It can be hard to know where to begin if you’re considering starting a software development agency. On the one hand, you have plenty of competition and hundreds of years of best practices for building successful businesses. On the other hand, you might not have worked on an engineering team before—or even run a small business at all. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the information: books, blog posts, podcasts, etc. So we’ve compiled our favorite resources here.
Scaling & Deployment
Building and deploying software is a critical part of running a development agency. It’s also one of the most challenging parts. Managing deployments for your clients can be difficult, especially as you scale up your operations to handle more significant projects and customers.
The most important thing you can do regarding software distribution is to plan. Effective scaling requires careful planning, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated or take up a lot of time if you follow some best practices. There are many different approaches to scaling and deployment, so we’ll analyze some popular ones below:
● SaaS (Software as a Service). This is a popular method for software distribution, especially for companies that don’t have the resources to handle their hosting and maintenance. SaaS lets you focus on building your product while someone else handles the infrastructure requirements. This can be beneficial if you’re unfamiliar with managing servers or want to focus on your core business. There are many different types of SaaS, but most of them provide similar functionality out of the box.
● PaaS (Platform as a Service). This is a newer method that’s growing in popularity. PaaS lets you build and run applications on a third-party platform, so you don’t need to worry about managing your servers. PaaS can be beneficial if you’re unfamiliar with managing servers or want to focus on your core business.
Automated Testing
The software can be complex. As a result, it’s easy for bugs to creep into your code—and those bugs can make or break an otherwise functional app. To prevent these problems, you must thoroughly test your software before releasing it to the public. But how do you know what tests are essential to automate? And how do you automate them?
Automated testing is a must-have for any development agency that wants its products to be reliable and bug-free. It’s also relatively inexpensive: with automated testing tools like Selenium, you can get started with only a few minutes of setup time and no coding knowledge required.
Security
Security is a significant concern for every business, especially regarding the data and information stored on computers. Even if you have no plans to sell your software or other products to customers, it’s still essential that you keep all of your company’s data secure.
There are two main types of security: privacy and encryption.
Privacy keeps people from accessing the information you have stored in your database or cloud backups without permission; encryption keeps someone from accessing the actual content of those files even if they get into your system or access them through a backup server.
Encryption is critical for protecting sensitive data like customer credit card numbers, as well as for ensuring that hackers cannot access any valuable internal documents (like employee resumes) that could be used against you in court or by competitors looking to steal customers away from your business with better deals elsewhere—or worse yet, identity theft scams targeting unsuspecting consumers who believe they’re making legitimate purchases online until it’s too late.
Agile Processes
Agile development is a software development methodology that focuses on delivering working, tested software in short development cycles (sprints). Agile methodologies are designed to enable and support this requirement.
For example, Scrum is an agile methodology in which teams develop their product through a series of iterations and “sprints.” Each sprint consists of a set number of workdays during which the team delivers new functionality ready for analysis by stakeholders.
The iteration begins with a short planning meeting to identify tasks and goals for that sprint, followed by daily stand-up meetings where each member reports on progress thus far. The process ends with an end-of-sprint analysis meeting where stakeholders discuss what has been delivered and decide what to do next.
Hiring & Retention
Hiring the right people is one of the most important things you can do in your business, especially if you’re starting from scratch. You’ll need to find people passionate about software development who fit your company’s culture. Your team should have diverse skillsets, backgrounds, personalities, and interests to work well together and provide better customer service.
Retaining employees is also very important because turnover can be costly. Make sure that each person who joins your team has everything they need to succeed – this includes training programs or mentorship opportunities so they can grow their skill set as quickly as possible (and stay happy). At first glance, employee benefits such as health insurance might seem like an expense. Still, they will save money in the long run by reducing turnover costs like finding replacement workers or retraining current ones who have lost productivity due to illness or injury before returning to action again!
Conclusion
The good news is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel by following these five best practices. You can use what other companies have learned and apply it to your business model. This will save you time and money while ensuring that your software development agency is scalable and secure enough for any project or client.
