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In the IT industry, if you have a better understanding of software development, you will get vast opportunities. It's essential to hire the best web development service provider for your business.
What is Software Development?
Software development is mainly a programming process used to build computer programs. This process is known as the software development life cycle (SDLC). This even includes a lot of phrases that come up with building products that meet technical specifications and user requirements.
With the help of SDLC, software companies can improve and build computer programs as it provides international standards. It comes with a proper structure for the development team to follow in the creation, design, and Maintenance of high-quality software. The main aim of all IT software development is to provide high quality within a given budget and timeline. The Custom software development company will understand your requirement and suggest the best in your time and budget.
Critical Steps in the Software Development Process:
Below are some of the steps in the software development life cycle:
- Needs Identification: This is mainly the process's proper market research and brainstorming stage. Before a firm builds software, it is essential to go through proper market research to determine the product's viability. To attract the target audience, the developers must work on the function and service they will provide. In the survey the target audience will find it valuable and necessary.
There are so many things that can be done to get more information. This even includes taking surveys from existing and potential customers. The strategy needs to be discussed with the IT team so that they will tell the strength, weaknesses, threats, and opportunity of that particular product. Software development can only proceed if the parameter of the product is satisfied with the necessary for its success.
- Requirement Analysis: This is the second phase in the software development life cycle. In this stage, the stakeholders agree on the user requirement and technical specification of the given product to achieve the goal. A detailed outline is given in every component, including the tasks and the development scope. It tests the parameters to deliver good quality products.
The requirement analysis stage comes with users, developers, project managers, testers, and quality assurance. This is where software development chooses the programmer's approach towards it. Here software requirement specification documentation is done so the team can consult once the project is implemented.
- Design: This is the third stage of the software development process. Here an advanced technical specification is drawn up by the developers and architects that they need to complete the software requirements. Then the stockholders will discuss some essential things such as team composition, risk level, time, budget, applicable technologies, method, architectural design, and project limitations.
The design specification document (DSD) mainly specifies the architectural design, communication, components, front-end representation, and even the user flows of the product. This even provides a template for the developers and testers that reduce the chances of delays and flaws in the finished products.
- Development and Implementation: For the design parameters, it is the next step, which is development and implementation. The developers come up with the codebase depending on the product specification and requirement that was discussed before. Then the company comes up with the guidelines and procedures for the front-end developers to build interfaces and back ends. At the same time, database administrators create relevant data in the database. The best web development company has proper knowledge and experience in this field.
The programmers even test and review the codes among them to proceed with the best. Once the developers are done with the coding, they proceed with the implementation stage. This helps in coming up with the pilot version of the programming to make performance match the requirement properly.
- Testing: in this stage, the software is checked to see if there are any bugs. It verifies its performance before delivering it to the users. In this stage, whole product functions are adequately tested to ensure that it performs as was decided. Most testers use exploratory testing if there is a need for experience with the software. The test script will help validate the performance of an individual component of the software.
If there is any defect in the code then it will get notified to the developers. If the flaws are valid and confirmed, things will be maintained, and the program will improve. After this, the tester repeats the process until the software is free of any bugs and comes up with the proper requirements.
- Deployment and Maintenance: once the software is free from bugs, it can be handed over or delivered to the customers. Once the software production version is realized, the IT software development company can create maintenance team management. Updates are critical in any software. This will help customer engagement high.
The evaluation and the changes that the software came up with are inevitable. The Maintenance consumes almost 70% of the life cycle cost of the software project. To keep the software alive, Maintenance plays a critical role. The act of reading code is one of the most time-consuming components of all to maintain the activities that are performed by software developers. The SaaS Software Development provides development, design, debugging, unit testing, and integration.
Readability mainly means the natural language that determines how easy the text is to understand. Whereas in literature, readability is mainly judged by its metrics like the average sentence length, average syllables per word, etc. if the readability level is increased, then it can make a massive difference between the success and the failure of the communication goals. Most of the programs must be written for the people to read and only incidentally for executing the machine.
What is Software Documentation?
This is mainly written material, video, and image instruction with computer software. The software documentation helps explain how to use a service or program. There is a mainly different type of software documentation, such as:
- Requirements documentation
- Architecture documentation
- Technical documentation
- End-user documentation
In some companies, a special team takes care of the technical writing, such as a documentation team. Responsive web design services are in high demand.
Source Code is Not Documentation:
The Software developers treat source code as the primary or even as only documentation. For the manifest in practice, the code has to be sufficiently precise and detailed. The original form of source code is not readable as plain text. Making software accessible and maintaining readability plays an important role. The documentation should be easy to understand when written and not just by immediate team members but by future stakeholders. Below are some examples that will explain why it is essential.
- When interfacing is done by the external model, the consumer should understand the exposed interfaces by the existing module.
- To extend a module, the existing models and the concepts need to be understood in detail.
- Detail documentation plays a critical role in fixing a bug or a patch to be fixed faster.
When the documentation is needed to be effective, it must be maintained along with the code. The documentation can also be changed when it comes to refactoring code. When the code is updated, the tracking can be changed into the documentation that all seasoned engineering teams put in.
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How to Write Good Documentation?
When writing documentation, it is essential to follow three golden rules that you need to ask yourself while writing comments:
- What does the code do?
- How does it do it?
- How can someone use the same somewhere else?
In the merge process, always treat comments as part of the source code. One takeaway from the post is treated as documentation equally as a source code as a part of the review process. The embedded documentation will help the programmers to understand thoroughly and stay with the context. The developers have to ensure that the code they write is easily understandable, readable, and straightforward.
Some teams prefer to skip the code documentation part to save money, effort, and time because one of these mistakes can result in more significant expenses once the product is transferred to the team or when a proper update is required.
Reliable documentation is essential for the entire programmer. The documentation presentation helps keep track of all the aspects of an application, and it improves the quality of the software product. The main focuses are Maintenance, development, and knowledge transfer to the other developers. You can hire website development services to develop your website with documentation.
For creating successful documentation, it is essential to have an easily accessible and provide a limited number of user entry points that helps new users learn quickly, simplify the product and help in saving cost. Documentation focuses on the following components as Business rules, server environments, databases or files, application installation, troubleshooting, and code deployment.
- Server Environments: When creating an application, it's very important to have detailed documentation for it and its environment. The information will help set up new environments for the application, and it should be presented with its location and the function of the system that runs your service. Some things should be specified here, such as server name, URL to the application, IP, application name and their version, user account information, operating system, and a point of contact.
- Business Rules: the business rules documentation helps the new additions to the team to adapt faster working habits of the company. This helps in giving information about how the products work and why. To support the business rules documentation, it will require only documents if available. This even helps in speeding up the development of learning significantly. In addition to the business rules, FAQs, help documents, or user guides can even help the developer with the important points of an application for the developers who need context to support the application.
- Database/Files: For reverting, migrating, porting, sharing, and so on, database information is very important and mandatory. It's very important to note down the server information, type of database, and version, but most importantly, to have a data model diagram. The database documentation will bring modifications to the structure and types, the table, keys, additions of indexes, and much more. All of this is very easy and simple to debug and control. Suppose the application is coming up with a file transfer feature. In that case, it is very important to document the way the transfer is made, which database and protocol, and the exact SSL certificates are needed.
- Troubleshooting: When running into production issues troubleshooting documentation helps a lot. When there is troubleshooting, most of the technical issues come with error codes that will help in solving them. In this type of documentation, there should be an FAQ section with usual and general problems. This error should be arranged in different types, such as the type of error, the level of error, and the module where the error comes from. Here you need to add the expectation, critical, warning, etc.
- Application Installation: when the developers need to set up an additional or new application environment when it is useful for configuration and installation documentation. The process should be detailed if required. You can even add or include screenshots. This should help the consumer to install the application easily. These steps will help the installer prevent all the problems because of the missing parts of an application. In the details, you can mention libraries, necessary software, and application server versions. This will ensure the environment is compatible and set up as intended.
- Code: The backbone of every application is code documentation. The code documentation can even be spat in multiple parts. Comment blocks are helpful for programmers. This can be found in a file explaining classes, parameters, methods, and possible errors. After this specific file documentation which is generated with the help of a third-party script that will be based on the common blocks, an explicit PDF will be created. There should be information regarding the code repository where the file update is found and needs to be moved. There should be step-by-step instructions on creating an application package or build to be deployed.
All the documents mentioned above should be available for the developer team members who are working on the project. This can be placed in the document-sharing portal for access control, easy access, and version control. If any changes are made, it is very important to update and come up with enhancements and processes that are added to the application.
When all the documents are available, this will make Maintenance and development more efficient. To get proper speed in the new project, you can start working on the Segue for the new project. You can even use the documentation in places where necessary.
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Why Documentation Matters and Why It Should Be Added to the Code?
When it comes to software development, there is always a plethora. DRY, KISS, SOLID, etc., but there is no simple catchphrase when it comes to commenting or documenting the code. Documentation is one of the important parts of development, and it helps in becoming a better developer and working with the team. Because of the time, the code needs to be documented. Within a certain time frame, a developer has to develop a feature. There is no moment when there is a need to stop and document everything related to code.
The codes are needed to be reviewed, unit tests, and automation tests apart from writing and designing. Documentation is given the least attention, which needs to be corrected. Documentation is one of the best solutions to help you with the feature if you want to make any changes. It's very important to take out the extra time to write a proper description that will help in saving a huge amount in the future.
Documentation Will Make Coding Easy:
Suppose anyone wants to understand what exactly happens inside your coding. In that case, all you have to do is point them to the documentation. This will help in saving a lot of time as they don't have to depend on you being a developer if you want to understand anything, then this helps you a lot.
- The codes that are used in creating features are very complicated. When looking at one section of code may not make it clear several other sections are deeply linked to it.
- All the service comes with a unique API with it. Documentation is needed when writing how to use those APIs that can be read outside the code.
- The co-workers in another department can even read the documentation and know how it works properly.
- The code you wrote will help you act differently when you look at it. You can even change things if they don't meet your expectations.
Conclusion:
Documentation is essential for software development, as it is seen in any situation with an application. Still, there is no help file with it, and there is little time to write complete documentation. There are several benefits of documentation. Some of them are that you can easily preserve the system's information in the different cycles so that you can remember when you need them again for any changes. The main objective of the documentation is to teach those unfamiliar with the whole system.
