5 Strategies to Help You Take Your Software Business to a New Level

Running a software company is engaging, but it comes with many challenges. Whether you sell out-of-the-box solutions or build custom apps for your clients, you should always focus on business growth and expansion.

It will help you generate new revenue streams, retain top talent, and establish a better position for your company in the industry. How do you take your software business to a new level, then?

If you don’t know where to start, you might find inspiration in some of the following strategies.

1. Standardize your workflow

In layman’s terms, workflow is how your developers get things done. If everyone on your team knows how to perform tasks, it will help you streamline project management. Plus, you will be able to see what works and what doesn’t so that you can fine-tune the workflow with better efficiency. 

A software company workflow usually includes planning, coding, reviewing, and deployment phases. You can add or remove them to your liking, but it’s vital to finally standardize the workflow and have your entire team on board with it.

2. Embrace automation

DevOps is becoming increasingly complex. However, it doesn’t mean you should not look for opportunities to fine-tune your operation.

With the right solution, you can reduce the workload on your developers and make the entire operation more efficient. Testslike web, native mobile, API, desktop, load, and accessibility are vital to ensure the quality of your software.

On the other hand, these processes are repetitive and time-consuming. That’s why many software companies implement software testing automation.

The newest automation solutions don’t require developers to write a single line of code to deploy various tests to ensure the apps are working as intended even under a considerable load. 

3. Limit work in progress

To stay ahead and be more profitable, many software companies take on more projects than they can handle. Not even the best micromanagement and multitasking practices can help you complete projects on time if you stretch your assets and resources thin.

Why risk not delivering projects before the deadline and losing clients when you can do the opposite?

The trick is to limit work in progress according to the resources and assets you have available. The best way to do it is to have your entire team participate in the early stages of project management. You can even ask senior developers to help you decide whether to take on new projects or not. 

4. Manage your backlog

When you start limiting your work in progress, you will end up with more tasks in your backlog than usual.

Backlog includes various tasks, from those you’ve created with your team when setting up the project to tasks your team added during the execution phase. The best thing you can do with your backlog is to sort tasks by priority.

You should schedule the tasks with the highest priority to enter your workflow when there is space in your “work in progress” load.

The tasks that are not essential for the project’s success includeadding non-critical features. Finally, your backlog size should always be consistent. Feel free to delete the tasks at the bottom of your list. If it is something important you got rid of, it will most certainly come back.

5. Keep everyone tuned on the progress

In software development, there are many task dependencies. Some developers in your team can’t even start working on the features they are responsible for developing unless the previous phase is completed. To promote a sense of responsibility and drive productivity, you should keep everyone tuned on the progress. 

You can do it with a good old physical board or streamline it with some modern project management apps. It will enable your entire team to visualize their work. See precisely how their work impacts others on the team and identify the phases prone to bottlenecks. 

The visual data is easy to understand, and you can also use it to keep your clients happy and informed about your progress. 

Conclusion

When taking your software company to a new level, you need to focus on improving the various aspects of your operation. The strategies above are only the tip of the iceberg, but they’re an excellent place to start.

Standardizing your workflow and automating time-consuming tasks can help you improve efficiency across the board. 

Limiting work in progress and properly managing backlog will render your company more agile. Finally, keeping everyone in the loop with the project’s progress can help you fine-tune your practices to achieve optimal results.