The Custom software development industry is vast, dynamic, and complex. While Software development is one of the safest and most-desired career paths, there are always pros and cons to everything. Software developers face a lot of obstacles and challenges in their careers. Several factors influence the growth of the software development industry. The major ones are changes in technology trends, growing complexities, market conditions, and increasing software development challenges.
Depending on which business domain and in which part of the world software development companies are operating, they may face varied challenges. One must understand the major challenges in software development so as to overcome them and drive success in software development projects. When you know the challenges, you can also know the reliability of your initiatives.
In this article, we are going to talk about the top 8 software development challenges for 2022:
Rapid Technology Advancement
The technological advancement in the last couple of decades has been a blessing for the IT industry. However, in the last few years, technologies have evolved at a very high rate. The rapid changes add pressure for software development professionals like expert blockchain programmers to use these upcoming technology trends in their software product development to stand out in the market and gain an edge over competitors.
Recent changes do indeed open doors to learning new things. It becomes more challenging when one considers learning a new skill & finds the preceding obsolete. For projects with a very long build duration, there could be updates during the development cycle. However, most companies are well-equipped and prepared to handle such challenges in the coming years.
Data Privacy
Data being the new gold, it is of utmost importance for any business to protect it. They need to protect the data of their customers in all cases. The regulations around data breaches are becoming more complex, and most customers today look at how the companies are using their information.
Software development companies need to factor in the data privacy laws into the development process. Software development should take into consideration the laws of the land around data privacy first. Once that is sorted, they should meet the general requirements.
Cross-Platform Functionality
When you hire app developers, it is expected from a software development team to deliver a seamless experience across platforms, devices, and channels for all their projects. The expectation is going to increase further in the coming years as more and more businesses are going multi-platform.
One of the major challenges for the software development team is to maintain consistency. They have to maintain consistency in messaging, tone and have to be aesthetic across all touchpoints. They need to be ready to provide on-demand support wherever customers decide to make contact.
Since businesses don’t want to miss out on any customers, they want to be on every platform. For example, a customer may want his application to be available on Apple, Android, Xbox, Android TV, Fire TV, and all other similar platforms. Each of these platforms has a different architecture, and not every feature is possible on every platform. There is always a workaround, and that would be the challenge in software development going forward – finding the right solution for all cases.
Working Overtime & The Great Resignation
In the competitive world, every business wants to go live as soon as the project is handed over to the development team. It is important for businesses to know that developing new software requires an environment that supports productivity and concentration as well as tools similar to Jira. If the software developers are pushed and forced continuously to work overtime, it could lead to stress among developers, and the software quality can fall.
Also, the industry is experiencing The Great Resignation. According to a report, around 40% of tech staff either have already resigned from their jobs or are planning to leave by 2022. Tech employees, including IT and computing staff, seem to be suffering more from The Great Resignation than other areas of industry and business.
Businesses need to understand if the quality of the final product is not up to the mark, it can negatively affect the business’s reputation.
Increasing Customers Demand
As already highlighted, the competition is very high. When a customer comes with a requirement, you cannot afford to miss out. The challenge for companies in software development is to bridge the gap between business requirements and technical requirements. Even to develop a small application or product, developers must clearly understand the business concept and the requirements.
It is assumed that the sky’s the limit for technology – one can make anything a reality using technology. However, this is not 100% true. The challenge for software development in the coming year will be to make sure the best technologies can deliver all the business requirements.
AI and Automation
AI is pretty much in every industry, and AI-embedded software are pretty much used in every business domain. You will find them in logistics, sales and marketing, automated production lines, and supply change management. However, implementing AI and automation presents challenges in software development to developers. It is difficult to determine when to automate the process and when not to.
The other challenges are handling UI changes, script execution, etc. To overcome these challenges, companies have to first develop a strategy and then start the work. Automation is not easy. Even though clients may want to automate most of their work, it could be a challenge for software development companies. The automation process requires skilled resources as you are about to replace human talent with robots.
Conflict with Software Testing Teams
In most software development projects, conflicts arise between software development and the testing team. There could be many reasons for it. The most common reasons are different mindsets, the difference in job roles, performance pressure, and the opposite nature of development and testing.
Testing is an even bigger challenge with continuous change in development. Testing requires a proper setup and automation to some extent. Testing with new technologies in the software development cycle could be a challenge. The companies have to ensure there are no conflicts between the development and testing team as it could hamper the project.
Limited Resources/Infrastructure
The number of projects has increased all of a sudden in 2021 after a lean patch in 2020. Software development companies in 2022 may face the challenge of meeting the upcoming demand. They may lack the resources and infrastructure to execute all the projects that come their way.
It could not only be with respect to an increase in demand but also because of continuous technological changes. They may lack powerful computing platforms, high-performance software development tools, and highly secure data storage architecture. If the companies are not able to overcome these challenges, it will impact the overall quality of the projects delivered.
It is very important for businesses not to hurry on giving their project to a company. They should check thoroughly how capable the company is of delivering the project. Also, when the project is granted, they should not push the company for faster delivery.
Conclusion
Although several software development challenges are clearly visible in IT companies, there are now simpler and easier ways for developers to find solutions. Also, hiring forward-thinking software developers who are proactive, talented, and have a systematic approach helps a lot. They should be prepared to face these challenges and overcome them to deliver the desired results to their clients.
It is also important to adopt a DevOps team for maintaining testing and development and cloud technology to handle seamless networks. These teams will indeed assist developers in coping with the many challenges that arise when working on software.