The root cause of over 70% IT project failures can be traced back to poorly written requirements. Learning how to write software requirements is essential if you want to deliver high-quality software on time and within budget. In this article I'll help you do just that. Using my 15+ years of experience helping teams build great software, I’ll share 12 do's and don'ts for writing effective software requirements.
SaaS product managers play a pivotal role in their company's success, and it's important they have the right skills and knowledge to ensure product stands out in the competitive marketplace. In this article, we’ll walk you through 7 of the most essential tips to master SaaS product management, as well as provide you with a shortlist of must-have product management tools.
If you're responsible for designing a web application, you know that engagement is key to success. A well-designed app will keep users coming back, while a poorly designed one will quickly lose them. In fact, 25% of project failures are attributed to UI/UX design issues! In this article, we'll share 11 of the best web application designs and show you how to create a more engaging and enjoyable experience for your users.
Creating a well-prioritized product backlog is no easy task, especially with conflicting input from stakeholders and limited data from customers. In fact, 25% of product managers say setting product roadmap priorities without customer feedback is their most significant challenge, and many spend nearly 2 hours every day on it. Learn how to prioritize backlog quickly in 6 simple steps.
A recent global, cross-industry survey showed that 26% of companies had AI projects in production. With nearly a third of those companies spending over 21% of their IT budget on AI, it's clear that AI adoption is on the rise, and businesses are preparing to take full advantage of its potential.
Requirements management planning is essential to the success of any software project. According to a recent survey, 70% of IT project failures are due to inadequate requirements, resulting in an average cost overrun of 27%. In this article, we'll show you how to create a requirements management plan, step-by-step. We'll also provide a requirements management plan example to help you get started.
Web application architecture sets the foundation for all of the development work. Get it right and you will benefit from improved scalability, enhanced security, better performance, easier maintenance, and increased flexibility. Get it wrong and you’ll be suffering the consequences long after the software launches.
Are you starting a software development project and looking for ways to accurately estimate cost of software development? In this article, we will analyse in detail the software development cost estimation process and assist you in reducing the risk of your project exceeding its budget.
Your product's user interface can make or break the success of your project - in fact, 25% of project failures are attributed to UI/UX design issues! To help you create a successful product, we’ve compiled 14 of the best UI design examples to inspire you in 2023. Through this article, you'll gain a deeper understanding of what makes for good UI design and how to apply these principles to your project.
Anyone who has ever undertaken a web app development project knows it's not easy. There are a lot of moving parts, and it can be tough to keep everything organized and on track. Not to mention, that 45% of web app development projects end up over budget, while delivering 56% less value!
If you're finding it difficult to choose the best web development company for your next project, you’re not alone. In fact, 49% of IT sourcing managers struggle with the same thing! It’s not easy to sort through the over 46,000 companies offering web development services to find the one that will meet your project needs best.
Navigation menus are the backbone of any website or web app, and good navigation menus can make or break a user experience. In fact, almost everyone (94%) says easy navigation is the most important website feature. But how do you create an effective navigation menu that is both user-friendly and visually appealing?
You want to build a web application, but you’re worried about the cost? With research showing that 45% of software projects end up over budget, it’s understandable to be concerned. But with the right web application development cost estimation, you can have a clear picture of the required budget and timeline for your own web app project.
If you're working on a new product or service within a large organization, you know that a proof of concept (PoC) is crucial for gaining top management support. But creating a PoC can be a complex process, with many different stages and success criteria to consider. Our proof of concept template will help you simplify the process and ensure that your PoC provides optimal business value.
If you're starting a web app development project, you know that one of the most important aspects of your job is to ensure that you design a web app that users will love using. But, that’s not always easy. In fact, 25% of project failures are attributed to UX design issues! And web app design is made all the more difficult when you’re working on a shoestring budget and within tight deadlines.
Are you a product manager or startup founder working on a new product? If so, you may be wondering whether you should focus on building a PoC (proof of concept) or MVP (minimum viable product). But did you know that choosing the right product validation approach for your product – whether it's a PoC or MVP – can be the difference between success and failure?
If you're a founder of a startup or product manager, you know that the odds are stacked against you. Over 90% of startups fail, and money doesn’t always solve the problem - even 75% of venture-backed startups fail. The reality is that when you build a new product, you’re making a bet. Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) is a great way to validate your bet with a much smaller financial investment and a lot less time.
It’s a complex web of managing both pre-build - “What is the right thing to build?” - and build - “How do we build the thing right?” stages. It’s not an easy task for anyone to handle this full product lifecycle. The product management process exists to help you manage all of this complexity. Stick around as we break down the 8-step product management process we recommend for any product management team.
Fast growing companies rely on enterprise software to optimize their business operations. It’s no surprise that the enterprise software market is valued at a whopping $396 million USD. But the problem? Many of these off-the-shelf enterprise solutions don’t meet the mark. They lack flexibility.
When commencing work on a new product, project or initiative, there needs to be a high degree of alignment between interested parties. This alignment ensures firstly that there is a legitimate need for the new product to be built, but also that the capabilities being delivered by the new product meet the stated needs of the project team.
Over 66% of software projects fail. Proof of concept (PoC) development can help to reduce this risk of failure significantly. Testing a software project’s most basic functionality with a PoC can help teams evaluate feasibility and validate market needs before investing significant time and money into a project.
Many startup founders ask if they should even bother with a proof of concept. Why not just go straight to working on a minimum viable product (MVP)? The truth is MVPs require significant capital investments - often $35K+ with US developers. That’s a lot of cash to invest in something that might end up being part of the nearly 90% of startups that fail.
User interface design (UI design) is all about building interfaces with an emphasis on aesthetics and personalization. As a UI designer, your goal is to produce an interface that is both user-friendly and looks aesthetically beautiful to the user. To build an interface that best suits the user's needs, you must take care of all possible interactions a user can make with your product.
Skyrocketing your perceived value and becoming an uncommon developer cannot be considered without honorable mention of the concept of 10x developer first. According to Techopedia, a 10x developer is someone who is thought to be as productive as 10 others in his or her field. The 10x developer would produce 10 times the outcomes of other colleagues, in a production, engineering or software design environment.
When you think about what motivates an employee, what initially comes to mind might be a good salary and perks like a gym membership or free lunches. These types of motivators are called extrinsic motivators. They can be easily replicated and become a widely-adopted standard amongst companies. In fact, employees have come to expect a certain amount of perks from tech companies these days.
Ever since it’s inception in 2001, the Agile Manifesto has been utilised successfully by many teams to deliver various projects and has been adopted as the favoured approach for software delivery teams. However, even before the Agile Manifesto was written, Agile ways of working were being used.Agile teams are those who deliver work packages in small and iterative ways.
If you’re a startup founder, the goal is always on to do more with less. You have to find a way to get your product to market quickly, efficiently, and effectively. Software development services for startups can help you achieve your business goals faster and more efficiently. But it’s important to understand the development process before you dive in.
Product development services are the fastest way to achieve product-market fit. By definition, product-market fit occurs when a product meets the needs of a market. Achieving product-market fit is essential for any company that wants to be successful.There are a number of ways to achieve product-market fit, but the most common and effective way is to use product development services.
APIs, or application program interfaces, are vital tools for businesses in all industries. They are at the heart of the most successful companies, powering everything from Google ads to shipment tracking. APIs have grown to be the “glue” that not only empowers technical innovation but also enables businesses to grow new revenue streams, streamline their go-to-market strategy and deliver more value to their customers.
If you have a great idea for a product, service, or business, the worst thing you can do is to dive in headfirst without taking the time to validate it. Idea validation is all about testing and researching your idea to make sure that it has potential. This can help you save a lot of time, money, and effort in the long run.
A smart, committed product team is needed to develop a good, successful product. A product team has multiple roles that must understand the user's goals. The product team designs, develops, and launches the product after understanding user needs. People usually think product teams are composed of a small number of resources tasked with designing and developing the product.
Software product development process has multiple stages including idea generation, requirements gathering and analysis, design, development, testing, and release to market. Being an iterative process, each stage involves certain activities and produces a number of deliverables that help as input to the next stage of the process. Product brief is a document that the product team develops at the initial stage of the product development process.
The world is considered a global village and, due to this, there is greater access to the best talent to hire for software development project and related products and services. Cost-effectiveness, better human resources, and improved business results are important reasons why software development projects are outsourced to software development companies.
How can you ensure your product team is pointed in the right direction, without stifling them or micromanaging their work? An overview of the project in the form of a Product Charter that includes inputs and outputs in terms of the intended outcomes. The goal of the product development process, after all, is to understand customer needs, identify opportunities, define the boundaries of a solution, and prioritize those solutions.
Effective communication is the foundation of a successful project. Sadly, it doesn't always work as it is supposed to - and in fact, many projects face this problem. If you haven't used a communication plan in past projects, it's worth trying and discovering what benefits it may bring to you and your team.
Agile software methods have created a heated discussion between promoters of big-design-upfront (BDUF) and promoters of agile development methodologies. What appears to be at the heart of the discussion is a worry about the lack of documentation that is expected to be created as part of the agile development process.
Writing a software requirements specification (SRS) is a critical step for any successful project, as 70% of IT project failures are due to poorly written requirements. In this article, we’ll take you through 7 simple steps to create a successful software requirements specification and provide a template. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to nail your SRS and how to set your next software project up for success.
The Product Management team brings an idea to fruition for what has been at the conceptual stage to that of the actual usage by the end-user. They ensure the products and services offered are aligning with the market requirements for serving the customer needs. The PM team is also responsible for maintaining its corporate goals at every stage of the product development cycle.
The essence of growth of the organization and creation of a product begins by putting in place an effective winning team. And for startup organizations, the team size may be considerably smaller, and building them along with building the organization goes hand in glove. Building a team involves bringing remote workers to work on a common goal. And each of them may vary in their skills, thinking, personality traits, and demographic backgrounds too.
Software Development in Poland is a great way to save on development costs and build a team quickly. With salaries for software developers in Poland being significantly lower than those in the US, the cost-saving opportunities are huge. In this article, we'll show you how to do this in four simple steps. We'll also address any concerns you may have about custom software development in Poland.
An NDA is a commonly executed agreement between companies and outsourcing companies or software developers, which ensures that very confidential information disclosed during the software development process does not fall into the hands of the wrong persons. It also ensures that the recipients of the information do not disclose it to third parties.
Whether you’re about to embark on a large new software project and need to grow your team through outsourcing, or have made strategic decision with third parties, you’ll need to take great care and due diligence in selecting your partner. This article takes you through some high-level considerations and provided some tips to help you make sure you select the right partner and start the relationship off in the best way.
A properly-written software partnership agreement sets the parties' legal obligations, rights, and responsibilities, as well as assists in clarifying their mutual expectations and enhancing communication from the very beginning of the partnership. If you are commissioning software development, it is critical to have a decent software development partnership agreement in place to obtain and secure the product or tool you want to build.
Finding a software development partner might seem a little intimidating at first, in part due to the vast number of software development companies ready to deliver their services. However, the best tech talent is busy. That is why you need to be prepared to put effort into finding a good development partner and solid talent that is available at a reasonable timeframe.
You want working software delivered on time and on budget. That’s the goal. But the reality is IT projects, on average, end up 45% over budget while delivering 56% less value than expected. To stay in front of these abysmal statistics, you need a solid software development plan. Your project plan is your roadmap - a roadmap that tells you and all of your team how to achieve working software on time and on budget.
The value of the agile development model comes directly from the deep collaboration. However, when software vendors are added to the mix, companies often opt to use agile development internally, but leave the outsourcing provider to deliver independently, completely outside of the agile work streams.
Remote teams allow companies to tap into a larger talent pool and allow everyone to work where and how they are most productive. With effective communication, the right tools, and a remote-first culture, you can create more-effective software teams. This article we discuss how you can overcome the challenges inherent in managing remote engineering teams based on our own experience at SoftKraft.
Nowadays, it is much harder to find a company that does not use software to run their business operations than one that does. A lot of businesses will use off-the-shelf software, which comes with a fixed set of functions. If you find what's currently on the market isn't meeting your needs, you might go for custom software.
Estimation can be a tricky part of any new software initiative. Provide an estimate which is too high and your project may be cancelled before it even begins; estimate too low and your project has the risk of failing or being highly stressed due to perceived cost and time over-runs. If the project in question is a capital outlay on a new warehouse or improved machines in the factory, accurate estimates can often be prepared quite easily, as these are highly repeatable, low complexity initiatives where indicative costs and timescales can easily be stated.
Although similarly named, the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) are two separate and distinct processes for ensuring success within software delivery projects. Let’s take a look at how you can get the best out of both of these for your software delivery project:
Are you looking for a way to dramatically increase the level of performance of teams across your organization? Ownership mentality is the answer. No matter the size of your company or the teams within it, fostering an ownership mindset pays dividends: increased speed and agility, higher levels of performance, better innovation, more strategic leadership, and greater employee engagement and satisfaction. As a leader, you must ensure that your staff is fully invested in their work and committed to the larger goals of the organization.
Software project outsourcing allows you access to a diverse pool of tech talent that can allow you to move your project quicker and in a more cost-efficient way. In fact, 70% of companies outsource software development to save money. But outsourcing is not without risks.
Starting a new IT project comes with a lot of challenges. According to the Project Management Institute, 45% IT projects end up over budget and deliver 56% less value than expected. One of the best ways to avoid these project pitfalls is to create a detailed scope of work (SOW) for your software development project. In this article, we'll give you a software development SOW template you can use for your next project.
Accelerate’s ideas are intriguing because measuring the output of a software engineering organization is extremely difficult. Anyone who has given this issue serious thought has most likely encountered the ‘measuring the unmeasurable’ objection. In this article, I am going to focus on measuring productivity of software development teams, how to effectively measure software performance and giving examples of they are implemented.
One of the important sets of choices often overlooked by founders that causes this failure is organization design. Assembling a proper start-up team for a new and emerging start-up is consequently critical. In this article, we’d talk about how to put together the ideal start-up team, taking a look at the stages of building a successful start-up team. Who Are the Key Members to Hire? When Should You Hire Them? At What Stage?
This guide is expected to help other people in the business who have started or improved their own product security programs and empower the business’s wide selection of crucial secure improvement strategies. Much of this report is based on the experience of gaint organizations that develop their product based on Secure SDLC and is utilized by millions and at times billions of clients. Small level programming organizations ought to likewise have the option to profit from large numbers of these suggestions.
We have seen several tech startups build their software development team structure around the Spotify Model for structuring the software development team. However, research has shown that this model based on tribes and squads also comes with its pitfalls. There is no fail-proof model. This has led to questions about how to structure a software development team. In this guide, we cover the common software development team structures and the best practices to build an effective structure.
For every organization, there’s a need for solid structures to be put in place to aid the smooth operation and interaction between the various levels and departments. Software engineering organizations are no less different. For smooth operations and proper handling of projects, there is a need for an organizational structure.
Starting a software project can be difficult to know where to start a new software project. Although it is an exciting time proposing innovative new solutions, engaging with suppliers and building cool new software, there is a lot of up-front work which is needed to get the project off the ground. One easy and straightforward way of capturing the early details for your project is to use a templated approach.
How to build a Minimum Viable Product successfully? The data tells us that launching a product without a market need accounts for 35% of startup failures! The good news is: with a little bit of work, you can make sure that your product does fulfill a real market need. This is what a minimum viable product is all about.
As technology progresses and becomes more efficient, so should the programming languages that come along with it. Making important decisions like adding or expanding usage of technology like investing in your codebase has to be based on your use cases and supported with strong business benefits. In this article, you will learn what companies use PHP and what are their PHP use cases so that you can make better decisions.
AI document management systems are transforming the way in which a business operates. They are essential to ensure that organization employees are working with the most current and relevant data available. It also saves valuable time for your employees, which would otherwise spend in processing and organizing data from documents. In this article, we presented 7 different ways that AI can add value to your business.
Is Mapbox better than Google Maps? The question is a bit tricky since it depends on the needs of your specific application and features. In this article, we will look closer at how Mapbox compers with Google Maps and where it has an edge.
The stakes are high when you’re investing significant capital, resources, and time into an outsourced software development project. You want to choose the right vendor, but with over 23,000 companies offering custom development services on Clutch.co alone, the sheer number of options can be overwhelming.
![Web Application Architecture [Complete Guide & Diagrams]](/uploads/blog/web-application-architecture/web-application-architecture.png)
![2023 Guide to Navigation Menus [8 Types & Top Tips]](/uploads/blog/navigation-menus/Cover.png)
![The 8-Step Product Management Process [with Examples]](/uploads/blog/product-management-process/product-management-process.png)
![Product Validation — 12 Ways to Test Your Product [with Examples]](/uploads/blog/product-validation/product-validation.png)
![6 Essential Product Team Roles [Definitions and Resources]](/uploads/blog/product-team-roles/product-team-roles.png)
![Product Brief: Template & Writing Process Steps [with Examples]](/uploads/blog/product-brief-template/product-brief-template.png)
![Product Charter: Template & Writing Process Steps [with Examples]](/uploads/blog/product-charter-template-writing/product-charter-template-writing.png)
![Communication Plan in Project Management [Practical Template]](/uploads/blog/what-is-communication-plan-in-project-management/what-is-communication-plan-in-project-management.png)
![Top 3 Product Team Structures — Which is the Best? [Pros & Cons]](/uploads/blog/product-team-structure/product-team-structure.png)
![How to Create Ownership Mentality [with Examples]](https://assets.softkraft.co/uploads/blog/how-to-create-ownership-mentality/how-to-create-ownership-mentality.png)
![Software Development Scope of Work [Template, Tips & Tools]](/uploads/blog/sd-scope-of-work/scope-of-work.png)
![Secure Software Development Lifecycle [Practical Guide]](/uploads/blog/secure-sdl/secure-software-development-lifecycle-v5.png)
![How to Build a Minimum Viable Product in 5 Steps [+ Template]](/uploads/blog/how-to-build-a-minimum-viable-product/how-to-build-a-minimum-viable-product.png)
