Key Strategies for Successful Software Development for Startups: Crucial Insights

Having a good idea for a startup is great, but what about its implementation? Statistics show that only two out of five startups are profitable, while the rest either fail or continue to bring losses to their owners. Obviously, the high-quality work of the development team is not a sufficient condition for the startup’s success, but this is exactly what lays a solid foundation for ensuring its viability. Actually, below, we will discuss this aspect and explain to you what stages and best practices are inherent in it. 

Why Should Startups Accelerate Software Development?

Software startup development is somewhat different from the development of full-fledged software, and it is not only due to possible budget limitations and the need to release a product to the market as quickly as possible.

‍

The fact is that a startup is always an innovative solution, and the plan for its implementation may be unclear from the very beginning. In this regard, to understand which approach to choose, development teams have to do extensive preparatory work, which consists of a much more global study of the market and audience than occurs when developing software with established business models. Due to the high resource intensity of the preparatory stages, the practical implementation of the project has to be accelerated, which, in turn, may require a revision of the usual approaches to software development.

A Step-by-Step Guide to the Startup Software Development Process

Let's dive deeper into the specifics of startup development and find out what stages this process consists of.

Ideation and Concept Development

When it comes to a startup, the ideation stage is one of the most time-consuming. It usually includes a global market analysis, the purpose of which is to identify the needs, desires, and pain points of the target audience, create customer profiles, and analyze competitors to determine their strengths and weaknesses. The information collected during research is compared with the project idea, after which the latter is subject to refining (for example, through collective brainstorming). Then, taking into account the project budget and other resource constraints, the development team forms a concept, which becomes the starting point for the beginning of development.

Requirements Gathering and Analysis

At this stage, the collected insights are transformed into technical and non-technical requirements for the product. That is, this is not only what was directly defined by its owner and other stakeholders, but also ideas that came to the team during brainstorming, market research, and industry research in general (to determine the necessary standards for software), as well as competitor analysis. After the development team collects requirements, they are analyzed for consistency, logic, and lack of duplication.

Design and Prototyping 

This stage begins with prototyping – creating a graphic sketch of the structure of the software solution. As its details are agreed upon with stakeholders and all other development team members, designers can also add some interactive elements (to demonstrate possible user interaction scenarios) and other details to the prototype to obtain a full-fledged design as a result.

Development and Coding 

Now everything is ready to “revive” the product – implement user requests to the server where necessary, organize data collection and processing, and generally make the design created at the previous stage functional. To do this, the development team writes the program code for the product’s server part (backend) and user part (frontend), as well as implements database queries.

Testing and Quality Assurance 

As individual components of the product are completed, they are subjected to unit testing to ensure they work correctly and to fix bugs before release. Once all the code for the product is written and the final build is done, the whole product is tested several times more until the team has fixed all discrepancies with the list of specifications and obtained a solution that can be presented to end users. 

Deployment and Release 

Now, the team can start deploying the product in the environment where it is used. This process is usually carried out with high frequency (each time with a newer product version), due to the specifics of the startup concept, which implies rapid processing of user feedback and subsequent optimization of the product taking this information into account.

Maintenance and Continuous Improvement 

Due to the limited time for developing the first version of a startup and the innovative approach to solving user problems, the initially chosen product concept may be imperfect and require refining. Also, after the release, the project team or real users may discover bugs that couldn’t be identified during the testing stages that took place earlier. Given these defects, the team must constantly improve the product.

Tips for Accelerating Software Development in Startups

Now, let's find out what can speed up the startup development.

Adopt Agile Methodology

The Agile methodology implies non-stop development cycles and continuous, feedback-based improvement. In particular, at the end of each development cycle, the team presents the product owner with a functioning solution, on the basis of which the first feedback can already be obtained. Thus, if any corrections arise, they are taken into account in the next development cycle, which ultimately brings the product launch date closer.

Focus on MVP Development

Developing a minimum viable product is another way to speed up the process of implementing your startup idea. In fact, you agree with your team on the minimum set of product features necessary for the product to perform the tasks initially assigned. Then, after such a solution is deployed and you obtain feedback about it, you can add secondary functionality and properties to it, gradually launching new, more feature-rich versions.

Utilize Outsourcing

If the problem of a time-consuming development process is caused by a lack of local technical talents or difficulties in hiring them, you can resort to outsourcing software development for startups. Usually, due to extensive talent pools, outsourcing providers form teams in 1-2 weeks, after which the development process itself begins.

Prioritize User-Centric Design 

Since one of the most resource-intensive stages of startup development is usually its optimization taking into account user feedback, it can be reduced by initially paying sufficient attention to analyzing the target audience, creating user personas, planning user flows, and other measures that are inherent in user-centric design.

Implement Continuous Integration and Delivery 

Adopting CI/CD practices from the very beginning of development will help your team implement the product incrementally, aiming for its constant improvement and optimization. In a deep sense, this approach speeds up the software development process for startup itself, too since the team's work does not stop even for a day as new versions are implemented.

Which Software Development Services Should Startups Outsource? 

Finally, let's find out what types of services exactly can be delegated to your outsourcing provider.

Full-Stack Development 

This type of service involves entrusting the entire development process (from start to finish) to a team of specialists on your provider's side. This is an ideal option for cooperation when you do not have an internal technical team since in this case, you will be able to deal with the business aspects of your project only, without being distracted by supervising the implementation of its technical part.

Mobile App Development 

Generally speaking, this type of software company startup service is no different from the previous one in its format of cooperation, except that your technology partner’s team will be involved in the process of developing a mobile solution, with all the specifics inherent in this – the need to adapt the solution to various user devices, versions of operating systems, app store rules, etc.

UI/UX Design 

Instead of developing the entire project, the contractor's team can take on the implementation of its UI/UX design, taking into account the needs, pain points, and goals of its target audience, as well as global market trends, generally accepted usability standards, and so on.

Quality Assurance and Testing 

Also, you can delegate testing of your software solution – in this case, the technical team will have to check its functionality on various user devices, software environments, platforms, etc. Additionally, if necessary, the contractor's team can check your product for vulnerabilities in its software code by performing some pentesting practices.

DevOps and Cloud Services 

If the deployment of your software solution involves changes to your business's internal digital infrastructure, you can outsource services related to the deployment of cloud CI/CD pipelines, automated infrastructure management, and end-to-end monitoring of operations within it.

Support and Maintenance 

Finally, if the solution is already built and deployed in its use environment, you can delegate tasks related to its optimization, post-release bug fixing, and update development to your digital partner's team.

How Che IT Can Help You

Are you looking for a team that would bring your startup idea to life without inflating your budget? Just feel free to contact us. Our team specializes in custom software development for startups and has a set of time-proven practices that allow us to implement even the most non-trivial solutions in just a few months. Write or call us right now to discuss the details of your project.