Performance optimization, like regular maintenance at the mechanic shop, is essential for protecting your investment in an application and keeping it operating efficiently over many years.
This is so crucial; it has been called many things: software optimization (also known as code optimization), application performance management, or application optimization.
What is Application Optimization?
The application optimization process is a set of standards and best practices that software developers follow to ensure their applications run optimally.
It is important to maintain application speed, but it is also crucial that you do so efficiently. This means using fewer resources while avoiding expensive technical debt.
The best weapon a business has against deprecation and poor performance of the software is optimization. There are many reasons why software is problematic.
The most common cause is poorly written code, but the code could also be outdated or unable to keep up with the latest tech. It could also be code that was tested in a limited environment with few users or worked well but cant handle the load.
No matter what the reason, improving your applications performance could have a positive impact on your business strategy.
What Is The Importance Of Application Performance?
Imagine that you have a call center for a company where clients can phone to ask questions. Youve probably heard the customer service rep on the other end of the line frantically typing at the keyboard while apologizing that the system was slow and having difficulty retrieving the information needed to address your concern or answer your question.
Mission-critical software is used by companies in nearly all industries and people who work in these roles. This software is almost always available and where the essential business functions are performed.
When an application that is so important performs inefficiently, it starts to affect users. The user may find it difficult to stay focused on the task. In situations where information is needed in a hurry, such as the example of customer service above, they might miss the chance to utilize it.
Poor performance in customer-facing software can cause even more serious problems. The software frustrates and angers your clients instead of helping them do business and giving you a competitive edge.
The customer may try to reload the page, which can cause more delays and problems for the software.
App performance has a direct impact on company metrics such as employee productivity and performance. This impact is easily extended to other key objectives, including customer satisfaction and revenue.
This can lead to a loss of customers. Add to this the costs associated with creating costly workarounds to solve an application that crashes constantly or the risk of a business process coming to a grinding halt in order to correct a critical mistake.
Performance is no longer an option but a requirement for companies that depend on customized applications.
Improved performance will benefit all your metrics. What are the best ways to evaluate and measure software performance in order to determine where you should focus your effort?
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When Is It The Right Time To Update Your Application?
What is Software Performance?
When discussing performance, application developers are most likely to refer to speed. Faster loading pages provide a better user experience.
It is so crucial that Google has incorporated load speed in its algorithm. Although its acceptable to relax standards for internal enterprise software that relies on database queries at the back end, speed is still important.
Despite the fact that computers have become more powerful and internet speeds have increased dramatically in recent years, computer response time guidelines have remained unchanged for almost half a century:
- The user can feel the instantaneous reaction of the system by displaying the results.
- Even though users will be aware of the delay, a users uninterrupted flow of thoughts is limited to 1.0 seconds. Normal delays are less than or equal to 1.0 seconds, and no feedback is required. However, the user loses the sense of being able to operate directly on data.
- The user should be able to focus on the dialog for a maximum of 10 seconds. Users will be tempted to do other things while they wait for the computer, which is why its important to give feedback on when to expect the computer to complete.
Although there is more instantaneous action today than 50 years ago, the brains ability to process visual clues and detect delays remain unchanged.
We can measure software performance by evaluating how users perceive the speed of an application. This is something we will discuss later.
Usability can also have a significant impact on efficiency, in addition to speed. Usability is a key factor in determining how efficient and quick the application can be.
To measure usability, you can count the steps taken or compare the amount of time it takes to complete a task before and after optimizing. Does optimization allow for a reduction in the number of processes? It can make the completion of a task easier. Is information contextually relevant?
Web Application Performance Monitors
Its not like driving a car. You cant just set and forget about mission-critical apps. Even if an app works now, that doesnt mean it will continue to work optimally in the years ahead.
The maintenance and regular usage of even the best-optimized platforms will accumulate technical debt.
A best practice in software optimization involves putting into place systems to identify and solve potential issues.
Azure Monitor, a tool for monitoring application performance in real-time and proactive mode, can help reduce the workload of DevOps and development teams by providing proactive and real-time monitoring to identify common issues like server overload or downtime. These tools alert teams to thresholds that have been exceeded, allowing them the time they need to respond and troubleshoot before it becomes critical.
Seq, for example, offers error logs that allow teams to delve deeper into user interactions and find where issues may be.
It is especially useful for software thats mission-critical and requires a higher level of transparency.
Its also important that teams adopt best practices, such as periodic system reviews. By putting in the time and effort to pay down your technical debt, you can avoid hotspots before they become a problem.
Routine maintenance and proactive addressing of issues can translate to less work and reduced costs in the end. Optimization could, for example, involve refactoring specific pieces of code.
How To Enhance A Web Applications Performance
There are a few additional practices that you may adopt in order to optimize software performance.
Research The Extent Of The Problem
We often get prospective customers who think they require a completely new application, but in reality, they only need some tweaks.
Its not always obvious what is going on behind the scenes. The problem could stem from problems in the database or the architecture.
The application may need to update the code on the backend that accesses and queries the data. This could be due to poorly-written JavaScript or a problem with the browser on the front.
It may seem expensive to work with an expert team that is a mix of developers from different disciplines, but you can save money over time.
The jack-of-all-trades who has only a cursory understanding of the entire technology stack can end up creating more issues than they solve, as well as attempting to sell you solutions you do not need. A team of experts can triage problems. The experts will be able to explain what optimizations have the most impact on your business and which can wait.
No matter what the reason, improving your applications performance could have a positive impact on your business.
How To Optimize The Performance Of A Web Application
There are best practices that you can adopt for software performance, even though every application will be different.
Research The Extent Of The Problem
We frequently encounter potential clients who believe they need a brand-new application when, in fact, they just need a few tweaks.
Its not always obvious what is going on behind the scenes. The problem could stem from problems in the database or the architecture.
The application may need to update the code on the backend that accesses and queries the data. This could be due to poorly-written JavaScript or a problem with the browser on the front.
It may seem expensive to work with an expert team that is interdisciplinary and has expertise in multiple development areas, but you can save money over time.
The jack-of-all-trades who has only a cursory understanding of the entire technology stack can end up creating more issues than they solve, as well as attempting to sell you solutions you do not need. A team of experts can triage problems. The experts will be able to explain what optimizations have the most impact on your business and which can wait.
The Code Should Adhere To Best Practices
The best web apps of today are lightweight, fast, and flexible. Youll need to make sure that you are making the best possible upgrades and optimizations in order to future-proof your application.
Its impossible to avoid technical debt. The same goes for auto maintenance. With application modernization, app development can now be structured in a way that allows future upgrades to be more modular.
Changing a tire does not mean disassembling the entire car.
When It Comes To Infrastructure And Hardware, Make Smart Choices
It is crucial to choose the correct infrastructure. You want it to support surges and bursts of usage to avoid crashes or lags.
Its a mistake to think that upgrading your hardware is the answer. Paying for infrastructure when you dont use it can also be a costly gamble. Find flexible solutions such as elastic cloud infrastructure, like Azure elastic cloud and AWS elasticity service, that can be paid as needed but anticipates unanticipated usage.
Optimize Your UX
The user experience field is among the most popular in design and development and with good reason. UX can be optimized in many different ways to influence perceived time using visual and psychological cues.
These are some examples of successful optimization techniques for programs:
To indicate progress, use percentages and progress bars. These interface cues can help users manage delays and set expectations, even if the bulk of the work is done in the background.
Progressive page loads. Techniques like lazy page loading display only the first part of the web page rather than waiting for the entire page to be loaded.
It gives the user something to see and consume as the page loads. In most cases, the entire page will be ready to display by the time the user scrolls down.
Images that load in stages. Page loading can start with thumbnails to show viewers what the page is about. Then, higher-resolution versions are loaded on full loads.
Budget And Road Map Your Optimization
We see a lot of companies that dont follow through with their software optimization efforts. This is often due to the fact that they underestimate the impact of technical debt or aging software development projects.
Nobody knows the quality of their auto insurance until it is needed.
The discipline you have to keep your system up-to-date is the best way to ensure that it remains effective. It means allocating funds in your budget and time in your schedule and roadmap.
Your optimization strategy and your businesss most critical operations will be reactive without this commitment.
Strategies To Improve The Performance Software Development Team
Software development teams are under pressure to complete a large amount of work in a limited time.
There are many ways to improve developer speed, from AI-driven analytics to automated testing. Theres always the option to hire more developers or partner with an outsourced firm.
How can you make sure that your teams are not just meeting their deadlines but continue to grow and improve?
It is not about adding new moving parts to an already problematic strategy but rather refining how you handle people and processes.
This post will share with you some ideas for improving productivity in the software development industry.
Improve team effectiveness in software project management
Set Clear, Attainable Goals
To increase software productivity, you need to start with clear expectations and goals.
Early on, set measurable KPIs aligned with your business goals. Challenge developers to achieve these milestones.
The importance of having a "goal-oriented mindset" and notes that leaders who possess this quality are able to bring everyone together around one strategy.
Read More: What Makes Developers.dev One Stop for the Best Web Development Services
The Business Leaders Guide to Software Development
You can combine Scrum with OKRs to measure software development processes. OKRs are a goal-setting collaborative tool that helps you set ambitious goals tied to quantifiable outcomes.
OKRs are usually external outcomes/goals, such as sales, downloads, or revenue. Theyre outlined within the strategy of a company.
Scrum is more focused on daily activities that help teams reach their high-level goals.
OKRs allow Scrum teams to determine what features to develop and prioritize, as well as how they will measure their success.
OKRs are a framework that measures subjective decisions using objective criteria aligned with the expectations and milestones of the organization, user stories, and OKRs.
Sprints Work
Agile software developers already know that they work in sprints.
Sprints give software developers more flexibility, and they can deliver better software quicker. You can also track the progress of both individuals and teams.
Weekly or biweekly sprints make it easy to keep everyone on track. The sprints are a great way to get everyone on the same page, discuss how the project is going, make suggestions about what you can do better next time, and give teams direction as to where they should concentrate their efforts.
The team can also better estimate and define user stories, tasks, acceptance criteria, and other elements, which will help them make improvements.
Accept A New Set Of Tools
Make sure that your team has the most effective tools for project management and software development.
Knowing where you are on the project cycle and on your key deliverables is essential to effective project management.
Its possible to overload your teams productivity tools, causing them to become frustrated, not use them, or waste time learning the latest tech addition.
It is best to choose project management, collaboration, and software development tools together.
This allows developers to test different options and build a tech stack that matches their preferences and existing processes.
The best stack for productivity is one that people actually use. requirements/business objectives. Ideally, I would be able to get up-to-speed in a matter of minutes without needing to ask for assistance or schedule a conference call.
Its not always about the best tool being complicated. suggests teams combine "visual reporting, intuitive dashboards, and Slack notifications for Code Reviews, Pull Requests." "Even the comments on Shared Google Docs."
You might consider training and documentation to help teams get the most out of the new remote working situation.
This could mean a group discussion or training session to share "collaboration tips" that will make life easier.
Technical Design & Documentation
Technical design and documentation in software development include all written material related to the process of product development.
A system overview helps developers, engineers, and stakeholders to understand what technology is behind the product and its architecture. It also helps them better understand why the product was created.
Specifications
The Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) provide information on the functionality of the system. The document should include information about the products functionality, its features, its behavior, and any benefits that it offers to users.
The PRDs include key business rules, user stories, and use cases that can help the developers to understand what is being created.
Documentation should not be overly technical but rather clear.
High-level Architecture
A clearly defined architecture is essential to dictating the direction and overall scope of any project or product.
The architecture design document should outline the key architectural decisions that the architect made and include at least the following sections.
- Architecture & Design Principles: Outline your architecture and design guidelines that will guide you throughout the project. If you are building a microservices-based product, for example, ensure that this is explicitly stated in your documentation.
- Software Design Document (Sdd) Template: The SDD is essential when building new products, as it provides a blueprint for how the software will be designed to satisfy product needs and how algorithms and data structures will be created to achieve the intended outcome. The SDD is also the main reference when writing code. Youll also want to make sure that you are as specific as possible when it comes to each component and its role in the overall plan.
- User Stories: Connect user stories to business processes and use cases. This will bring your customers on board. All of these things, including requirements, SDDs, architectural and design principles, etc., are geared toward delivering the end product that your customers desire. Include their feedback in the documentation to ensure that the developers dont lose track of the main purpose.
- Solution Details: Describe the final goal. What are your goals for the product? What services/features/components will be included? Document your plans by describing the services, modules, and components you plan to offer, as well as why these are important for consumers and stakeholders.
Create Feedback Loops To Boost Productivity
Feedback should be given as early as possible and as frequently as possible. Feedback should be given as soon as possible, ideally in real-time.
This will give a better view of individual and team performance.
There are many ways to share feedback. You can use 1:1 conversations. Team reviews after sprints or any other method.
Youll need to move away from annual performance reviews, which are often seen as stressful or toxic. Instead, build a strategy that uses feedback as a way of lifting up the whole team.
The feedback loops dont only apply to performance management but also to progress coding. Sending a Draft Pull Request along with proofs-of-concept or partial implementations is a great idea, for example.
This allows teams to detect potential problems and take the necessary steps to prevent them.
Making Priority
Youll need to meet with developers one-on-one as often as possible to give them feedback tailored to their needs.
This will lead to sustainable improvements in performance.
For the team to perform as a unified group, youll need to make sure that each member has the support/skills/feedback they need to do their best work.
Set goals based on each developers expertise, skills, and motivations. They will be more likely to invest in your business for the long term if you combine this with their skills and expertise.
Developers Should Have A Distraction-Free, Quiet Work Environment
Your developers could be distracted by their workspace and not do their best work or even get their work completed.
Open office designs with high traffic can have a negative impact on productivity in an office. Youll instead want to create an environment with as few sound distractions as possible (and maybe offer some noise-canceling headphones).
Due to the pandemic, many teams work remotely. This means you cannot control the new physical environment of your team.
This includes the communication tools you use. Create a plan that allows workers to turn off Slack, emails, or other communication tools for large portions of their day.
Avoid video conferences whenever collaboration is required. Facetime can be essential, but too much of it will frustrate your team and lead to wasted time.
Managers should instead focus on delivering updates and feedback via less intrusive communication channels, such as email, shared documents, or project management software.
Support flexible and asynchronous collaborative methods.
Optimize Workflows To Increase Productivity
A software developer who participated in our survey of employees, said that the best way for managers to improve performance and motivate their developers is by "respecting the team and respecting their time."
Consider how you can optimize your workflows to reduce friction.
These tips may help.
- Embrace Productive Procrastination: Researcher says that sometimes its worth waiting out downtime. Researcher says that he "practices productive procrastination" whenever possible. If I am waiting for tests to finish, I may do a code review or respond to questions on the Slack community channel. Instead of waiting and losing momentum, I take advantage of any downtime."
- Plan Your Projects In Advance: Plan projects in advance. This will allow you to move on quickly if a team member finishes their task. Software development teams that are effective dont wait around. With the assistance of project managers and team leaders, they should be working on high-priority items in the backlog.
- Ensure that your team is informed about any changes to requirements, scope, or deadlines as early as possible so they are prepared. Open communication can help to avoid issues that may affect project quality and delivery time.
- Leave Room For Improvement: Plan and allow for the improvements that engineers propose to ease development. It can motivate engineers, and it is a great way to discover architecture problems or technical requirements before they impact business features.
- Dont Randomize The Work: Dont switch an engineer from working on feature A to feature B because another team has fewer resources on that particular day if the engineer will be back on A tomorrow. Some engineers and developers are better at multitasking than others. However, no one is able to produce their best work by bouncing from task to task.
- Youre Moving Your Brain Around In Different Directions All At Once: This can cause bugs, exhaustion, and hours that you dont know about. According to a study, adding just one more project can reduce your productivity by as much as 20%. Adding two additional tasks will take up half your time.
- Reduce Or Eliminate Unimportant Tasks: After you have nailed your workflows that are driven by humans, the next step is to build on this "strategic basis" and automate or eliminate "wasteful processes" that do not add value.
- Redundancy In Your Process Should Be Checked: Is it possible to automate certain processes? Can you eliminate unnecessary meetings? When that is not an option, try to make better use of the time you have.
- You can, for Example: set an agenda, limit the time, and conclude each meeting by presenting a plan of action/next steps. Each meeting must also have a clear purpose to guide the discussion.
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Last Thoughts
It is not about adding more technology to the mix. Instead, its about helping the team stay on track by creating conditions that encourage productivity.
Look for ways to remove obstacles in the developers workflow, provide ongoing constructive feedback, and help to build a culture where developers can do their best.
