If you were provided a solution that would substantially improve the quality, efficiency, and speed of product development, you’d be quick to implement it. This is as true in the world of software product development as it is with hardware product development. Note that I differentiate baseline software development, with software product development here. Software products must be built to a higher standard, be more bulletproof, scalable and maintainable since their primary reason for being is to do one thing: generate revenue and profits.
By streamlining the meticulous processes of the development life cycle, automation has become the most crucial upgrade to any software company’s development pipeline. From rapid application development to quicker testing and deployment, automation boosts productivity across multiple stages.
So, it begs the question: why are companies so hesitant to make the investment in automation?
What is Automation?
No one questions whether automation is worth it when building physical products, like cars or cell phones. We fully expect robots to be utilized along with workers when building cars because it’s obvious that’s the key to improving quality and productivity while simultaneously lowering cost and risk. But when making the same statement about software product development, we often get blank stares. Trust me, the same argument and reasoning applies. Automation is the key to effectively and efficiently building software products.
When building commercial software products, at nearly any stage in the development lifecycle, developers must spend an inordinate amount of time writing or fixing code that in itself adds no value to the end user. Think of this as plumbing – everything that must be there to support the only 20-30% of code that actually delivers value to your customers. This plumbing code is usually complex, repetitive and error-prone. It typically requires little to no creativity or critical thinking, and it often takes up 70-80% of your developer’s time to build or maintain. It’s exactly this plumbing code that’s ripe for automation. And doing so allows your developers to put their ingenuity and skill to good use by working on more critical tasks.
Your goal should be to automate as much of the software development lifecycle as is PRACTICAL. It may be tempting to think that more automation is always better and that the asymptotic goal should be 100% automation. This is 100% wrong! Even in the “real” world, 100% automation is a path to failure – just ask Elon Musk who had to scrap $500M of tooling when he discovered that he was trying to automate too much of the Tesla Model 3 production. What worked (and was cost-effective) was to strike the right balance between robots and people.
Which parts of the development process should be automated?
The beauty of automation lies in its versatility. It isn’t limited to improving just one or a few stages of the development process. Here are a few situations where automation is extremely helpful:
- Unit Testing – Automating the testing of individual parts of code.
- Regression Testing – Using automated code to test the entire software, particularly after updates.
- Rapid Application Development – Using automation to apply and reuse boilerplate code to quickly develop new apps.
- Code Generation – Generating code and related data through automation.
- QA Testing – Simulating user input for testing parts of the software.
It may be challenging to identify which stages of development should be and can be automated.
Luckily, Modularis has the right leadership and experience to help you get started.
The 4 benefits of automation at different stages
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Quickly rebuild development environments
Manually rebuilding and updating development environments is cumbersome and time-consuming. Having each developer manage and maintain their own environments can lead to inconsistent behavior, merging conflicts, and lots of lost time trying to debug or diagnose environmental issues.
This is where virtualization and DevOps automation swoops in to save the day. Having each developer use a cloned virtual machine image for their development environment dramatically reduces complexity and saves time for the entire team. Combined with full adoption of Continuous Integration & Deployment provides a big boost to productivity. In addition, if a developer inadvertently screws up their environment, it’s often much faster to simply replace a corrupted development VM with a fresh one spun in minutes from a versioned VM snapshot or image.
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More time for developers to innovate
In order to boost productivity and growth, it is imperative to utilize your workforce to the best of their abilities. You must foster an environment where the creativity and inventiveness of your developers can thrive. Automation allows you to do just that.
By relieving your developers of uninteresting and repetitive tasks, you allow them to spend their time doing more valuable work – work that more directly adds value to your customers.
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Faster deployment
The one constant benefit of automating any stage of the development process is that it saves time. Once you’ve established the necessary automated procedures, you need only reuse them for new applications.
Such an approach, centered on reusability, helps you to cut down on costs and significantly reduce the time spent on different stages of the development process. As a result, you can effectively keep up with client needs and deploy newer applications much more quickly.
For insights on how modularity and reusability can help you de-risk and accelerate software development processes, check out this blog.
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Greater accuracy, consistent results
Remember, automated code and tools will function exactly as you’ve programmed them. This means that automation leaves no room for error.
In fact, features like common code repositories and automated build processes help developers deal with conflicts in the code and remove discrepancies during assessment. So at any point in time, the most recent and error-free build is available for evaluation.
Contrary to manual testing, where human error is a big drawback, automated testing is a surefire way of ensuring that the build is free from bugs and errors after every update. All or parts of the code can be tested on a regular basis, ensuring consistently accurate results every time.
Short-term risks, long-term success
Although automation is an endeavor that’s worth the long-term investment, it may not seem as such in some cases. The high level of security and accuracy that automation promises requires a certain level of effort to ensure that everything executes as intended – the robots need to be programmed, maintained, and continuously improved.
In certain scenarios, automation may take slightly longer than a manual approach, but it’s imperative to remember that it will boost efficiency, productivity, and quality in the long run.
PlatformPlus – Accelerate Your Software R&D Practices
If you’re looking to shift your software R&D to a platform-centric approach, then our experts at Modularis are ready to help. We have created a product-based and service-based solution, in one complete package: PlatformPlus.
It’s the world’s most efficient development platform that automates R&D processes to maximize efficiency and productivity.
Our powerful software is complemented by the full support of an expert engineering team with years of technical leadership and coaching experience. Our team will help you deal with the Innovation Fraction gap, and help you more effectively manage your time and resources so that your team is spending far more time on innovation and far less on maintenance.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us here!