Approach to the Software Development Process

From it, you will learn

What are the development stages and our approaches to them?

Software development consists of different stages, which contain many essential processes. Learn about each of them and our best approaches that make them most stable, transparent, and efficient.

How do we ensure the quality of development and maintenance?

Find out how much we put on testing to ensure a high-quality product at the release stage and continuous and effective product improvement at the maintenance stage.

How do we manage a team of professionals productively?

Learn which practices we use to manage a team of professionals during the active development stage to make their work and communication completely seamless and most productive.

How do we make a profitable foundation for a project?

Find out how, even at the discovery stage, we help you evaluate an idea, make the best plan for its development, and choose the most profitable solutions for its implementation.

How do we build mutually beneficial relationships?

See what principles we follow to bring the most value to the customer, provide good opportunities for employees, and move the company into a bright future.

And much nore

We believe that the secret to success is an open exchange of knowledge and experience. You'll find many practical aspects of development here that are not obvious but extremely important.

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Time Tracking in Software Development

Time management is essential to the productivity of a team as a whole and every individual team member. It is one of the main reasons why we track time.

Effective Remote Team Communication in 2025: Stand-ups, Meetings, and 1-on-1s

Managing a team of on-site developers isn't an easy task. Add in a large team working remotely, and it becomes more complicated.As a remote-first company, Mad Devs needed to build efficient communication practices to ensure every team member performs at their best and teams deliver value to our clients, from small startups to complex enterprise solutions. The result is a system that optimizes communication across teams and the company.

Software Engineering Reports: How to Write a Project Status Report

Project reporting is important in software development. Among all the reports that we write, a software engineering report takes a special place. Here, you can read about the importance of software reporting, what a software project status report is, the benefits of reporting and risks that arise if reports are not written, and how to write a report correctly.A software engineering report is a document that communicates the implementation of design ideas to stakeholders. It is made to communicate the results of work and to outline the plan for future tasks. At Mad Devs, we write a software engineering project report every month to:In this software project report sample, we can clearly see that our software engineering project reports include: If there are changes in the team, we mention them in the section "Team's updates & changes."

Retrospective Meeting in Software Development Team

Scrum retrospective meetings are a practice widely adopted by Agile teams. While earlier, such a practice didn’t exist, it has already proven its efficiency. With the development of the Agile environment, teams started being focused on frequent product releases and customer updates. As soon as one release is performed, another one follows. With such a pace, it is difficult to stop and reflect on what was done, what was good, what was bad, and what can be improved.

Software Development Metrics: How to Measure Productivity in Software Development?

According to research by the Society for Human Resource Management and Gallup, less than 20% of employees feel their company's reviews of their performance inspire them to improve their work. Likewise, 95 % of managers aren't content with their companies' systems for reviews. As such, it would seem that employees have a negative, or at the very least complicated, relationship with monitoring and reviewing performance. Software developers encounter more challenges than other employees in this regard since there is commonly a knowledge gap between those conducting reviews (the business side) and those "on the ground," the developers.Despite the challenges of creating effective review systems, it is important to monitor workflows, infrastructure, and employee performance to ensure that customers receive the expected results. Given the many metrics involved in software development, a proper approach to measuring performance and productivity should support the professional development of engineers and the creation of high-quality products.

Project Management Using Jira: Workflow and Best Practices

Gone are the days when a lack of options forced us to use spreadsheets for project management and planning. Now, plenty of project management solutions are available to businesses and teams. At Mad Devs, we use Atlassian's Jira for efficient and transparent project management. However, not many project managers know that Jira is more than an efficient project management solution. It can be integrated with many other tools and services.One of the main reasons our team relies on Jira is its extensive functionality. Every project is unique and requires a special approach and a specific toolset for effective software project management with Jira. With this platform, Mad Devs can choose the necessary stack to plan, track, and release even the most complex projects. While there is no single correct way to organize a project in Jira (everything depends on its unique context), we have collected best practices based on our experience creating transparent and efficient project management practices and want to share them with you.

Importance of Software Demo

Whatever we are building—be it an app, a website, an enterprise-level solution, demo sessions are important. They help us develop better solutions, build more trustful relationships with clients, boost the team's motivation, and collect feedback. That's why we organize demo sessions on a regular basis and prepare them in our own special way. But first, let us have a look at the ways they help us to work better and build better solutions.

Importance of Documentation in Software Development

The importance of documentation in software development is very easy to underestimate, but it can be a critical mistake for a project or even an entire company. However, the role of properly written and maintained documentation throughout the software development lifecycle is essential for all parties, from the company and its developers to customers and end users. It explains all the features of a project, informs us how we can work with them, helps to understand the project's functionality, and allows us to reduce onboarding time and costs.Today we cover what software documentation is, what types there are, and why documentation is important in software development. We'll share industry best practices, approaches, and tools for documentation. Also, we will talk about single source of truth (SSOT), which is impossible without quality software documentation, but highly important to carry comprehensive information about everything that happens in a company and its projects, making this information most accessible and usable for all participants.Let's start with the concept of why there is so much attention paid to properly compiling and maintaining documentation and why having it can create a system that helps the entire company work much better.

Optimization of Software Delivery Pipeline

The development process can be compared with a construction site. While a lot of work is needed to develop databases, applications, etc., a foundation shall be created to enable productive and reliable software development and delivery. Continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD), and continuous deployment are the foundation practices that make the work on a software product easier.

Quality Assurance Software Testing Life Cycle.

Quality Assurance: Process of Software Testing Life Cycle

The quality of a software product impacts directly the brand reputation and influences client retention. Just a single faulty product can have disastrous consequences for both the business using the product and the company that has developed it. That’s why ensuring the top quality of every developed product is our main goal.That’s why we test our software. Software testing reduces the possibility of errors and bugs.

Technical Debt Management

This artilcle was updated on 7 June, 2024Technical debt is a fact of life in software development. If you skipped our first article or glossary term on the topic, here's a quick review of what it is.When teams choose a faster and simpler solution over a more reliable oneIn these situations, a team collects debt in the form of poor code quality or lack of testing that will gather interest over time. This interest will need to be paid by means of refactoring code or updating libraries and services, which require extra time and other resources. The scope of the work involved in "repaying" tech debt depends on the sacrifices the team made as well as the type of debt. Very basically, there are 2 types:

Code Review: How to Do It Properly and Reap the Benefits

Providing a customer with high-quality code is one of the primary goals of any software development team. But the truth is nobody’s perfect, and whatever a developer’s level of proficiency and experience is, people do make mistakes.Code review is a time-honored method that can help to detect errors and make your code nice and clean. What’s more, code review is not only about fixing bugs, it’s about building team cooperation. In this post, we’ll highlight the importance of code review and share our personal experience in practicing this.

Internal and External Tech Audits: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

Close examinations are what we regularly experience in our life—be it a health check or vehicle inspection. Just like a car, any software product also needs to be thoroughly examined to make sure it is well-functioning and secure for its user. Such an inspection is called an IT audit. In this post, we explain what it means, how it should be conducted, and why it matters. Keep on reading to find valuable insights from Mad Devs.Tech audits enhance business efficiency through software optimisation. That sounds impressive, but what particular benefits stand behind this definition? Let's consider the exact values of this procedure:✔ Getting your software in order: Audits reveal optimization areas that improve functionality, reduce risk, and support scalable growth.✔ Anticipating problems: An IT assessment can pinpoint weaknesses and help to anticipate and solve problems before they happen.✔ Digging at the roots: The roots of some issues can be quite unobvious, while an auditor can provide an in-depth analysis of the project and get to the heart of the problem.✔ Highlighting risks: Tech audits can expose a variety of risks in different parts of your software project, and knowing risks well means managing them effectively.✔ Getting a fresh eye: By taking a fresh look at the software project, a third-party expert can identify bottlenecks that may not be visible from within.✔ Saving time and money: Regular and timely tech audits can stave off a lot of future problems, saving you time and costs in the long run.✔ Improving customer retention: Through a tech audit, you can enhance the quality of your software, thereby increasing customer loyalty and retention.

SDLC: Developers Onboarding & Offboarding Processes

Onboarding and offboarding take an important part in the company's processes. While there are many standard practices and checklists on how to onboard a new specialist and offboard somebody who is leaving the company, we at Mad Devs have our own practices that have been proven the best for us. Earlier, onboarding was one of the most undervalued processes. Now, the approach to onboarding has changed completely. Even though in many companies, the onboarding procedures remain erratic, undocumented, casual, and limited in scope, the situation is changing for the better rapidly.

Customer Onboarding Process: Importance, Process and Best Practices

An onboarding process is a crucial step across the board. But in software development the onboarding process is, frankly, not limited to the IT team only. Even though many in the industry see a customer as somebody "from outside."Onboarding of a customer is the most vital moment in any software development project, whether it's a brand-new startup or a complex legacy system. That's why we at Mad Devs play this close to our chest. We have a structured and transparent customer onboarding process to ensure that you know everything about your project progress and how we work. From day one, you'll know what to expect—and we're always open to discussion and adjustments as the project evolves.Depending on project-specific features, the customer onboarding process template might change. Here, we are going to talk about the "fixed" parts of the process and take you for a ride on our customer onboarding process.

Managing Developers: Remote Team Communication

Remote work replaced the traditional 8-hour office routine. After the global pandemic, the business landscape underwent a profound transformation. Virtually overnight, many companies adapted to remote work and proved that the workforce could seamlessly operate from home offices and kitchen tables alike.While many tech companies have successfully navigated this transition, maintaining and fostering remote teams in the long run is the real challenge. As our world becomes more interconnected, managing teams scattered across different countries and time zones demands unique skills and strategies.Communication is a cornerstone of effective team management, and this is especially true for remote teams. Mad Devs has vast experience in managing remote developers, and we know how to do it successfully. In this article, we dive into managing remote teams in the tech industry and sustain collaboration.

SDLC: Why Do You Need Software Prototyping and Mockups?

The journey from idea to fully functioning software product is a long one that begins, sometimes, with a black-and-white sketch written in a notepad and ends as a functioning app in the hands of an end-user. The initial stages of the SDLC (software development life cycle) involve planning and designing, which in turn require the use of mockups and prototypes. While they may seem similar, there are key differences between the two concepts, which this article will explore. Furthermore, the text will explain why software teams need to invest time and resources into mockups and prototypes.

Growth Ways for Developers in Mad Devs

There’s no newbie developer who doesn’t dream of becoming a high-level professional one day. It would be strange not to have such a dream. But what does it take and how long is the way? There’s no secret formula, and you can’t just turn into a godlike programmer overnight. It takes years. However, there are some actionable practices that can make your way to professional growth shorter. Mad Devs is the place to grow and develop both professionally and personally. In this post, we’ll share our first-hand experience in helping developers become better copies of themselves.