Software development projects are dynamic, and managing them is not an easy process. Just when you think everything’s under control, something unexpected happens. That means requirements change overnight, due dates change and that “simple” feature turns into a 3-week nightmare.
If you are a project manager, team leader or stakeholder, you understand these battles. Fortunately, the majority of software development challenges are predictable and with a proper strategy, you can handle most of them effectively.
So, what are the greatest challenges development teams are facing now, and how can they be managed? Let’s take a look.
The Requirements That Keep on Moving
We know, you probably have been there. The project development began well with clearly defined requirements first, but after 3 weeks, the customer wanted something different. This happens because the customer often struggles to convey their actual needs in the beginning. At first, they are not aware of the technical possibilities or limitations. Be flexible, set agile methodologies and adapt to changes.
- Break down the tasks for better understanding.
- Write easy-to-grasp user stories.
- Make regular stakeholder meetings to detect changes early.
Tip: To keep up with changing expectations, implement tools such as Jira or Trello to do backlog grooming and track requirements.
Off-Target Time and Budget
Software development is difficult to estimate since it tackles exclusive issues. Here, the demands to generate estimates about the software development, without seeing the complete picture, create unrealistic expectations.
- Look at other past projects done to have feasible baselines.
- Divide everything into smaller, estimable pieces.
- Add 20% buffer time for slack/unexpected issues.
- Get your development team on board for estimation discussions.
Tip: Use MS Project or Asana to keep up with actual vs. estimated and then modify your process over time.
Communication Issues
Most of the time, projects fail due to communication issues rather than technical problems. With disjointed teams, work is duplicated, actual needs are misunderstood and ultimately, frustration rises. Similarly, remote teams also face issues where the context of the project remains unclear.
- Make clear communication channels using tools like Slack.
- Have daily check-ins focused on blockers and priorities.
- Develop one source of truth for project information.
- Only use email for formal documentation.
- Keep the project information in platforms such as Confluence for easy access.
Tip: You should develop a communication plan at the time of project kickoff to eliminate confusion.
Increasing Technical Debt
Technical debt is incurred when teams compromise on certain aspects just to meet deadlines. The band-aid solutions accumulate and the code becomes hard to write and modify. This creates a cycle of low quality and there is more pressure to cut corners.
- Review the code as an essential stage of the regular workflow.
- Invest in CI and automated testing.
- Schedule refactoring time for each sprint
- View code maintenance as a part of the project rather than an add-on
Tip: Build a culture of “quality first”, where developers feel free to share their concerns about the code.
Team Morale and Burnout Issues
The tight deadlines, complexity of problems and the dynamic needs create great stress for the development teams as well. A team experiencing burnout adversely affects quality, and the result is the loss of good employees, which creates a vicious circle.
- Assign realistic workloads that allow space to deal with last-minute work.
- Celebrate the success and reward hard work publicly.
- Be flexible with remote employees and make an organized leave schedule.
- Conduct weekly or monthly one-on-one check-ins concerning support needs.
Tip: Psychological safety is one of the priorities that a manager should adopt in order to establish a sustainable pace and a constructive and contented team.
Individually functioning Teams
Development, QA, operations and business teams within large organizations communicate very little with one another. Due to this, the work transfer is delayed and the handoffs are miscommunicated.
- Form cross-functional working teams with their representatives.
- Use open tools such as GitLab and Azure DevOps in order to be transparent.
- Boost teamwork but share collective retrospectives
Tip: Promote collaboration by common workshops, retrospectives, or virtual project rooms.
Keeping Security as a Last Priority
Later identified security risks can be extremely expensive to repair and disorienting to development. Most of the team members take security as pre-launch activities despite the rising concerns about compliance needs and cyber attacks.
- Train programmers to make sure they follow secure programming practices such as OWASP Top 10 so that vulnerabilities are avoided.
- Carry out security reviews at project milestones in order to detect risks.
- Use security scanning in development pipelines
- Involve experts early to deploy the shift-left security.
- Employ AI applications like GitHub Copilot to scrutinize the code and comply with laws by adopting the GDPR frameworks.
Tip: The security is supposed to be a collective responsibility within project life cycles
Deployment Disasters
Even the software that is well-developed can fail during deployment. Database migrations fail, bugs in a configuration or unanticipated production interactions occur. Lack of clearly defined rollback strategies can make failed deployment take even hours to put systems back up.
- Establish tagging environments that mimic the production environments.
- Mark a ‘hyper care’ time to analyze performance and user feedbacks.
- Gradually roll out and use feature flags for testing
- Maintain documentation and prepare a clear rollback process.
- Appoint support staff to look after deployments
Tips: Consider deployment plan processes as a sprint effort
Emerging Challenges
The conventional project management issues are no longer the only problems that software development is facing. The major future trends that will be reshaping the industry are as follows:
Digital trust and security: 51% of tech leaders list security as the most critical issue and as AI and IOT devices multiply, it is necessary to raise the level of security. Introduce DevSecOps, employ AI-strengthened tools to vet the code, e.g., GitHub Copilot, and improve data privacy with reference to the GDPR, and efficient encryption.
Complexity associated with AI implementation: 55% of the executives face difficulty regarding AI implementation, but there is a need to automate the generation and testing of code. Begin with the pilot programs, educate the employees about how they will use the AI tools, and choose the scalable AI platforms that would work with the business goals.
Talent wholesale: 48% of companies struggle to attract skilled developers in the AI and cybersecurity sectors. So they are considering joint education initiatives, upskilling strategies to educate their current staff, and low–code development platforms such as Microsoft Power Apps to reduce dependency on highly skilled developers.
Modernization of old systems: Outdated monolithic systems hinder modern integration. This should be solved with a microservices architecture, containerization with Docker, and cloud migration to have a higher degree of flexibility and security.
IoT Systems: The increasing use of IoT brings hardware integration problems. Use simulation tools to test, implement DevSecOps to protect IoT and stay updated with the new protocols.
Tip: As a project manager, it is always advisable to make clear the aim of the AI adoption and sustainability and ensure that it can be connected to business goals.
Wrapping Up
By now, you have come to know the software development challenges and solutions. All software projects have their problems, and a good manager foresees and deals with them in advance. Communicate, plan and develop your team members as people, not resources.
Perfect projects don’t exist. In this case, you cannot avoid problems but rather see how you can deal with them charmingly. Even a complex project can be successful if it is developed through strategic processes and a proper mindset. A successful project manager is able to create an environment where teams are able to contribute the best no matter how difficult the situation is.
Author Biography:- Harikrishna Kundariya, is a marketer, developer, IoT, Cloud & AWS savvy, co-founder, and Director of eSparkBiz, a Software Development Company. His 14+ years of experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and SaaS applications.
