How to Increase Your Software Development Team's Productivity
Productivity means being able to achieve your desired results with minimum effort, time, and expenses.
Software productivity refers to the ratio between the delivered working features of your developed software over the efforts, time, and expenses required for the development.
In today's fast-paced environment, one of the main challenges in software development is how to increase teams' efficiency and productivity.
Here are some tips to keep your software development team productive:
Develop clear goals and expectations.
Defining specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals for your software development team is essential to keep them aligned and motivated.
It is important to have a 1-on-1 conversation with your team members at the start of every project. Describe to them the project goals, priorities, and requirements.
Break down the project goal into smaller and achievable milestones that every member of your team can work on every week. Then work with them to determine their roles and expected contribution in achieving the team's goal.
Setting clear goals and expectations can help your team members:
Provide a clear definition of the work that needs to be done.
Work together more effectively and efficiently for better results.
Increase their productivity to achieve the desired goals.
You can use the following metrics to assess the productivity of your software development team.
- Sprint burndown reports. These reports help you identify if the allocated workload to the team member is less than, just enough, or too much as compared to the given time frame.
- Team velocity. This metric helps you track the amount of work completed at the specified sprint, identify unknown challenges during the planning phase, and set realistic delivery expectations.
- Throughput. This metric measures the total value-added work output of the team in a given period and assists you in determining if your team is overloaded or blocked.
- Cycle time. This metric refers to the total time spent by the team in completing a task. Constant cycle time recording and analyzing helps you identify the process bottlenecks and set user expectations more accurately.
- Bug rates. You can use this metric to track the number of generated bugs as new features are deployed and determine whether the software product is of value or not.
Adopt an agile approach and work in sprints.
One way to increase and maintain productivity among software development teams is by working in sprints. That's the reason why most development teams implement agile practices.
In the agile approach, your software development team is encouraged to:
Reduce technical debt.
Release smaller updates more frequently.
Properly plan out their work in two-week sprints.
Perform early testing to make changes if needed.
Go lean and minimize unimportant tasks.
Get rid of any activity or task that doesn't add value to your project. Check your processes for redundancies and try to automate certain tasks.
Find out tasks that are time-consuming and find ways to reduce or eliminate them. You can do some of these simple ways:
Reduce the number of team meetings.
Set a time limit for every meeting.
Make sure to prepare an agenda and action plan for every meeting.
Implement standup meetings once a day.
Use instant messaging apps like Slack to communicate faster.
Provide continuous education like trainings and mentorships.
Offering trainings on leadership, communication, management, and the latest technologies helps your software development team to become:
More productive, excited, and motivated to perform their assigned tasks.
More efficient in handling and sorting out communication issues between team members.
Well-equipped with the latest skills that they need to use in your software development project.
Create a distraction-free work environment.
In software development, a distraction-free environment is essential to improving your team's efficiency and productivity. Having a positive and healthy workplace helps developers to properly think, stay focused, and perform their tasks better.
Depending on the type of workspace you have, there are different kinds of distractions that can interrupt your developers. These are as follows:
Messy workplace.
Background noise.
Emails and social media notifications.
Interruptions from co-workers, clients, and family members.
Long and unnecessary meetings.
Working with your remote team, it is highly recommended to provide your team members with noise-canceling devices to prevent unnecessary noise while having video calls and screen presentations.
Provide regular feedback.
Giving constructive feedback is essential to boost your software development team's productivity. Feedback gives your team real data to help them:
Stay productive.
Improve their performance.
Stay on the right track to reach the team's goal.
Decide what tasks and requests to work on and when.
Feedback can be given at different levels. You can give feedback by having a 1-on-1 conversation with your developers. You can also conduct retrospective meetings at the end of each sprint to review what went right and bad during the project. This is the best way for your software development team to take a bird’s-eye view of the project and learn from their mistakes.
When it comes to increasing your development team's productivity, motivation, regular feedback, 1-on-1 meetings, and mentorship can do wonders for you. These are some basic strategies that you can practice to improve the productivity and efficiency of your software development team.
If you want to know more about building a software development team in the Philippines, feel free to schedule a call with our chief technology officer (CTO).
