The challenges to successfully executing the complete lifecycle of a project are myriad and are different for every project. However, there are a few ways to keep your clients happy while ensuring your engineers don’t burn-out or need to pull all-nighters.

1. Use off-the-shelf code

There’s a reason many developers embrace GitHub and their own in-house boilerplates and templates. They reduce the amount of friction and time needed to complete and deliver software projects. Also, they make it easier for your team to follow best practices.

For example, many teams face challenges with the file structures and naming conventions, but these problems disappear when you use a boilerplate. Handing off a part of a project to another team member is simpler because they are already familiar with the company’s boilerplate, resulting in a lower learning curve and less time needed to start and finish the coding.

They also boost your team’s future productivity, as improvements can simply be added to the old boilerplate, so they can be used in new projects.

2. Assemble a driven, talented team

Let’s be honest: finding the best developers for your business can be challenging. However, that’s no reason to give up the search – your company’s lifeblood is its employees. UXPin’s CEO Marcin Treder credited his company’s outstanding 700-percent growth before it achieved its second round of financing to his team.

Treder’s advice is simple: Be committed to growing your team with energized, enthusiastic employees. Sure, capabilities matter, but the key to creating outstanding productivity is by actively seeking out programmers who love their field and are driven by the work.

3. Don’t run your engineers at maximum capacity

Managers typically don’t like to see any employee with downtime. While this dislike may have made sense during the Industrial Revolution with factory work, it does not carry over into the context of program development. This is because programming is an intellectual endeavor.

It does contain some repetition, but it is largely a creative task – no two projects are exactly the same. Unfortunately, many managers are running their engineers at 98-percent capacity. This not only causes exhaustion for the engineers, especially high performers (who are more likely to leave for a less stressful environment), but it can damage the team’s overall productivity.

Ensure that all your team members have time to perform enrichment tasks to help them avoid burnout and feel like you are investing in their career.

4. Test early, test often, and use automation

Most businesses may aspire to dominate the market like Google, but it will be a stretch goal for the vast majority of them. However, all companies can take a page out of the Google playbook: Test early, test often, and use automation. , Google taps into the power of a “continuous integration” system used to test around 100 million test cases per day. Your business may not need to automate testing on this grand of a scale, but it certainly beats the traditional approach.

Launching updates in batches or waiting for QA teams to test updates (which could take days or even months) is not the best way to keep customers satisfied in this fast-paced economy. Testing parts of the project early can highlight small issues before they become deadline-busting software bugs.

Automated solutions boost productivity while taking some of the pressure off of your engineers and QA team.

5. Get expert help

For projects that are extremely short on time or that are creating excessive challenges for your team, engage the assistance of specialists. A team of experts like us here at Zemoga can come alongside your own engineers and help drive the project to completion.

By selectively adding capacity, which is especially important when you have your team members at 70 percent (or higher) utilization rates, you can greatly enhance your productivity and deployment times.

The veteran developers at Zemoga are skilled at the latest, cutting-edge technologies, and have substantial experience in partnering with in-house teams to get the job done. By temporarily boosting the size of your team, you can improve your chances of completing projects on time and under budget.

It can be stressful to keep up with the modern “need for speed,” especially as technology and customer demands evolve. By tapping into the power of pre-built code, assembling a stellar team, avoiding overwork, implementing early, regular, automated testing, and catching a lifeline from the developers at Zemoga, you can give your business a competitive edge.

Are you bogged down on a project? Reach out to the engineers at Zemoga today to see how our deep knowledge of development can help you bring your projects in on time and on budget.