-6 months, which allows you to roll out your product fast and stay ahead of the competition.
Fast releases
With Agile development, CI/CD pipeline, DevOps approach, and a balanced mix of manual and automated testing, our teams deploy major releases every 2-3 weeks.
Optimal development costs
The usage of scalable cloud-native architectures, ready-made components (frameworks, platforms, and services), and public APIs allows us to reduce software development efforts and costs.
Access to advanced techs
We can enrich your software product with AI, VR, data science, IoT, and more.
Strong data security
ScienceSoft starts cooperation with signing NDA (already at the initial negotiation stage if needed) to guarantee the confidentiality of your information. We ScienceSoft create a protected environment (including DevSecOps practices and tools) for data processing and storage. Our security practices are approved by the ISO 27001 certificate.
Compliance
Our solutions are fully compliant with industry and legal requirements (HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR, etc.).
Key Roles in Our Software Development Teams
Project Manager
- Creating a project plan with milestones and deliverables.
- Keeping the project on schedule and within the scope and budget.
- Facilitating and coordinating communication between all team members.
- Creating a risk management plan.
Business Analyst
- Eliciting wants and needs of future software users.
- Translating user wants and needs into functional and non-functional software requirements.
UX designer (focuses on usability)
- Performing UX research.
- Designing the interactions users will have with a software product.
- Designing the information architecture.
- Conducting usability testing.
UI designer (focuses on aesthetics)
- Creating the style of user-facing software interfaces.
- Creating a UI kit for user interface development.
Back-end developer
- Writing back-end code and APIs.
- Performing unit tests.
Front-end developer
- Creating a software representation level: everything that the user sees on the screen.
Quality assurance engineer
- Designing a test strategy and plan.
- Selecting test tools.
- Designing, developing, and maintaining tests.
- Implementing, documenting, and improving the testing process.
- Tracking test results, finding and reporting bugs.
DevOps engineer
- Managing software servers.
- Incorporating an infrastructure-as-code approach.
- Software containerization and container orchestration.
- Establishing CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment.
- Selecting and configuring tools to execute daily software monitoring.
Sourcing Models for Software Product Development
The entire software development process is in-house
Pros:
- Direct supervision over the development process and team productivity.
Cons:
- High costs.
- Prolonged software development project start.
- All hiring and managerial efforts are on your side.
A mix of an in-house team and outsourced consultancy
Pros:
- Outsourced consultancy provides expert project guidance, mentors through the most challenging activities, and closes up the gaps in specific tech skills.
- In-house team can perform specific tailored, more interesting tasks to grow their expertise in a certain field (developing unique algorithms, improving software performance), while outsourced developers handle routine activities.
- Tasks that require exceptional security can be performed within the in-house network and infrastructure.
Cons:
- Risks related to vendor selection.
- It requires time and experience to establish smooth collaboration and communication between the in-house and consultancy teams.
- Project team coordination, the concerns about quick and quality delivery, risk management are partially/totally on your side.
Full software development is outsourced
Pros:
- Established software design and development processes, software development project management.
- A vendor assumes full responsibility for the team arrangement and management, quality of the project deliverables and related risk management.
Cons:
- High vendor risks.
Software Development Costs
Major cost factors:
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Preliminary costs
~ $100,000+
Software product MVP development.
~ $200,000+
Full-scale software product development from scratch.
Core Techs and Architecture Patterns ScienceSoft Uses
At ScienceSoft, we use cloud development and infrastructure services to deliver the majority of modern software products. Quality managed services, the pay-as-you-go model, and multiple ready-to-use components (messaging, service discovery, AI, AR/VR, IoT, data science, and more) offered by cloud providers can help create software faster and optimize its cost.
About ScienceSoft
A 34-year provider of software development services headquartered in the US, ScienceSoft helps both startups and mature software product companies worldwide envision competitive and selling software products, cost-efficiently launch an MVP in 2–6 months and confidently grow it to a full-blown quality product.