The Essence of Software Development for Enterprise and its Key Features

Enterprise solution development is the software product creation process designed to meet the needs of a specific customer and aimed at solving their business challenges. In most cases, the work involves multiple areas, starting from database design and finishing with user interface development.

Enterprise solution is a large project with complex business logic, targeted mainly at large enterprises. As early as at the initial stages of product development, it is programmed with scalability potential since it is meant to be used by a large number of people. In fact, there are no defined features this type of development should include.

Enterprise software development is not about trends. The work pattern where you immediately utilize a new interesting framework as soon as it appears, setting about to rewrite the product components based on it, will not do here. The software and business logic complexity makes the error too costly.

Nevertheless, it does not mean you have to use the latest technologies. It is crucial to find the very balance between the technology stack used and possibility to develop and scale the software up in the future. That is why it is necessary to thoroughly select the team capable of implementing the project.

Thus, we have made sense of the concepts, and now let us try to highlight the specific features of this direction.

5 key features of software development for enterprise

First of all, you have to understand we are talking about the product which the company will really use in its activities and which will be integrated into its work processes. Therefore, when we try to highlight some features of enterprise software development, in our opinion, they will be as follows:

1. Stability and immunity to trends. Big market players are not interested in technologies which have just appeared on the market and with unclear prospects. The steady business begins to use new technology only when it makes its way from a fashion trend stage to a commonly recognized tool.

If the technology, chosen at the beginning, simply “dies out” in a year’s time, it will be very difficult to switch from using it. However, the outdated basis further support will be more expensive with every single day. The customer faces a need for a difficult choice – an outdated system expensive support or switching to a new platform, which is even more expensive.

2. Business logic complexity and variability. While you analyze one component included in the future product, some other part of it will be changed because the tasks to be solved with it will be changed as well. Moreover, this is a permanent process.

Business depends on the environment it operates in. Competitors constantly put some pressure on it, and it has to take market fluctuations and many other factors into account. These processes need thorough comprehension to create a flexible system able to evolve and scale itself up if necessary.

3. Huge data and complex integration. It is necessary not only to store extensive data volumes in one place but to correctly interpret it as well. If this data is of different types, it is distributed within different modules. These modules have to be properly integrated with each other, and then, if necessary, integrated with external systems.

It is difficult to keep all these things in one mind. Furthermore, the situation becomes even more complicated because few developers, assigned to the project, can see the broad picture. At most, developers who work on some modules interact with developers dealing with adjacent modules, if at all. As a result, different approaches can be utilized to solve similar or same tasks.

4. A costly error. As we have already mentioned, enterprise solutions are developed to meet the needs of business in operation. This means that the quality of the project is crucial for the company ordering the project. There is no place for experiments in such a case. That is why you have to make sure everything not only works but works stable.

Losing or misinterpreting a chunk of data can trigger serious problems for the company and, what is even worse, not only internal ones. For instance, the error may relate to the data intended for submission to supervisory bodies. Thus, a single error can lead to monetary fines or a number of other sanctions including the company’s cease of operation.

5. Enterprise is a team play. Because of the complexity of such projects development, each particular programmer’s contribution to it is barely noticeable. Interaction of many people, simultaneously working in several directions, is necessary. Effective communication is also crucial as sharing data leads to solving the most difficult and most unpleasant issues during the development.

To perform efficiently and develop the consistent code, it is necessary to set certain standards and monitor their implementation. It is also important to keep up documentation relevance, organize cross-team interaction, and assign specialists responsible for the system as a whole and its separate components.

The importance of foundation for further success

The complex and variable business logic conjoins with such factors as a long-term development period and a critically high product importance level for any business which will use it. All this is done to reduce the product support and upgrade rates due to the initial development cost and productivity optimization.

Based on the data in this article, we can make a number of short but important conclusions:

• during enterprise development, it is important to start coding a product with all solemnity to facilitate its future support and upgrades;
• the more streamlined solutions will be, the easier the project will be to support, and the easier it will be to involve new people;
• architectural solutions are more important than the technologies and tools used, and architecture itself should determine the technology stack but not vice versa;
• communication issues are the main cause of IT projects failures, technical issues are not always the reason for improper development, very often poor interaction between teams and individuals is the reason for unsuccessful projects;
• it is always necessary to remember that the operating business will use the end product in real life, software glitches, being mare “bugs” for developers, can cost a lot of money for customers or cause irreparable damage to their reputation.

The senior management of enterprise oftentimes has nothing to do with IT. They have business education, a corresponding set of knowledge, and a range of interests. Therefore, you will solve most issues yourself or deal with mid-level managers. It is necessary to be ready for this.

Enterprise projects are meant for many years to come, so when working on them, things like patience, standardization, and scaling potential are of great importance. If both developers and clients understand this, everything will be just fine.