No matter how old your business is and regardless of the industry in which it operates, the business ecosystems are changing dynamically and are being largely driven by the use of relevant technological tools. From communications to databases, to inventory management to customer support and beyond, the importance of technological tools cannot be overlooked if one needs to stay competitive in the contemporary business world. This means, that businesses require developing software that caters to its needs and operations in order to facilitate its operations and organizational designs.

Like other industries, the education industry has lately been heavily dominated by the technology. Integrating technological tools such as tablets and virtual learning tools to create collaborative learning systems are a key to their success. This is why many educational institutes today are becoming more tech savvy and are looking to develop advanced technological tools and software that can facilitate the learning process and help with overall education management.

When it comes to getting a software developed, many organizations find themselves struggling to decide between developing a software on their own or using a third-party software development service to take care of the project. Usually, the idea of incurring additional outsourcing costs and sharing confidential data with a third party repels them from outsourcing software development. It is, however, important to understand that no matter how successful a business is otherwise, software development requires technical expertise which might not be everyone’s core competence. If you are trying to plan a software development project on your own without involving a third party, here are a few things that you should know.

Getting the Requirements Right

When you are developing a software, you need to understand that different stakeholders will be using it and it might serve a different purpose for each stakeholder. It is important that you consider the needs of all stakeholders and incorporate them into your project plan. In order to do so, it is important that you communicate all the information to your team adequately and make sure they know what they are expected to do. The timelines and budgets need to be explicitly defined to the team but you should also have a contingency plan as there is always some chance of actual costs exceeding the estimate costs when it comes to software development.

Data Security

Data protection is one of the biggest concern in software development projects. Hacking and data breach tools have become as sophisticated as cybersecurity tools over a period of time. Your data is your key asset and you will in for a huge business, financial, market and legal trouble if you lose your data to an unauthorized third party and therefore you need to have exceptional coding practices and security protocols. Other than having strict internal security protocols, make sure to have third-party security audits at regular intervals so that your software, apps and all digital properties can be assessed for security compliance. You need to be prepared that data security will consume a good chunk of your human and capital resources.

Consistent Speed and Performance

One of the biggest downsides of dealing with tech is that it changes rapidly and dynamically. If you fail to keep up with it, you will become obsolete in no time. When it comes to advancement, more often than not, technological advancement mainly revolve around speed and performance efficiency. Improved technology means faster speed and better performance. Similarly, when your user is running your application, he will expect it to load as fast as possible, ideally, the application launch time should not exceed 5 seconds. You would not want to frustrate your user enough to abandon your application. Make sure you have optimized all performance areas such as compression of media files, data management, content management systems, bugs removal and information processing efficiency.

Optimum Scaling

The economic rule of any operation is to be efficient and to make sure that your resources are neither under-utilized nor over utilized. Only an optimum utilization of resources will ensure that you can gain a maximum output in the minimum input. This theory is applicable to software development projects as well. When you launch a software or an application, you need to pay attention to how scalable it is. It should be able to efficiently respond to whatever number of users will be using it. Planning scalability in case of software development can be tricky and many organizations resort to cloud computing as an alternative.

Legal Compliance

Your software needs to be fit to cater to your stakeholders in the best possible manner, use your resources efficiently and achieve your business objectives. However, at the same time, you need to be cautious of your legal compliance. Every country has laws pertaining to software, data protection and cybersecurity and you need to make sure that your software is compliant with the relevant laws.