The 4 Key Components of Modern Software Culture
The Modern Software Culture embraces DevOps teams, agile development practices, test-driven development (TDD), and continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD).
This software culture has emerged in the industry over the last 10 years. During this time, INGENO observed that not all businesses have the resources to set up their own in-house teams of software developers.
As a solution, INGENO set out to provide businesses with Agile Custom Software Development as a Service: Affordable access to a pool of world-class software development teams trained under the Modern Software Culture.
INGENO’s elastic pool of software engineers delivers significant value to businesses with any development budget.
Let’s explore the 4 components of INGENO’s development teams and find out how they can help your business create custom software products.
Cross-Functional DevOps Teams
Development operations (DevOps) refers to teams of computer engineers who all perform both the role of a software developer and an IT technician. Typically, software developers handle the coding, and IT technicians take care of infrastructure, deployment of solutions and operations.
All of INGENO’s development teams are DevOps teams meaning that each team member handles both software development and IT duties. Every team member takes ownership of every step of the research and development pipeline.
Agile Software Developers
At its core, the modern software culture is Agile.
Software developers used to be slowed down by rigid planning processes. But when Robert “Uncle Bob” C. Martin introduced Agile, everything changed.
Agile is an approach to software development where implementation and delivery are favoured over planning and documentation.
INGENO’s DevOps teams follow the many principles of Agile software development, such as:
Communicating with project stakeholders frequently
Partaking in short, daily stand-up planning meetings
Working in self-organizing teams
Developing improved solutions iteratively and continuously
Taking risks to innovate
Writing automated tests with 100% coverage (under test-driven development)
Delivering small releases early and often (under continuous integration and deployment)
These principles enable INGENO’s DevOps teams to deliver high-quality code quickly and often.
Test-Driven Development
Embracing modern software culture means following test-driven development.
TDD is a software development approach, popularized by Kent Beck, where testing is the focus of software development.
Under TDD, developers express software requirements as software test cases rather than a list of requirements written in plain English.
INGENO’s DevOps teams always write a full suite of automated tests to provide 100% coverage to all newly added code. They write code that complies with a set of tests that encapsulate all the requirements of the software they’re about to develop. They can be confident that they’ve fulfilled all the requirements when their code passes all the tests.
Developers following test-driven development select everything from their coding style to their production environment technologies to support their automated, fast-executing suites of tests. A focus on testing is crucial to guarantee that software works exactly as expected.
Continuous Integration and Deployment
INGENO’s DevOps teams continuously integrate and continuously deploy (CI/CD) their code changes to always deliver early and often.
Our developers make code improvements in tiny increments and merge (integrate) their code changes with the main code branch as frequently as possible.
When a developer merges their code changes with the main branch, pre-written tests run automatically to check that all software requirements are still met. In other words, automated tests check that the changes didn’t break anything.
When the automated tests fail, the merged code is unmerged. A fully working build is always ready to be deployed at any time.
Continuous integration avoids long, frustrating searches for bugs that occur with one giant merging of code. Bugs are quicker and easier to find in small changes.
As well as continuously integrating, INGENO’s developers continuously deploy their working builds. Continuous deployment is the automated release of updated software to customers on a consistent schedule.
All new builds pass the automated tests that reflect the requirements of the software. So, INGENO’s developers don’t need to spend time manually testing new builds before they are deployed.
Under continuous deployment, developers have more time to spend on research and development that creates value for businesses.
The Value of Operating Under the Modern Software Culture
Humble compiled a collection of incredible statistics that demonstrate the real business value of operating under the modern software culture.
While the statistics may seem unbelievable, INGENO experiences similar numbers when working with clients.
30X faster shipments can be explained by Agile teams. Agile software development promotes spending less time on planning and documentation. Agile developers focus on implementing code that meets the software requirements as quickly as possible, resulting in significantly faster shipping times.
1000X faster deployment phase can be explained by the automation aspect of continuous deployment. New builds go through a fully automatic deployment pipeline without any human intervention.
450X more deployment can be explained by continuous integration, continuous deployment, and test-driven development. These practices enable developers to deploy new builds on a frequent schedule. The current build is always ready for release. So, when it’s time to release an update, automated deployment takes over and ships whatever is ready at the time.
A great example of when CI/CD and TDD boosted deployment rate in a real-world scenario is when INGENO delivered 5.2 updated software versions per day to one of its Silicon Valley clients – from day one of the project.
12X faster to restore outage can be explained by developers making small changes between deployed builds (CI/CD), meaning the causes of outages are easier to find. Also, modern developers are part of DevOps teams. They have better IT and infrastructure capabilities than traditional developers. They can solve a wider array of outage issues themselves without having to explain the situation with a separate department.
4X cost reduction per project can be explained by the increased involvement of stakeholders in the development process. Agile developers communicate with stakeholders frequently to reduce the number of assumptions that they have to make. Fewer assumptions result in fewer changes further into the development process, saving both time and money.
5X more innovation can be explained by Agile’s promotion of risk-taking. Developers are encouraged to pursue solutions that they think will work, even if their proposed solutions aren’t tried and tested.
Using Modern Software Culture to Take the Lead
Companies that were once small used the modern software culture to dethrone dominating tech companies that were stuck in their ways.
Apple out-innovated Blackberry. Netflix out-innovated Blockbuster. Facebook out-innovated Myspace.
Of course, other key factors were involved with the rise of these companies. But the modern software culture contributed to them out-innovating their slower, rigid competitors.
The dethroned giants that faded out of existence failed to change their outdated software development culture.
Implementing the modern software culture is not quick or cheap to achieve, which is why INGENO created Agile Software Development as a Service.
Get the agility, expertise, and scale that your business needs to create software products that will dominate your industry.
Get in touch with INGENO today to find out how much value Agile Software Development as a Service can bring to your business.