Introduction
Often, as soon as the segment of medium-sized businesses or startups starts to talk about innovative projects that draw their capabilities from Web 3 technologies, the need arises for consulting and practical support from any experienced company for the development of IT projects. Specialists strive to study as thoroughly as possible the market for such services, the reputation of the companies that offer them, the experience of their employees, as well as the results of the development and implementation of IT proposed projects. Naturally, it is impossible to make the right choice of supplier simply by studying the list of development companies. For example, leaders in the field of infrastructure solutions within the framework of blockchain technology, such as Dysnix, not only demonstrate many years of experience in project development but also confirm this by the presence of highly qualified DevOps and DevSecOps specialists.
Management of the development
Often, ordinary users ask a simple question: what falls into the category of IT products? The answer is as simple as the question itself: anything within the framework of IT technology, intended for use. Any program, website, or application that offers some solutions to achieve the user’s goals will be an IT product. Agreeing with this, it is obvious that the process of developing an IT product is a complex task, and often very labor-intensive, requiring the efforts of many specialists. Within the framework of one project, various categories of specialists work, performing tasks in two directions: management of the development (managers) and the practical development (development team).
Any process must be managed in order to be carried out effectively. Speaking about the process of developing a software product, let us note, first of all, the product manager. He cares about the development strategy, and how the product will be sold, i.e. he constantly “keeps his finger on the pulse”. Of course, the product manager is practically not involved in the development itself, since his task is to solve market-related issues. Closer to the development team is the development manager. Its function is to monitor the process of work in the team, determine local tasks for each team member, and control the deadlines for their completion. It can be summarized that it is the product manager and development manager who manage the entire software development process.
The development team
The development team itself includes specialists who also perform different tasks.
– An analyst is a kind of subject matter expert. In other words, the analyst must have maximum information about the segment of activity where the product being developed will be used. The analyst processes task information for all team members and competently and clearly explains to everyone what needs to be done within the framework of their specific task.
– An interface designer first of all must think through and propose the most convenient way to operate the product being developed and only after that create its interface.
– A usability specialist is obliged to check whether the interface created by the designer is convenient to use. In practice, it looks like this: the usability invites potential users of the product being developed and invites them to evaluate the convenience of the interface by starting to use it in practice. The task of usability is to collect and analyze all user actions and report the result to the designer so that he can make changes if necessary.
– Developers perform their task of writing code for a software product. Based on their functions, they are divided into front-end and back-end developers. The backend developer receives the task directly from the analyst, and the frontend developer, in addition to the analyst, is also assigned the task by the interface designer.
– The tester must find as many errors – bugs – in the software product as possible. Depending on what bugs were discovered, the tester sends the product to those development participants (analyst, designer, developers) who must fix them. Despite the fact that it is almost impossible to create a software product completely free of errors, the task of the tester is to bring to the user a product with the minimum possible number of bugs.
What is mandatory and optional in the development process
As you can see, in the process of developing a software product, a considerable number of specialists are involved, who solve a considerable number of problems, while performing many different communications. To prevent the development process from turning into chaos, there are various development methodologies, the most popular of which is Agile.
In conclusion, let us remind you that all functions described above is not the kind of mandatory standard or law, failure to comply with which entails some kind of sanctions. In some companies, one specialist quite successfully combines several functions, and in startups, all functions can be performed by two, or sometimes by one person. However, in all cases, the next stages of the development process must remain mandatory: planning, design, coding, testing, and subsequent support of the software product.