Your developers shouldn't be struggling to get their work done. Help them improve with these suggestions.
You may not know this, but software development can be very challenging. Not only are software engineers tasked with creating the tools your entire business depends on, but they also sometimes have to do so under the stress of impossible deadlines. And no matter how many developers you hire, the projects they work on will continue to grow exponentially.
This means the pressure will increase. And as demand grows, so does your need for expansion. As this need increases, you will put these developers under even more pressure. When this possibility becomes a reality, you'll need to make sure your engineers have developed a workflow that makes work easier, not more complicated and confusing.
But what does it mean? Does this mean you provide them with the best hardware for the job and ensure their work environment is conducive to productivity? Yes, you certainly do these things. However, improving developer workflow requires much more than that.
Let's take a look and see what you and your developers can do to improve your processes.
Spend time doing early research and development
If you dive into a project without spending enough time on research and development, that project will get bogged down quickly. And the more complicated a project is, the worse it will be. Before the first line of code is written, it is imperative that all stakeholders involved spend ample time answering as many questions as possible. The more information you have about the project, the smoother it will run.
This is even more important when the project is something that fits into your current delivery pipeline or is intended for third parties or customers. Hold meetings with all project developers before the project begins to ensure everyone is on the same page and that all questions are answered.
Don't skip this step, otherwise your workflow will be full of bottlenecks and speed bumps.
Develop process and style guides
Writers have plenty of style guides to guide them and simplify their workflows. There is no reason for your developers to work without this guide. These guides should include topics such as methodologies for commenting inline code, libraries to use, how code should be structured, languages used, and team assignments.
Make sure these style guides are presented in an easy-to-read format with concise writing to avoid any confusion. These guides should also include team hierarchy and contact information, so anyone can get in touch with a project lead or co-developer.
Employ peer code reviews
Don't require your developers to review their own work. Any writer will tell you that it's nearly impossible to edit your own work because mistakes easily go unnoticed. There are several reasons why this happens, which is why writers hire writers and editors to check their work.
The same thing should be true for your developers. Not only will your developers miss errors, but their process will also slow down drastically because they will have to spend more time checking for the smallest error. Assign each developer a colleague (or team of peers) to review their code so that any and all errors are discovered efficiently.
Employ CI/CD
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery is all about speed and efficiency. It's also about automation, which can boost developer workflow. The idea of CI/CD is that, through automation and specific tools, delivery happens at incredible speeds. Bugs can be discovered through automated tools and once fixed, the application is automatically deployed.
While CI/CD can be a major integration challenge, the time spent upfront will pay off as your developers begin using a workflow focused on speed and reliability. Even better, the end results will be much more reliable and any updates will be sent as part of the automated lifecycle.
Work with virtual machines
Virtual machines can go a long way in facilitating a developer's workflow. For one, the use of virtual machines makes it incredibly easy to deploy a rapid development environment. You could use a tool like VirtualBox, create a custom virtual machine (which includes all the necessary tools), and clone that environment as needed. Even better, if something goes wrong with a virtual machine, it can be rolled back to a previous working iteration, so very little work is lost.
Another very useful way that virtual machines help with workflow is that these custom VMs can be exported as devices and shared among a team. This means that all developers on a project are working in exactly the same environment. By doing this, you can eliminate any platform issues that could have occurred between the developers.
Make these virtual machines (or devices) available for download on a company server, and your developers can quickly create the necessary environment and get to work.
Conclusion
Even if you have hired the best developers, they may not be able to produce at the level required by demand if you don't put in the effort to help make their workflow efficient. By implementing these suggestions, you can be sure that your software engineers will enjoy an efficient and useful workflow.
