How Long Does It Take to Code a Software Package

One of the most productive ways of increasing your company is to build usable and stable applications for your business. The creation of custom software applications enables them to fulfill the company’s personalized needs. That means it will take some time for those software systems, bundles, and suites to meet your company’s necessary standards.

It is important to remember that the purpose of a software program is the major determinant of the time necessary for the software to be created. However, a software development project takes an average of 4 to 9 months to be completed. This includes the time required for the software to be planned, developed, tested, and published.

Well, for most individuals, this would seem like a long time. However, to guarantee its longevity and extensibility, a successful and robust software program requires careful engineering. The stages involved in software development will be addressed in this article, which will help you understand why the process can be longer than anticipated.

Step 1 Design

This is the first stage of a project to create software, which takes 2 to 4 weeks or so. This stage focuses on designing the program in essence. A software development project needs to have a detailed engineering plan, much like a typical construction project. You can then continue to construct the framework and then, following the product specifications, complete the construction project.

The design process gives developers a clear view of the software they need to build and how it can be created. This stage emphasizes the description of the software’s main features, as well as user requirements. Usually, to come up with the following, you need not consult with the software development team:

• Core features
• Different needs for interfaces
• Device specifications
• Definitions of the end-user, as well as their software experience
• The preliminary scope of growth, which should be constructed in the first, second, and successive stages

The time of this process is unpredictable and depends heavily on your willingness to answer the development team’s questions and also make the decisions necessary for the project to continue. Both the customer and developers will have a specified design of the new app at the end of the design stage. The experts at Entrance Consulting say that during this point, it is important to ensure that you work hand in hand with the developers to prevent surprises down the road.

Step 2 Development

When you have the blueprint, the design of the new software solution will begin. This will usually take an average of 3 to 6 months. To manage and organize the development team, this process will require someone. Thus, to keep the software development team coordinated and within the set timeline, you would need a project manager.

Also, the production team has some important tasks as well:

• Software Developers are expected to write the appropriate code.
• Technical architects assist in the structure design.
• Designers support to design the user experience (UX) or user interface to help design (UI)

A full-build program is the product of the final step. It doesn’t matter if the product is lean, just as long as it meets the blueprint requirements produced in the design process.

The project manager should take a few days to plan the development teams’ schedule before the actual development begins, delegate tasks to various team members, and backlog the tasks that are not relevant. Also, to ensure that the project remains on track, the project manager has to recognize and minimize any hazards.

The framework or structure is the first thing that the team needs to create. This helps to evaluate the technologies needed, to see how they can work together. It is the responsibility of the technical architect to do this, and it takes approximately 14 days to complete. This will depend, however, on the sophistication of the integration of the system or whether any unconventional technologies are integrated.

The actual coding stage now begins after finalizing the product design and layout. This is the longest stage for software development projects, and it takes 3 to 6 months on average. In situations where the program needs to be delivered within a limited period, additional developers may be brought on board.

This comes, however, with a big challenge. The addition of new developers to the current team would increase the team’s size. In essence, this makes the team more difficult to handle, which risks delaying the whole project.

Step 3 Compliance

In the software development process, this is the last step. It takes about 3 to 6 weeks for the enforcement process. It usually includes comparing and checking the final product against usability and coding requirements. This can be compared to final checks in the building industry for compliance with the safety code.

The types of tests needed for software usually differ. Any software development project, however, should undergo at least the following tests:

• Coding Reviews- This ensures that when writing the code, the considerations for creation and extensibility are taken into account. The code inspection helps the client to verify if the developers have adopted protocols and styles that have been recognized. Also, the customer can check if the program is safe, easy to maintain, and open to future updates.
• End-to-end research- this testing includes the use, as the end-users will do, of all the app features. Also, the test enables developers to verify how different elements of the code and other incorporated technologies can work together. Technically, during the development stage, features are checked separately. The back-to-end research, however, incorporates all the characteristics to verify if they work together.
• User acceptance testing, also known as UAT, is a rigorous inspection carried out by the consumer to ensure that the final product meets their needs. During this time, the client is usually keen to check if something was overlooked by the developers while checking the app.

Conclusion

Other than those tests mentioned above, you may recommend additional tests to be conducted by the developer or the client. Any of these checks include testing whether the app works on different PC operating systems, on various web browsers, or different smartphones, such as Android, iOS, or Blackberry.

It is important to conduct additional tests if the program has multiple users at the same time or processes high volumes of data. Such tests should verify the efficiency and load times of heavy traffic to ensure that the program stays stable. The last test should be to verify how various conditions can be treated by the program, such as corrupt files, invalid data values, or timeouts. The test should also verify how the program interacts with systems from third parties.