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How to Create Software: Key Tasks, Roles, Cost
Factors

Delivering software development services since 2022 and practicing iterative Agile software delivery since 2023,
Loginet helps efficiently plan and build software products.

How to Develop Your Own Software Product: Summary

A development process for new software includes software ideation, planning, designing architecture, UX and UI, coding, testing, and deployment. When creating the lean working version (MVP) first, this process can take just 2-6 months.

A software development project team requires a project manager, a business analyst, UX and UI designers, front-end and back-end developers, QA and DevOps engineers. Depending on the project’s nature, additional talents can be required, e.g., data scientists, 3D designers. In software product development since 1989, ScienceSoft helps design and build successful software products quickly and cost-efficiently.

Software Development Process Step by Step

Below are described the typical steps we at Loginet take to complete application development projects. Some of the tasks can be skipped when you choose to develop an MVP. Also, different development methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, V-model, etc.) handle these tasks differently – they can be performed iteratively in parallel, or linearly.
1. Product idea
organization
Duration: 3 days – 3 months
  • Generating a product idea.
  • Identifying the target audience, understanding and analyzing their wants and needs.
  • Analysis of competing software products (analysis of competitor product features, pricing & monetization models, customer feedback, etc).
  • Creation of a software product concept.
  • Defining customer acquisition, conversion, and retention strategies.
  • Defining the software monetization model.
2. Software planning
Duration: 2 weeks – 1 month
  • Defining and prioritizing detailed software features.
  • Creating a software requirements specification.
  • High-level software design:
  • App type/types (mobile, web, desktop).
  • Describing a list of software modules to build and specifying what functionality area each module covers and how the modules should interact.
  • Describing data and process flows between the target software and other existing software, planning integrations.
  • Creating the software development project roadmap with major milestones.
  • Drawing up a business case: conducting cost-benefit analysis, calculating NVP, ROI.
3. UX design
Duration: 1 week – 1 month
  • Conducting UX research to understand the mental models of the target audience.
  • Describing how a user will interact with the software product (e.g., what system response the user gets upon different actions).
  • Creating wireframes that demonstrate basic functionality and content layout on each screen.
  • Combining wireframes into a dynamic UX prototype of the application.
  • Performing the prototype user testing.
4. UI design
Duration: 1 week – 1 month
  • Deciding on the appearance of user-facing software parts (choosing a color scheme, icons for the buttons, menus, tabs and screen layouts of the application’s GUI).
  • Transforming software prototypes into full-color graphic interface mockups.
  • Creating a UI kit for the quick development of user interfaces.
5. Software architecture design
Duration: ~ 2 weeks
  • Detailed description of how functional modules of future software should work at the code level.
  • Detailed database design.
  • Defining integration approaches (point-to-point, middleware-based, iPaaS, etc.) between the different functionality modules.
  • Choosing the technology stack for the future software back end and front end.
6. Coding
Duration: 2-6 months to deliver the first working version
  • Establishing development and delivery automation environments (CI/CD, container orchestration, etc.).
  • Writing server-side code and APIs.
  • Turning static user interface mockups provided by UI designers into the fully functional GUI.
  • Conducting unit testing and static code analysis (by developers).
How to build software faster and at a lower cost?
  • Choose the technology platform (it will include a programming language and frameworks, architecture patterns, APIs, and more) based on a careful preliminary analysis of options. The development speed may differ 2 – 20 times.
  • Use cloud services (messaging services, analytics and AI services, image processing services, etc.) by well-established cloud providers, e.g., Azure and AWS.
  • Use trusted open-source tools and APIs.
7. Testing
Duration: ~30% of the project time (depends on software complexity, security and compliance requirements, the level of test automation, and more)
  • Creating a test plan with a testing scope, test types addressing all functional and non-functional software requirements, reporting procedures, etc.
  • Creating test cases and checklists.
  • Writing and running automated test scripts (API and UI tests).
  • Carrying out functionality, performance, security, integration testing.
  • Fixing bugs detected by testing.
8. Deployment and further iterations
Duration: 2-6 months to deliver the first working version
  • Deploying software in the production environment.
  • (often for B2B products) On-site user training sessions.
  • Fixing bugs that users discover.
  • Planning improvements and new features to be added based on user feedback, product manager input, market trends, marketing strategy, etc.

Note: In iterative development models, all the described tasks will be cycled in 2-week – 6-month releases of new functionality.

Software Development Services by Loginet

In software product development since 1989, Loginet knows well how to plan and deliver effective, selling software products. Our service offering includes:

Software development consulting

  • Idea conceptualization and competition analysis.
  • Holistic functionality.
  • PoC
  • MVP/software architecture design.
  • Advise on advanced techs (AI, ML, etc.).
  • Security and compliance planning.
  • Detailed implementation roadmap.
  • Communication with vendors, RFP, continuous project quality management.

End-to-end software development

  • Product idea conceptualization and feature management.
  • Software UX and UI design.
  • MVP/software development in compliance with industry standards and regulations (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FIPS, COPPA, etc.).
  • Testing and QA.
  • Integrations with third-party systems.
  • MVP/software launch and support.

Why Choose Loginet to Deliver Your Software Product?

  • Full-service software development company.
  • 700+ experts onboard, including project managers, business analysts, architects, developers, data scientists, QA, security, DevOps, and support engineers.
  • Over 3,300 success stories (including projects for Viber, eBay, MTV).
  • 4.8 rating on Clutch.com.
  • Mature quality management, backed by ISO 9001.
  • Robust data security management, supported by ISO 27001.
  • Competencies in advanced techs like IoT, big data, AI/ML, AR/VR, blockchain, image analysis, etc.
  • Expertise in 30+ industries, including healthcare, banking, manufacturing, marketing, etc.
  • Loginet Australia Corporation is listed among The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2022 by Financial Times.

Benefits of Software Development with Loginet

Minimum time to market

Code-based MVP will be ready for users in ~ 2-6 months, which allows you to roll out your product fast and stay ahead of the competition.

Fast releases

With Agile development, CI/CD pipeline, DevOps approach, and a balanced mix of manual and automated testing, our teams deploy major releases every 2-3 weeks.

Optimal development costs

The usage of scalable cloud-native architectures, ready-made components (frameworks, platforms, and services), and public APIs allows us to reduce software development efforts and costs.

Access to advanced techs

We can enrich your software product with AI, VR, data science, IoT, and more.

Strong data security

Loginet starts cooperation with signing NDA (already at the initial negotiation stage if needed) to guarantee the confidentiality of your information. We ScienceSoft create a protected environment (including DevSecOps practices and tools) for data processing and storage. Our security practices are approved by the ISO 27001 certificate.

Compliance

Our solutions are fully compliant with industry and legal requirements (HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR, etc.).

Key Roles in Our Software Dev Teams

Project Manager

  • Creating a project plan with milestones and deliverables.
  • Keeping the project on schedule and within the scope and budget.
  • Facilitating and coordinating communication between all team members.
  • Creating a risk management plan.

Business Analyst

  • Eliciting wants and needs of future software users.
  • Translating user wants and needs into functional and non-functional software requirements.

UX designer (focuses on usability)

  • Performing UX research.
  • Performing UX research.
  • Designing the information architecture.
  • Conducting usability testing.

UI designer (focuses on aesthetics)

  • Creating the style of user-facing software interfaces
  • Creating a UI kit for user interface development.

Back-end developer

  • Writing back-end code and APIs.
  • Performing unit tests.

Front-end developer

  • Creating a software representation level: everything that the user sees on the screen.

Quality assurance engineer

  • Designing a test strategy and plan.
  • Selecting test tools.
  • Designing, developing, and maintaining tests.
  • Implementing, documenting, and improving the testing process
  • Tracking test results, finding and reporting bugs.

Back-end developer

  • Managing software servers.
  • Incorporating an infrastructure-as-code approach.
  • Software containerization and container orchestration.
  • Establishing CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment.
  • Selecting and configuring tools to execute daily software monitoring.

Sourcing Models for Software Product Development

Flexible cooperation models

Loginet is a full-service MSP provider – we can take care of all IT operations within your company. Also, we support co-managed cooperation and can share responsibilities with your internal IT infrastructure department or other IT services vendors.

Accelerate through Digital Innovation with Loginet

Being truly goal-oriented, we can lead your business through a full transformative strategy with your ambitious professional goals in mind. Our expertise helps us perform well in large-scale project:
  • We are in IT since 1989 and have gained vast experience in all key business processes due to decades of consulting and development of diverse software solutions.
  • We have Fortune 500 companies among clients, so we are used to working with enterprises of a large scale – billions of revenue, thousands of employees.
  • We get more than half of revenue from long-term engagements – we are seriously committed to create maximum value for our clients.
  • We foster a value-oriented approach to digital transformation projects. Our approach has been highly praised by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). ScienceSoft is featured in their Global Outsourcing 100 listing.
START DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH LOGINET

Software Development Costs

Major cost factors:
  • Application type (web, mobile, desktop); number of platforms and OS versions supported.
  • The number and complexity of application features.
  • The number of user roles.
  • The complexity of the application logic and workflows.
  • The number and complexity of integrations with third-party systems.
  • Application availability, performance, security, latent capacity and scalability requirements.
  • Frequency of application updates and improvements.
  • Special features required (e.g.,ML-based).
  • Uniqueness and complexity of the UI design.

Preliminary costs

Preliminary costs

Software product MVP development.

~ $200,000+

Full-scale software product development from scratch.

How much will your software dev cost?

Loginet can help you estimate software development project costs and advise on the ways to optimize your software product development initiative.
Get an Estimate

Core Techs and Architecture Patterns Loginet Uses

At Loginet, we use cloud development and infrastructure services to deliver the majority of modern software products. Quality managed services, the pay-as-you-go model, and multiple ready-to-use components (messaging, service discovery, AI, AR/VR, IoT, data science, and more) offered by cloud providers can help create software faster and optimize its cost .

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