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Overview:

• ● Understanding every stage of a software development process can help your company know what needs to be done before having a digital product for your business.
• ● Among the main development stages are: requirements gathering, financial analysis, project development, testing, and more.
• ● See more details about each stage below.

Nowadays, it’s common for startups, scale-ups, and established companies to want to implement a software development process in their business.

With intense market competition—regardless of industry—demand for complete solutions such as custom software and custom apps has grown exponentially as technology advances.

Because of that, before your company decides to hire a specialized technology provider, it’s important to understand how the software development process works.

That way, you’ll know where your company stands in the decision process and you’ll also understand the needs that a technical project of this scale requires.

Follow along and see everything about the software development process, its stages, and why they are so important.

Need custom software? Get to know X-Apps’ software factory

How does the software development process work?

The software development process is carried out in stages.

In other words, from the client’s initial interest to the final delivery of the project, it’s important that each stage is executed with maximum attention and care, ensuring every feature the client wants is delivered within the timeline defined in the contract.

Even though each technology company has its own development method, some stages are common across most of them—including here at X-Apps.

So, check the topics below for more details on each stage.

Stages that are part of the software development process

The main—and most common—stages are: requirements gathering, requirements analysis, financial analysis, project development, testing, and MVP deployment.

After these stages, it’s common for development companies to keep in touch so new features can be added to the project and also to support maintenance when necessary.

1. Requirements gathering

The first—and most important—stage of the software development process is requirements gathering.

This is where developers and business stakeholders meet to understand what problem the future software or app is meant to solve.

In addition, this stage is where key features are listed and prioritized, and where the team evaluates whether the proposal is viable within a given development timeline.

In our experience, we’ve seen several projects that could not move forward due to the large number of requirements proposed by the hiring company.

To address this, we identify the most important features needed for an MVP.

After the first launch, new features can be added at any time.

2. Requirements analysis

After requirements are gathered, the second phase of the software development process is the careful analysis of those features.

In this stage, the development team performs an in-depth analysis of the information collected in the previous phase and begins building development models to organize the production stage.

That way, the company hired to build the proposed solution drafts guidelines that can be followed, and later one of them will be chosen and applied strictly during development.

In this process, it’s important to validate and verify the models that were built, ensuring the software will truly meet the client’s needs and confirming that the model aligns with the requirements gathered earlier.

3. Financial analysis

Another fundamental stage for effective on-demand software production is financial analysis.

Now that you know the best model to execute the project and the client’s requirements, it’s important to analyze what it will cost the client.

Software development is expensive, often costing between R$ 60,000 and R$ 100,000, and some projects can reach R$ 200,000.

This depends mainly on the complexity of the resources involved.

Within the amounts above, beyond costs related to shaping the idea, there are development costs, advertising investments, and a product improvement program, which will be carried out according to feedback from your target audience.

In addition, to measure costs more effectively, it’s important to involve an IT specialist from your team—or a full qualified team that can be hired through a staff on demand model.

These are the most qualified people to evaluate costs, timelines, and the outcomes involved in this initiative.

4. Project

After all analysis—requirements or financial—the development of the project begins.

However, this stage can be divided into several sub-stages depending on project complexity and the methodology used.

Using agile methodologies, most software development companies don’t build the entire project at once; they deliver it in cycles.

That makes it possible to deliver feedback and an MVP to the client faster, applying changes only when necessary.

If the project is built all at once, it becomes harder to change features and implement new ones if the client needs adjustments.

Within a software development process, we can divide the project into two stages: architecture design and detailed design.

The first is traditionally done by a software architect, who is responsible for creating a plan describing important aspects and decisions for development.

This includes taking into account requirement types and system organization, how parts communicate with each other, and whether there are external dependencies.

In addition, guidelines, implementation technologies, and risks are analyzed.

In the detailed design, relationships between modules are defined to determine each module’s features.

In addition, interface and database scope are also defined.

5. Testing

After developing the critical features for software or app usage, it’s extremely important to perform the testing stage with care and attention.

No matter how well you plan a software product, errors can happen. It could be, for example, a crash or an issue that prevents saving a file.

Anyone who has been through that knows how unpleasant it is to depend on a program that doesn’t work.

To address these problems, software testing is used.

It serves to find possible errors a newly developed program may have so it can be made widely available to end users.

Testing is the final stage of building your project and aims to ensure product quality before launch.

6. Deployment in the company

After testing and fixing potential issues, the software development process reaches its end and the project is ready to be compiled and installed in the client’s system.

At this stage, it’s important to deliver an intuitive and accessible interface, since many users may not have deep technical knowledge.

In addition, it’s important to provide user manuals and run short trainings to improve the client’s usage experience.

Conclusion

For your company to grow naturally and in an agile way, it is essential to decide to build custom software or a custom app for your business.

Always looking to innovate and bring differentiators that your competitors don’t have yet, trusting the software development process to a specialized company is a strong indicator your business will achieve results.

However, it’s important to note that each product type has a development timeline that can be negotiated during the initial stages.

Also remember that the investment, even though high, offers excellent long-term cost-benefit.

X-Apps has experienced professionals who execute planning within the desired timeline, generating savings and added value for a market that demands more innovation every day.

If you’re thinking about developing software, contact us. We have the right solution for what your company needs.

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