10 way to enhance your software team quality

It’s always hard to find a Skilled and experienced Developer for a small or medium sized team. But Skilled and experienced developers are key to successful project and team growth. In this article I will share how to develop a culture within the team so junior and mid-level developers become expert and skilful in a short period of time.

1. Basic Software Engineering Knowledge

The very first task for newly appointed developers will be getting familiar with Basic software engineering skills like .

1. Software Engineering Models
2. Agile Development
3. Software Specification
4. Software design and implementation
5. Software Validation
6. Software Evolution
7. System Modelling

2. Keep up to date with Framework & Language

We all are using lots of backend and frontend Frameworks to speed up development time.Each team chooses some specific framework for their development work. And team members always need to be updated about it..

For example, “Team A” chose Laravel as their php framework. Now Mr. A knows Laravel Version 6 and each project assigned to him starts with this version . But the current version is 8. Mr.B knows 8 and uses this version to his project. If Mr.A needs to work in Mr.B’s project then it will create complexity and unexpected delay of delivery time. Same logic is true of the Language version.

So keeping up to date with the chosen framework is vital for all team members.

3. Team coding Guideline

Each and every team should follow a coding guideline. So all of the developers’ code looks the same. For example, Some developers like to create an Enum class to put Constant out of a Model like

class UserRole extends Enum
{
    public const SUPER_ADMIN = 'Super Admin';
    public const MEMBER = 'Member';
}

But others in the team like to put this constant into the Model. That creates inconsistency and complexity to work multiple developers into the same project.Having a common Guideline can solve this problem easily.

4. Practical knowledge of Design Patterns

In 2021 there are lots of well known design patterns to solve a specific problem efficiently. As a coder it’s not important whether we implement a feature within time and budget but it’s important how we do it. Is your implementation simple and readable by other programmers of your team?

Here are few design patterns

• SOLID design principles
• Repository Design pattern
• Factory Design pattern
• Observer Design pattern
• Adapter Design pattern
• Template method design pattern
• Domain Driven Design

5. Testing & Problem Solving

Small team can’t afford a Software tester for most of its projects. So it’s the developer’s responsibility to test his work properly. But not all developers can do it properly. As a result , teams lose the client or bear extra cost of development because of bugs which can be resolved before they are noticed by the client. But this problem can be solved by a team leader spending a few hours/days giving training to a novice developer about testing and problem solving.

6. Weekly/Monthly group discussion about tool/skill/topics

In a team, there are always a few developers who are always keeping themselves up to date with new tools, skills and topics. If the Team leader, top management arrange a team meeting to give the opportunity to share his/her knowledge to the rest of the team then his knowledge will be distributed to the whole team and that keeps everyone up to date and on the same page.

So weekly / Monthly team meetings about new skills is important and it will ensure a skilled and qualified team. This will create a healthy competition between the team members.

7. Code Quality report by another developer

In a small team, usually one programmer is assigned to one project. He is responsible for coding, testing and communicating to the client. So there is a possibility that code can be messy and unreadable . To avoid this scenario, Team leaders should sometimes assign another developer to investigate code quality . This investigation reports should have following

• Does this programmer maintain coding guidelines ?
• Has there any improvement needed on code?
• Is database table structure and indexing done properly?
• What is the SQL query performance?
• Are there any security issues?
• And so on

If these happen regularly then everyone will be careful to code because their code is about to be audited.

8. Pair Programming (Second opinion matters)

It is practically impossible to do pair programming in a small team due to tight deadlines, budget and lack of resources. But a senior developer can be assigned as a mentor. In this approach, the main developer does all the work. Time to time he can consult with the mentor about work plans, DB design etc. Any problem with the work plan or coding comes to light before it happens.

The Mentor should not spend more than 3 to 5 hours weekly here. Too much involvement is going to create problems.

9. Training

Recruiting the right person in the right position is always a tough job for HR and Team leader.

After choosing a candidate . It’s time to train him to cope up with team culture.A mentor should be assigned to the novice developer. He can give 1 hour daily brief about

• Team coding guideline
• Language and Framework Team use
• Team workflow
• Demo project to judge coding skill

Team leader should not involve him in any project until a green signal from the mentor. This will ensure that even a novice developer’s code meets the team standard.

10. Performance Bonus and appreciation

After successful completion of a project, the developer should be awarded a few days paid leave with a performance bonus.This will keep developers motivated for quality work. This kind of recognition will inspire other developers in the team.