5 Proven Tips to Make Software Development More Efficient

If software development is part of your business, chances are it has the biggest impact on whether you succeed or not. Some companies are lucky to have a great development team, others are less fortunate. But no matter how talented and driven your team members are, the question is always, how can you make them even more efficient and productive?

Here are five proven tips that will help your development team stay focused and deliver projects with real business value on time and budget.

Tip 1: Keep your working environment clean

A clean working environments is vital for productivity. ‘Clean’ means free of clutter and distractions – so make sure your work inbox is free of spam emails and your social media notifications are turned off.

It’s also beneficial to block some non-work-related websites that you tempt to use during the day, and wear headphones to avoid being distracted by colleagues.

Tip 2: Set your priorities

Keeping everything updated and prioritized is the key to a productive development process. The team should know about the highest priority tasks for the day and create an action plan based on them.

Every day before leaving the office, create a list of high priority tasks for the next day. This allows you to save time (you don’t have to spend time on prioritizing in the morning) and come to work with a more focused mind.

Tip 3: Plan, plan and plan

As simple as it may sound, planning is a proven way to stay efficient. Many developers find it extremely beneficial to first plan how they are going to handle the task and only then get to work. So to make your code reusable and efficient, take some time to determine patterns and write modular code to simplify the process.

Tip 4: Avoid work overload

For those who work in the tech industry, “crunch time”  – vast periods of mandatory, but often unpaid, overtime that kicks in during the months leading to a release date – is almost unavoidable and, unfortunately, the most brain-exhausting activity.

Always remember that working past your productive point is a waste of time – it only increases stress levels and decreases your  mind’s ability to keep track of things. To avoid a severe drop in productivity and save your mental and physical health, make sure you alternate between working and taking breaks.

Tip 5: Try Agile development

Agile (and its popular methodologies –  Scrum, Extreme Programming, etc.) is an alternative too traditional or waterfall project management. It focuses on continuous improvement, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering high-quality products.

Keep in mind your company’s and customers’ values and choose an Agile framework that aligns with your company structure and business goals. This will allow to create a flexible and value-driven team that can create an innovative software technology.