If you have problems with your software projects – maybe your deadlines are quickly approaching and the software agency is taking too long to deliver their work, maybe there are constant changes in the scope that are difficult to handle, or the quality of work is not there – don’t worry, you are not alone. It is no surprise that without proper monitoring and control, software projects can easily go off track. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of tips and tricks to help you with monitoring your software project.

Importance of monitoring software projects’ progress

Software project monitoring refers to the process of keeping track of the progress of a software project and ensuring that it is meeting its goals and objectives. This involves monitoring various aspects of the project, such as its timeline, budget, resources, and quality of deliverables. Effective monitoring of software projects is essential for ensuring that the project is completed on time, within budget, and meets the expected quality standards. However, things don’t always go our way and often, despite our best intentions, software projects fail.

Software Projects Management Problems

There’s a PwC study (2014 ) that states that only 2.5% of companies are 100% successful with all their projects. But why does it happen? There’s a saying “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” According to Wellingtone’s The State of Project Management Report, 54% of companies don’t have access to real-time project KPIs. Furthermore, one of the main causes of project failures is a lack of clearly defined objectives and milestones to measure progress (37%). As you can see, it is very important to keep your finger on the pulse and monitor the development of your software projects in the right way.

What is the right way?

First, it’s crucial to set up a plan. Identify the specific goals and outcomes that the project is intended to achieve. After all, you must know what you want to achieve to monitor if it’s going well. Establish the budget, timeline and who should be included in the process – internally and externally (vendors, software consultancy agencies, etc.) Then, pick the methodology that best suits your project and needs, establish the work process, and create a communication plan. A lot of people underestimate how important it is to create a communication matrix – who is responsible for which area, who is responsible for the final decision and budget, who should receive information, and when. Make sure you have this area well thought out.

Want to learn more tips and tricks for software project management? Check out our guidebook: 

Tracking progress through KPIs

Once the scope and objectives of your software project are defined, the next step is to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking progress through key performance indicators (KPIs) is a critical part of monitoring the progress of your project development. To do this effectively, first, identify the KPIs that are most relevant to the project’s success. This could include metrics such as project timelines, budget, resource utilization, and product quality. Once the KPIs have been identified, measurable targets should be set for each one, which can serve as a benchmark for measuring progress. Regular monitoring of progress is important to ensure that the project stays on track, and adjustments can be made if necessary.

Best practices for effective monitoring

Several best practices can help to achieve effective monitoring of a software project. Continuously assessing the effectiveness of the monitoring plan is one such practice, as it allows project managers to identify areas for improvement. Additionally, using data to drive decision-making is essential for making informed choices about the project’s direction. Fostering a culture of transparency and accountability is another key practice, as it encourages team members to take ownership of their work and be honest about any issues or concerns that arise during the project. Finally, staying flexible and ready for eventual changes and risks. To successfully deliver a software project you must know how to balance its scope, time, and cost.

Measuring the success of software projects

In conclusion, monitoring the progress of software projects is crucial for their success. Without proper monitoring and control, software projects can easily go off track and fail to meet their goals and objectives. The first step to ensure the effectiveness of your project is to set a clear definition for its success criteria. Don’t leave it open-ended and let people assume what should and shouldn’t be done. Instead, define exact criteria and regularly measure what has been delivered. Keeping our fingers crossed that with those tips and tricks, all your software projects will go according to plan and will be a success.

Have you ever thought you had an amazing idea for a project, but when you presented it to other people – it turned out that you didn’t think through many important aspects of this project? It seems like this scenario happens a lot. But what is more surprising – there are businesses that launch their products exactly like this. They have an idea for a project, and they develop it without spending any time on research or validation beforehand.

However, there is a way to test and validate a business idea or product concept with minimal resources and investment – MVP Software development.

What is an MVP? 

In software development, an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is a product that has just enough features to be usable by early adopters and to validate a product idea with real users.

Gartner defines it as: “(…) the release of a new product (or a major new feature) that is used to validate customer needs and demands prior to developing a more fully featured product. To reduce development time and effort, an MVP includes only the minimum capabilities required to be a viable customer solution.”

We can call it “a stripped-down version of the product”. The MVP approach is used to minimize the risk of building a product that nobody wants and to allow the product team to gather users’ feedback before investing time, effort, and resources into a full-scale product development. MVP is a crucial aspect of software development and helps startups and established companies alike to make informed decisions about future development. By launching an MVP, businesses can quickly determine if their product has a market fit and if there is enough demand for their solution.  

Discovery phase in software development 

The discovery phase is the initial stage of software development where the focus is on understanding the problem and defining the requirements for the product. During this phase, an MVP can be created to test and validate the product idea or concept with real users, gain feedback, and identify any potential issues before moving on to the development phase. By incorporating an MVP into the discovery phase, it can help businesses save time and resources and increase the chances of success for the full product. 

What makes a good MVP? 

A good MVP should have the following characteristics:  

Solves a problem:

The MVP should solve a real problem or address a real need for the target audience. The problem should be clearly defined, and the MVP should address it in a simple and effective way.  

Has essential features:

The MVP should have only the essential features required to solve the problem or meet the need. It should not have any unnecessary features or functionality that may complicate the product or distract the users from the core functionality.  

User-friendly:

The MVP should be easy to use and understand for the target audience. The user interface should be simple and intuitive, and the product should have a clear value proposition that is easily communicated.  

Testable:

The MVP should be testable, which means that it should be possible to measure and track user engagement and feedback. This will help in validating the product idea and making data-driven decisions for future development.  

Cost-effective:

The MVP should be developed in a cost-effective way and should not require a significant investment of time and resources. The focus should be on creating a functional product quickly and efficiently, rather than building a fully featured product that may not be successful.  

MVP, Proof of Concept, or Prototype? 

An MVP is not the same as a Proof of Concept (PoC) or a Prototype. A PoC is a demonstration that a particular technology or solution is viable and meets the requirements of the project. A Prototype is a preliminary version of a product that is used to test and demonstrate the product’s design and functionality. Both PoC and Prototype are usually less functional and polished than an MVP. 

An MVP, on the other hand, is a fully functional product that is released to the market to test its viability and to gather feedback from real customers. The focus of an MVP is on delivering just enough value to early adopters and to validate the product’s key value proposition. 

To show you an example – we have developed an MVP for Bosch & Siemens Hausgeräte. 

The benefits 

MVP is an important concept in software development because it helps to reduce the risk of building a product that nobody wants. After all, developing a full-featured product without any testing or validation can be a risky proposition. By creating an MVP, businesses can reduce the risk of investing significant resources into a product that may not be successful.  

What is more, it helps the product team validate their assumptions about the target customers, their needs, and the market demand for the product. This feedback can be used to identify any usability or functionality issues and make data-driven decisions for future development.  

In addition, an MVP allows the product team to test the product’s marketing and sales channels, customer acquisition, and retention strategies. This information is critical for the success of the product and can only be obtained by testing the product with real customers. 

Finally, it allows businesses to quickly bring a product to market and test it with real users. This can help to identify any issues or opportunities for improvement and enable the product to be refined and improved in subsequent releases. This can also help to save time and resources by avoiding investing in unnecessary features or functionality that may not be required. 

Does your project need an MVP? 

By creating an MVP, businesses can test and validate product ideas, reduce the risk of investing significant resources into a product that may not be successful, and bring a product to market faster. Ultimately, an MVP is a valuable tool for those looking to build successful software products while minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency.  

Do you know the saying “better safe than sorry”? Creating an MVP has a lot in common with it. MVP may seem like just an additional step that you have to take before starting with software development, making it slower to develop what you truly want. However, in this case it is better than wasting time and money on developing a product that has no market value. 

If you plan on developing a new software solution, then you probably need to test different ideas and prepare its prototype first. After all, designing a digital product is an intensive process, and it takes a great deal of time and work. What is more, it is best to work quickly, as wasting time may lead to bigger problems than not performing well in the market. There is a methodology that helps with just that – a design sprint. 

What is a design sprint? 

A design sprint is a collaborative process used to solve complex problems and test ideas within a limited timeframe. It combines the skills of designers, developers, strategists, and other professionals in order to create a solution that is both innovative and effective. The goal of the design sprint is to quickly identify potential solutions to a problem, validate them with customers, and develop an actionable plan for implementation. Design sprints can be used for any kind of project from product development to marketing campaigns. By using this method, teams are able to move quickly while still ensuring that their products or services meet customer needs. 

Design Sprint – Steps

The Design Sprint process is a structured approach to solving complex problems in just a week. During that week your team meets, and rapidly validates and clarifies your next steps in product development. It is a highly collaborative, interactive and goal-oriented process. Your team should consist of decision-makers, designers, marketing experts, developers, and people representing your customers. 

The process of a design sprint involves five steps: 

1st Step: Understand – During this step you map out what is the problem you try to solve, and what is the goal you aim towards. The main idea is to create a knowledge base for the whole team to work upon.  

2nd Step: Sketch – Here, you create and sketch as many ideas as possible. Each person has to work on their own and propose a solution to the problem you want to solve. 

3rd Step: Decide – This step is self-explanatory. You have a bunch of sketches of your future solution. Now, it is time to decide which one should be prototyped and tested. 

4th Step: Prototype – Once you have decided on which solution you want to test, you prototype it. The goal is to “fake it till you make it”. Create a realistic prototype that you can test in the next step. 

5th Step: Test – The last step consists of testing your prototype. Show it to your potential users and gather their feedback about your solution. 

What are the benefits? 

Design sprints are a great way to test ideas and prototypes quickly and efficiently. They provide an effective way for teams to rapidly prototype, test, and refine ideas before committing resources to them. The main benefits of running a design sprint include:

• faster time-to-market,
• improved collaboration between team members,
• better customer feedback,
• and cost savings on prototyping resources.

Design sprints can also help teams focus on the most important aspects of their project while avoiding distractions. 

Do you need to run a design sprint before launching a product? 

A Design Sprint is an effective way to get feedback from stakeholders, identify potential risks and opportunities, and find creative solutions to challenging problems. Design sprint can also help teams become more agile by creating an environment where everyone contributes ideas and works together to come up with creative solutions. 

Design Sprints are becoming increasingly popular in the business world as companies look for ways to accelerate innovation and create value faster than ever before. Whether you’re looking to launch a new product or service, or just need some fresh ideas on how to move your business forward, a Design Sprint could be just what you need. 

Summing up

Design sprints are an incredibly useful tool for unlocking the creativity and productivity of teams. By taking a few days to focus on a specific problem, design sprints provide a structured yet creative environment for teams to come up with innovative solutions. Design sprints also allow teams to quickly prototype and test ideas, reducing the cost and time associated with traditional product development processes. By utilizing them, teams can move faster while still ensuring that their products meet customer needs. Start using design sprints today and unlock your team’s potential! 

Let’s say you want to start a new software project. Maybe you need to develop a web application, or mobile app, or add some features to your system. Completing such projects is a complicated process that requires a lot of time and effort. There are also a lot of risks associated with software development projects. How can you be sure that your vendor understands your business needs and challenges? 

The answer lies in the term discovery workshop. 

As a customer, you have high hopes that your software development company will help you achieve your goals. Before agreeing to any project and associated contract you need to verify that your software partner can meet your needs, budget, and deadlines. This is when the discovery workshop (also known as discovery call/project kick-off) steps in.

Read on to learn about:

What is a Discovery Workshop? 

A discovery workshop is an initial meeting conducted prior to the beginning of a software project. It can last from 2h up to 3 days depending on what needs to be delivered. During the meeting, all the stakeholders get to:

• better understand the idea behind the project,
• estimate the scale of the project,
• learn about target users.

Thanks to the discovery workshop, consultants, software developers, and UX designers get to know you, your goals, and challenges and can recommend ideas that would best fit your business. Vice versa – you as a client get to know your software partner and see how they work. After all, discovery workshops are the beginning of your software development project – a collaborative process that requires constant communication and sharing of ideas. It is crucial that all involved parties are on the same page and there are no misunderstandings about project expectations.  

How to prepare for a Discovery Workshop? 

Before a discovery workshop even starts, you should establish what are your expectations and goals for the software project. You can expect that your software partner will do an intro call with you to determine what information you already have and what needs to be discussed and prepared during the workshops. It would be good to consider the target audience, technical requirements, possible budget, etc. Preparing all the information you have regarding the project beforehand helps to better plan the discovery workshop. However, you do not have to worry if you only have a general idea for your software project. A good software partner will guide you through the process and, based on all the information gathered, they will prepare the agenda for the discovery workshop that best fits your needs.  

What to expect from a Discovery Workshop? 

1. Getting to know each other 

Help the software house understand the situation where your company is now and what you want to achieve with their expertise and skillset. 

In return, you can expect questions that will help the software house better know your company’s internal functioning. The more precise you are, the easier it will be to take concrete steps toward your goals.  

2. Understanding your concerns 

Understanding your problems and requirements is what helps a software house to ensure they can address your problems, challenges, and pains. Addressing your top priorities, your biggest concerns, and main challenges before starting the collaboration gives the software house a broader perspective on your project so that they can estimate potential risks and evaluate expected benefits. 

By asking probing questions a software house will get the full scope of your expectations that their solution or skillsets will help you achieve. Therefore, it is important to provide detailed answers, so the full scope is known. Open questions bring more value and success depends on the quality of both the questions and the answers. 

3. Addressing your needs 

Another step is discussing how a software house can help you address each of the pain points you have mentioned before. Now, it is time to determine what the software house can do to solve your problems and meet your expectations.  

Based on the discovery call, the software house aligns its services to your needs, so you will be assured that they will work smarter and be able to address your pains.  

4. Moving onwards 

Expect the software house to guide you through the next steps, help you evaluate the project, and discuss the general terms of working together.  

Once, we held a 5-day Discovery Workshop to develop a Remote Inspection Tool for DEKRA

Who participates in a Discovery Workshop? 

A discovery workshop is needed to determine the scope of the project, align the whole team toward one goal and establish possible risks. That is why it would be best to gather everyone responsible for making decisions on your side. Think about all the people directly involved in and having an impact on your software project. It is also important to have someone who will represent your target users and their needs connected to the web application, mobile application, or system.  

From the software house’s side, you can expect: 

What is a discovery workshop for?  

The purpose of the discovery call is to shape your idea into a plan. A Discovery Workshop is needed to prepare an action plan according to the objectives, requirements, and goals of your business. This step in the development process allows all stakeholders to be on the same page and fully understand your business needs and the idea behind your software project.   

It is also an opportunity for you to verify the software house and talk about prospective collaboration, as well as get a sense of the people you will work with. You can ask for relevant use cases if you want to make sure that the vendor has experience with similar projects. The same goes for the industries and markets the software house operates in, the technologies they use, etc.  

What can also be important is the methodology their work is based on. For instance, when a software house operates based on the Agile approach, it is information for you that you will be actively involved in the process. So, ask about the work culture, technology, and approach to remote collaboration.  

It also helps to verify the quality of communication between you and the development team. After all, you are going to work together for at least several months, so effective communication is what will make it smooth.  

Do you need a Discovery Workshop? 

The discovery workshops are for clarifying requirements, finding potential issues earlier on, and saving time, money, and headache. It is a meeting full of brainstorming, exchanging ideas, and identifying future opportunities and risks. You should come out of the discovery workshops with an estimated timeline and budget for your software project, a mapped user journey, and a clear project plan. What is more, discovery workshops give you extra verification of your software project from experts in software development. They will ask you all the important questions, suggest ideas based on market trends and their experience, as well as make sure you truly are prepared to start your software development project. 

Take advantage of Discovery Workshops 

Sometimes, a discovery workshop may seem like only an additional expense on your budget. However, if you are at an early stage of your software development, discovery workshops are the best way to test and validate ideas, evaluate your requirements and risks, and prepare a clear plan for the development of your project. It is an effective way of starting your software development project and building a successful application or a system that addresses your target users’ needs and gives them value.  

Every project needs a proper plan, why drive into the unknown when you can’t see beyond the headlights? To make your software development project successful you have to do proper preparation and a good discovery call is an important aspect of it. 

Software development can be as easy as you like – it all depends on who you ask for help.

Yameo has been active since 2005 and we have helped 45 organisations build over 100 solid software solutions. You will note that we have over 100 projects, yet 45 customers. This is intentional, because what we do is build solid software for top leaders – end2end software development. People understand value and what we deliver is value. Reflected in the fact that on average we are building 2 to 3 solid solutions for a customer. Of course our relationships with customers starts with 1 project, but as is often the case this becomes a second and third project.

We like seeing our customer’s succeed, because in the end it means we succeed.

End2end Software Development – explain it to me

Throughout our history and what you can read in our Use Cases is that we have always been of value in supporting a customer from beginning of a project with things like ideation, critically analysing their idea, infrastructure planning etc – all the way through development and deployment & launch. This is only half of the value we offer, and where other software houses often end their relationship with a customer. Where we go further is not just in SLA’s, maintenance and hosting of solutions – but in being a partner who understands your industry and the trends that are important to you and offer up-front recommendations, feedback and ideas on how you can continue to grow.

Hardware

Although not our speciality we work with partners who can help with hardware – such as our Tellma use case where together with Tellma GmbH we provide a full software and hardware video banking kiosk terminal solutions to banks in Europe.

Read the use case!

“Customer success is our success”

This can be such a cliche saying to use – however in our case this is reality. Like I said we only have 45 customers yet we have done over 100 projects. Time and time again customers return to us to develop new solutions after they were satisfied with our previous work and the results they achieved.

We therefore focus on building solid software for top leaders.

“At Yameo we focus on delivering exceptional work not just because we know a customer expects it, but because we know there is always more to develop. And if a customer remembers you and sees you as a valuable and trustworthy partner – they will return to you when they have new ideas. This is our focus at Yameo and this is how we have built long-term partnerships with some of the biggest organisations in the world like DEKRA, WorldVision International and AON. And above all we pride ourselves on being expertise in healthcare, finance and insurance solutions where we have a lot of domain expertise and experienced development teams.” – Maciej Krajewski, CEO Yameo

We focus on the whole customer journey

We understand that end2end software development has to make sense for both customer and end-user. We therefore try to understand the full customer journey, all processes involved and all use cases that are possible. Only then can you truly be a valuable partner for your customer. If you adopt the customer journey and all its processes and keep this in mind while being an ideation partner, developing or even launching and maintaining a solution you will know what is relevant and effective for a customer and what is not. With this mentality we have approached our customers for 17 years and why we have 45 customers but 100+ successful projects.

Software development can be as easy as you like – it all depends on who you ask for help.

Who will you ask for your next software project?

Interested to read some Use Cases? Click here.

We’ve been developing software solutions (like DEKRA i2i video solution) for DEKRA since 2013. In recent years, we’ve helped them in achieving their goal – improving and implementing their DEKRA i2i solution into their branches worldwide. Over the last 9 years, we had an opportunity to provide solutions for them, which gave a lot of satisfaction on both sides. DEKRA is a company that seeks out innovation and isn’t afraid to take a step into the unknown. As a software development partner, it’s been a pleasure to work with the passionate and enthusiastic people at the DEKRA Service Division.

However, we’ve learned a lot through these last 9 years – we’d like to share some of the valuable experience we gained.

Prioritise business cases above use cases

Why is this important? While it’s important to have working use cases to be able to move forward with developing the process of the final product, focusing on them may be counter-productive in the end. That is because the use case approach focuses solely on the chain of events that are expected to happen when a user comes into interaction with the solution applied. Business cases focus on system interactions and the final results we want to achieve in the “real world”; therefore, it focuses on the consequences of implementing the solution instead of it working on a paper (new client attraction, more revenue, and so on). 

Throughout the time spent with DEKRA we’ve learned to differentiate between use and business cases, and as a result, learned which features to prioritise, and what solutions to implement to deal with challenges in business cases. When a satisfactory result is achieved in developing business cases, there’s always time to shift focus to use cases.

Importance of the non-technical 

As developers, it’s easy to overlook the fact that many users may not be as skilled in using tech as we do – we’re creating a solution, not for ourselves, but for others. That determines exactly how important it is to have clear and meaningful communication with non-technical personnel of the client. Sharing information, updates, and progress reports in an understandable way with project managers who are not skilled in technical aspects is crucial.  

The same principle applies when it comes to employees – we have to keep them up-to-date with new features being implemented and be ready to explain their function in a way that’ll be easy to understand. By keeping the language simple and not boring them with terminology, while focusing on the value-benefit aspect, as well as their daily work, we were able to implement those solutions with ease, while gathering invaluable early user feedback. The goal of this was to ensure high adaptability and usability, which meant bigger success at the end of the project!

Immerse yourself in user stories

While working with DEKRA we’ve met many extraordinary people and that gave us a chance to learn from their experiences regarding the challenges and hardships of using the tech in their industry. That allowed us to broaden our horizon by including user experience stories from all walks of life – from field agents, lower management to branch managers. All these different perspectives, recommendations, and proposals regarding our product during the development stage allowed us to paint a full picture in our work – a much-needed holistic approach allowing us to stay ahead of the competition in these trying times.

Proactively seek feedback

During our cooperation with DEKRA, we’ve got a confirmation of how important is the well-known principle of working together towards mutual understanding blooming in an inevitable success – Feedback. As we shouldn’t practice alone – not to repeat mistakes – we shouldn’t work blindly according to the plan. During our journey with DEKRA, we’ve asked employees as well as managers regularly and consistently for feedback regarding our work and gave our own back accordingly – as this is a two-way street. That allowed for constant improvement through learning from our mistakes and suggestions for future-to-be users of our product. Monthly evaluation sessions with management, built-in app feedback forms, and scheduled meetings with employees gave us insight into challenges and everyday hardships of the industry – in turn allowing us to make the best-suited product possible. A nice example is DEKRA i2i, a video solution used now to support multiple use cases, across different industries on multiple continents.

Show what is possible – be assertive

By thinking outside the box and being ready to propose unconventional solutions, while being open to conversation and prepared to make mistakes, we discovered how big of an asset we can be to DEKRA and their business cases. By showing a full range of possibilities, technologies that can be used, and ready-to-use demos, we were able to grab the full attention of our client and include him in the development process hundred percent. We also provided insights regarding the cost benefits that our innovative and not ready on-the-go solutions will bring. That built trust, which in return gave space for discussion about DEKRA’s goals and plans for the future – a matter in which we’ve of course advised and recommended possible solutions.

So what can you learn from our experience?

Well, it’s all there. In our opinion, we’ve gained a lot of invaluable experience from our 9 years of partnership with DEKRA. We have developed, scaled, and established a global video solution within their group. We’ve learned to be more than just a development partner, but also a leader in innovation and feedback partner. It also showed us how being proactive in every aspect of collaboration is a mutual benefit. 

Interested to read their Case Study on DEKRA i2i? Why not click here.