It's no longer just tech companies relying on software development to propel their businesses forward. From banks to bakeries utilizing technology to help their businesses and the products or services they sell run more effectively, businesses have had to develop new software skills and capabilities to keep up.

Businesses are understandably concerned about the endgame when it comes to what new software can do for their overall operations. How will your new machine learning improve digital marketing? What will the overall growth be? The thing is, best business practices and software development can no longer be considered two separate entities.

But what do businesses need to know to get every possible advantage out of their software development while ensuring that it's seamlessly integrated into their organization? This guide explores the ways in which business practices and software development intersect and highlights how to make development a strategic priority to keep businesses running smoothly.

How Do Business Practices and Software Development Intersect?

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Although technology is rapidly increasing across all workflows, business practices have been a bit slower to catch up. But this lag has, and surely will continue to, shed invaluable light on exactly why business practices and software development can no longer be separated from one another. The reasons for this intersection include two key principles:

Rapidly Evolving Tech In The Workplace

The effect and influence that software and tech have on our human behaviors is huge. As technology changes and develops, people also change and develop in response. Organizations are using sophisticated technologies to grow, collaborate, and streamline processes at a continually exponential rate, and workplace practices have come as an afterthought. It's a classic case of demand vs. capacity in software delivery.

The result is a palpable tension between what software development is capable of accomplishing and the scrambling workplace practices trying to keep up with this rapid change. As such, the need to implement business practices that can accommodate this lightning-fast development is more apparent now than ever before.

Business Needs Are Shaping New Tech

There was a time when business software development was localized to help improve one function in one department, mostly behind the scenes. But software, with the help of innovations like automation and AI, has breached the boundaries of this scope.

Technology, and the way we use it within our businesses, is now totally shaped by human needs. You can even buy ai domain names, demonstrating the shrinking gap between business and technology. Understanding that technology is now developed to evolve along with our business needs again shows that business practices and software development cannot be separated from one another.

Beyond this, the natural intersection of business and software has become apparent in the penalties suffered by businesses failing to keep up. They've become more vulnerable to disruption through software-driven innovations, less attractive to customers who expect to see high-quality applications, and more likely to spend money trying to optimize operations.

How to Combine Business Practices With Software Development

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So how can businesses ensure that their software development stays aligned with business practices, and moreover, how can business practices holistically incorporate software development into their overall business plan? Well, it's all about prioritizing software development rather than turning to it as an afterthought.

Define Your Goals

Once a company has decided to develop a software application, they need to evaluate their needs and set specific goals. Outlining in detail your requirements, coding, design, testing, and maintenance will help you gain insight into what's best for the overall business because you've started with it at the forefront of your plan.

To define your software development goals in detail, you need to know exactly what your company is lacking. Do you require remote workforce management to accommodate new working conditions, for example? To help, you can start by dividing the project into stages.

Start by:

• Formulating objectives
• Outlining overall business requirements to ensure the endeavor is realistic and achievable
• Creating a design mockup
• Estimating delivery time
• Estimating the overall value the software can bring to the entire business
  

By incorporating a software development plan into the business as a whole, teams can accurately estimate and measure exactly what resources will be needed to make the plan work.

And, by highlighting the software's business advantages, such as the application integrity, increased stability, and reduced number of malfunctions, the whole business can prepare.

Choose a Development Method

Because software development projects are so complex, it's beneficial for the whole business to determine a specific software development methodology. For example, a business could choose to adopt an agile software formula that incorporates automated testing. But what is automated testing and agile software development?

Simply put, automated testing allows for continuous improvements to be made to your software. This methodology will help safeguard against unnecessary resources being spent on manual testing as well as identify trouble spots long before your team can. Agile software development is a business practice whereby workflows are improved through collaboration and the encouragement of self-organized teams.

Align Software Development With Business Requirements

Rather than trying to fit your existing business plan into a software framework that looks great on paper, make your software choice is based on existing business needs. This may of course require a bit of chin-scratching to ensure you're aware of exactly what your business requirements are, and what needs to be done to achieve these.

So before searching for a software developer, ensure that every nuance of your requirements is carefully planned out and communicated. These steps will help guarantee that the solutions being built always meet the needs of the overall business.

Allow Time For Testing And Improvements

Allowing for the inevitable setbacks in your software development will help the software to adapt and change alongside your business rather than becoming a sticking point. Whether you create an insurance policy for testing times, like using a call center transcription software or a free meeting software online while this element is being tested in your new software suite, or use RPA to test continually, allowing for changes makes room for software in your overall business.

Business Practices and Software Development: Final Thoughts

Looking at the points above, the better question to ask ourselves may indeed be, "how don't business practices and software development intersect?"

Software development now reaches every corner of business development and best business practices for its deployment must reach every corner if businesses want to remain relevant.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Lau, Director of Growth Content, Dialpad

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud based contact center platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.