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Introduction
Balancing speed and quality in software development is a common challenge. It is often difficult to find the right balance between delivering quickly and delivering high-quality software. However, it is possible to achieve both speed and quality in software development by following some best practices.
There are some best practices we have been following in our teams to deliver really high quality software.
Have a North Star
Agile teams often focus on delivering small, incremental changes to their software. This often leads to keep teams busy with the tasks or projects which are not bringing enough value to the overall company at their stage.
While it is important to focus on delivering small, incremental changes, it is also important to keep the big picture in mind. It is important to have a clear understanding of the overall goals of your software development project and how each small change contributes to those goals.
Keeping the big picture in mind helps each member of your team to challenge the status quo and highlight any red flags that may arise during the development process. Which is really key to make sure you are on the right path with the speed.
Keeping the big picture properly documented, and use right tools to that. Miro is a great tool to brainstorm together with team and document your decision on a digital board.
Vertical Slicing
Vertical slicing is a software development technique that involves breaking down a project into small, manageable pieces. This allows you to deliver value to your customers quickly and get feedback early in the development process. By focusing on delivering small, incremental changes, you can achieve both speed and quality in software development.
Vertical slicing also helps to reduce the risk of project failure by allowing you to identify and address issues early in the development process. This can help you to deliver high-quality software that meets the needs of your customers.
Two Weeks Rule
We have been following this rule in our team for a while now. We make sure that we are delivering something valuable to our customers every two weeks, that is in a sprint. This helps us to stay focused on delivering small, incremental changes which keeps your production product.
Say no to Waterfall
Waterfall can be slow and inflexible, making it difficult to deliver high-quality software quickly. When you work on a project with waterfall approach, you run into the risk of building a considerably complex software which easily goes into scope creep.
This can lead to delays in the project and can result in poor quality software.
It is so much natural to underestimate the amount of time it takes to build that project. Forget about the time it takes to for beta testing and rolling out the whole software.
Keep Some Buffer
Things can go wrong and you might just fall a short on your plan. It actually happens more often than not. So its always a best idea to keep some buffer.
Go Live Checklist
It often happens that your team gets into tunnel vision and builds a product that is vertically sliced but there are some edge cases that are not covered. It is important to have a go-live checklist that you can use to ensure that your software is ready for production.