Tips to Crank Up Your Software Development Team Productivity

Crank Up Your Software Development Team Productivity

The software development field looks rosy, well-planned, and organized from the outside. However, when consumer demands are changing every second in this day and age, it becomes a massive challenge for software developers to rise to the occasion. There are so many distractions in this social media age that keeping your software development team highly productive is an art in itself. Project managers and C-level executives have their tasks cut out.

There is so much competition in the software industry nowadays that if you, as a team, cannot sustain a level of productivity, you will be thrown out of the competition. It’s a very demanding field, and although there are a lot of productivity tools available to resurrect the issue, it’s not the one-stop solution. There are many factors involved, and as a manager or CTO, you need to dissect all of those to understand one can uplift the software development productivity.

Now, the question is, how can software developers become more productive? OR what kind of approach could the management take to ensure high productivity? Answering all these questions is of primary importance as it allows you to come up with innovative solutions that can contribute to your software development team’s productivity. It could also affect the software development cost because if the productivity is high, you can execute the task in less time.

Let’s dive deeper into the subject as we provide you with some of the easiest ways to crack up the software development team productivity. Here are some valuable tips for it:

1. Communicate on a Regular Basis

In any organization or a team, communication holds the key to success. So, if you want to increase the software development team productivity, have regular meetings or sessions of knowledge sharing. It will allow them to learn from each other and also share their viewpoints. Some ways to communicate regularly are via daily standups, scrum meetings, slack channels, team meetings in a conference room, etc. This will also ensure good team bonding.

In the context of modern work environments, especially those navigating remote work, virtual team building activities have become an essential strategy. These activities extend beyond the traditional communication methods mentioned, serving as an effective way to foster team bonding and increase software development team productivity.

2. Assign Roles and Responsibilities

Over the years, successful software development teams have been where each one knows their roles and responsibilities. So, as a project manager or a tech lead of a software team, you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Then, based on the skill acquisition, you should assign them a particular role in the team. In this manner, they will remain dedicated to their work, and they will feel a sense of responsibility and accountability.

3. Creating a Healthy Work Environment

As a leader, your job is to create a healthy work environment for your employees. A healthy environment is one where the junior-most member of the team can also contradict the viewpoint of their manager. Everyone should feel safe to share their perspective regarding the project and what can be done for better execution. In addition to all these, you can allow flexible working hours for the employees to give their best in their comfortable timezone for the development.

4. Set Reasonable Deadlines

Every task you assign to your software development team should have a reasonable deadline. It’s impossible to have a hard deadline for every task as some complexities may arise during the work, and it may get stretched. However, there should always be a soft deadline with every task as it allows the developers to plan. They know the working hours they will require to finish it, and there will be better planning which then cranks up the productivity of a development team.

5. Encourage Customer Feedback

Customer feedback can serve as a motivation to do well for any software development team. That’s why a project manager or one in charge of a software development team should encourage constant feedback from their clientele. You should analyze the real-time issues clients face and the functional features in the team meeting. Then, based on the feedback, developers can implement the changes and come up with a refined and finished product.

6. Adopt CI/CD Approach

When software development requirements are changing rapidly, you can adopt the CI/CD (Continous Integration/Continous Deployment) approach to improve development productivity. It allows developers to streamline the software release and reach out to customers with a new version sooner rather than later. The approach also ensures high-quality products and helps you to deliver the product reliably. Therefore, this type of approach will help to crank up productivity.

7. Utilize Developer Productivity Tools

In this day and age, you will get many developer productivity tools in the market that one can utilize to increase the software development team productivity. Some of the most popular project management tools are Jira, Asana, and Trello. Also, you should make sure that your developers have equipment like high-tech laptops. It should have sufficient RAM and hard disk that doesn’t slow down the development process. In this way, you can increase software team productivity.

8. Take an Agile Approach

If you’re in the software development industry for a few years, you must know about the agile methodology or approach. More and more development teams are adopting agile methods to uplift their productivity. Here, you will release smaller updates every week and conduct testing as early as possible. You won’t find dependencies or delays at the time of final release, contributing to productivity. That’s why today the agile approach has been in so much demand.

9. Invest in Your People

If you hire software developers for your company or organization, then invest some time and money in upgrading their skills as well. Most people believe that it’s a waste of time and money, but it will reward you with higher productivity. So, if you can conduct workshops or seminars on teamwork, communication skills, time management, etc., it will help you in overall team productivity. Also, there will be a positive change in your work culture, which is quite fantastic.

10. Become Flexible and Smarter

Increasing software development team productivity doesn’t mean you need work in a typical 9 to 5 schedule. In the end, productivity is about being efficient and smarter in your work approach. So, for that purpose, you can be lenient and flexible in your working hours. For example, some developers like to work early in the morning, while others prefer working till late at night. Understanding developers as a person would allow you to be smarter and productive.

11. Take Data-Driven Approach

If you want to increase the productivity of your software team, first, you need to find out where the production time is being utilized. Then, keep an eye on how your employees are making use of the allotted eight hours. You can also ask your teammates to prepare a task sheet to mention the time required to complete a particular task. Based on those data, you will know the hours which are productive and wasted. In this way, for future tasks, you can plan in a better manner.

12. Define Goals

Having a common goal is extremely important for a team’s success, and as a project manager, you should have SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals. If you have a clear vision of where you want to reach and what you want to achieve, it becomes easier for all the team members to align on a common purpose. Also, this purpose becomes a source of inspiration for the whole team, leading to an increment in the software team productivity.

13. Set Priority of Task

When you’re working on a large-scale project with a software development team, you need to execute plenty of tasks daily. However, if you want to be productive, you need to prioritize tasks as high, medium, and low priority. Now, work according to the preference of your task, and that will lead to successful software development. In addition, your productivity will rise as the team will invest time wherever there’s a need and eliminate tasks that waste time.

14. Giving Incentives to Developers

TEAM means Together Everyone Achieves More. Now, this full form has a meaning only when all the team members feel welcome and essential. As a CEO or CTO of a software development company, you can start giving incentives to the developers who have contributed to the immense success of the project. In this manner, other team members will also push hard for that reward, and this type of healthy competition will lead to an increase in work productivity.

Conclusion

Software development is not as easy as it sounds. You need a motivated and very productive team to take on any complex challenges in this field. Unfortunately, increasing productivity is an issue that gives sleepless nights to the project managers and team leaders over the years.

Taking this into consideration, here we have tried to provide some tips that can help you to uplift the productivity of the software development team. We hope it will help you in your future projects. What are your thoughts on these tips? Is there any specific thing you do to uplift the team’s productivity? Do let us know in the comments section. Thank You.!

Author Bio: Hardik Shah works as a Tech Consultant at Simform, a leading mobile app development company. He leads large scale mobility programs covering platforms, solutions, governance, standardization, and best practices.