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Tag: design

  • What Does Build Quality Look Like in Software Design?

    What Does Build Quality Look Like in Software Design?

    With rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), mobile applications and modern software in the last year, the enterprise software market is expected to grow exponentially. Market revenue is projected to reach $292 billion in 2024, and developers are constantly implementing innovative measures into the software development life cycle (SDLC) to ensure a seamless, high-quality creation process. One of the best ways to achieve this is by leveraging modern build health tools to monitor a multi-faceted project’s overall quality and performance.

    Build health tools automate the creation of executable applications from source code and encompass several areas to ensure the stability and health of the software build process. From automated testing to security scanning, developers rely on these tools and processes when defining a modern approach to software development. Before diving into the intricacies of build health quality, it is necessary to grasp the complete significance of the SDLC when attaining the final product in a global marketplace.

    The Significance of the SDLC

    The SDLC is the process in which developers plan, write, modify and maintain software. This methodology applies to software developed for computers, mobile phone applications, video games and other systems. Adhering to this process allows developers to reach the optimal outcome for the final product. The life cycle includes everything from the planning and brainstorming stage to setting up maintenance and operations after the product has launched. It ensures success by providing a more structured approach to building and developing software. This becomes increasingly important as the software market’s value continues to rise.

    Since 2020, the demand for software engineers has doubled. Because it’s essential for business leaders and developers to keep up with the latest trends and innovations, the need for software knowledge will continue to grow exponentially. Currently, software is typically delivered in one of two ways:

    • On-premises. End users install and run the software themselves on the desired device. This serves as a more secure delivery method for highly-regulated industries.
    • Software-as-a-service (SaaS). This cloud-based method allows end users to access the software online rather than through a traditional download/upload. This enables providers to offer a subscription-based/pay-as-you-go structure for users. The provider is responsible for the hosting and maintenance.

    Developers rely heavily on build health tools to ensure a smoothly running life cycle. Build health tools play a huge role in determining a seamless development process.

    The Role of Build Health Tools in Modern Software Development

    Build health tools essentially fill the gaps in the development process and enhance the software build quality. These tools deliver automated testing methods by creating multiple testing scenarios to ensure full functionality. They help developers see the different data points necessary for garnering a 360-degree view of the software and its status.

    The tools also impact resource utilization and response times. Using key performance indicators (KPIs), they monitor the build quality while enhancing build production to ensure it is better than what was previously developed. In that way, it is constantly growing and improving to guarantee the project reaches a smooth and seamless completion for the developer. From there, the tools can create multiple datasets in less time, which significantly reduces overall software development time.

    Common Challenges of Build Health Tools in Software Design Projects

    There are several challenges with using build health tools. The most common obstacle is that automated tools and testing lack the human touch that comes from developers and their manual work. Although build health tools can perform simultaneous tasks quicker than a more manual approach, they overlook the full spectrum of available resources to improve the build. These tools are so focused on functionality that they fail to incorporate the prior research and available resources that often serve as key building blocks for a successful development project. For this reason, it is important to have developers working in conjunction with build health tools to provide a balance between manual and automated software testing.

    Developers can leverage build health tools to seek out the KPIs that determine the software’s quality at a given stage of the SDLC, from initial development and quality assurance (QA) to the final phases of staging and production. Some of these KPIs include:

    • Exceptions. Make sure there are no new exceptions from the previous build versus the production stage.
    • Test coverage. Ensure that adequate testing is performed on the current build by defining what application programming interfaces (APIs) need to be included for certification, along with the number of executions required.
    • Automated data validation. Make sure data is accurate and useful while remaining enforceable by the designated standards.
    • API testing. Test the overall interface for smooth performance with trustworthy data to advance the program/project. It is also important to compare performances during different SDLC stages to confirm the status of the API, dependency, database, and functionality.
    • Memory/CPU usage. Measure the overall usage of the central processing unit (CPU) and its memory to ensure stability and efficiency.
    • Requests per minute. Evaluate the rate at which the software can receive and execute certain requests delivered by the end user to ensure optimal efficiency.
    • SQL coding standards. Enforce standards and limitations for the overall coding within the interface by measuring quality, security, efficiency, and sustainability.

    While these are only a few of the KPIs detectable with the aid of build health tools, it is essential to note how these tools can benefit a successful software release. Developers can compare the differences between current and prior builds throughout the SDLC to fully gauge any changes, developments, improvements, or downgrades during production to a successful launch.

    Current Events and the Future of Build Health Quality for Developers

    There are many examples of current organizations effectively leveraging available build health tools for project success. Software developers will continue to adopt new and innovative methods using AI and automation capabilities to ensure more efficient testing and higher build quality.

    The future is bright for contemporary software engineering. As unexpected as the AI boom of 2023 was for the tech world, the future of modern software development may hold even more surprising developments. Build health tools are expanding and perfecting the creation process for enterprises and developers worldwide. As build quality improves on the back end, the customer experience for global industries will improve on the front end. The potential for software enhancements and innovations in this way is what makes the journey exciting.

  • Five Tips For Creating Design Systems

    Five Tips For Creating Design Systems

    Design systems were all the rage half a decade ago, with an explosion of open source resources made public by Google, Salesforce and Shopify, for example. Not long after, design tools like InVision, Sketch, Adobe XD and Figma featured ways for product teams to maintain design systems within their apps. If you want to build a scalable, consistent product that increases build velocity in design and engineering teams, a design system is integral.

    Throughout my own design career, I have become an advocate for building and maintaining design systems. It has become a niche passion of mine, and I hope to share some of what I’ve learned through the years as a design system nerd.

    But wait – first, what is a design system? A design system is a library of style, components and other patterns documented so that building and adopting products is more efficient and cohesive for designers, developers and end users alike.

    The key benefit of a design system is that it creates consistent, repeatable patterns that make end users think less. A product experience that delights is usually designed with persistent visuals and consistent interaction. Users want to feel comfortable knowing that no matter where they navigate, they won’t be surprised by what they find. Repetition, in the case of product design, is not boring, but welcome. Design systems create trust with users.

    Another benefit is the increased build velocity from design and engineering teams. As designers, we are tasked with solving problems. We want to create a simple understanding of how our users can accomplish tasks in a workflow. Of course, we are tempted at times to invent new patterns to solve design problems. We often forget, in the minutia of design iterations, that we’ve already solved a particular problem in a prior project or in another part of the current product. This inefficiency can lead to wasted time, especially if those existing patterns and components have not been documented. In a single-person design team, the negative effects may not be as visible, but one can imagine the exponential nature of a larger design team consistently duplicating existing work or creating new patterns that, ultimately, create an inconsistent user experience.

    Instead, we want to empower ourselves as designers to focus on solving problems without the need to invent new interfaces every time we are posed with a design challenge. Design systems are always vital, but are especially so when design teams scale up and the product experience reaches a level of maturity.

    Hopefully, you’re now convinced that design systems are the backbone of the best design teams and delightful user experiences. Below are a few tips to help you create a usable design system in your own organization.

    Start Small

    Create that button symbol. Save that primary color or header text style. Audit your designs and see what patterns emerge. You get the idea! It doesn’t matter where you are in the design process; any remnant of documenting a pattern will do wonders for saving your precious time and creating beautifully consistent experiences for end users.

    Prioritize Design System Documentation

    Whether it’s as simple as a shared page, internal minisite or a full-fledged website, documenting your design system and making it easily accessible to the right people is fundamental to its success. You need to determine the level of complexity that is needed for your organization and teams that you collaborate with. Talk to your engineering team to see how to best document and stay in sync between design and code.

    Keep Evolving Your Design System

    Ask yourself and your team if certain parts of the design system are actually helping solve problems. Iterate on a component that needs to be more flexible or add a new one if there is an important use case that needs to be addressed. Audit your component library to see if there are components that are not used, or if there are multiple components that can be merged.

    Have a System for the Design System

    It’s easy to get lost in the moment and forget to create an important, requested component or remind a developer to build a part of the UI as a component. Having a project management system and workflow for your design system can help prioritize needs and keep communication organized. Whether it’s logging tickets in Jira, moving cards over in Trello, or simply annotating or resolving comments in Figma, there needs to be a workflow that is consistent and works for the entire team.

    Collaborate

    I’ve fallen into the trap of being inside a design tool bubble. As designers, we’re often stuck inside software that is great for communicating a user experience but poor at staying in sync with the actual code that is being written. This causes an inconsistency between design and code. Design systems are no exception to that problem. From the outset, advocate for working with a developer to build a design system that works as a fruitful collaboration between design and engineering.

    These five tips will help you start creating a usable design system that will make your collaborators and, most importantly, your users, happy. Ready to get started?

  • Design for DevOps – Best Practices

    Design for DevOps – Best Practices

    Without good design practices, a DevOps implementation has no hope of delivering on its promise of accelerating innovation with high quality and scale.

    Anyone who has been a designer knows that good design for DevOps is easier said than done. My blog, “7 Pillars of DevOps,” identified seven essential best practices areas that make up successful DevOps. One of the seven pillars is Design for DevOps. The blog explains that the pillars are not silos, but rather foundations that need to be kept in balance. It also can be said that a good design goes a long way to make up for shortcomings in the other pillars.

    This is true for any number of designs, including designs for legacy, greenfield or brownfield products. It is true for platform projects, feature enhancements or repairs. It is true for enterprise three-tier applications or multilayer products. And it is true whether the developers are using Agile, Waterfall or ITIL processes.

    In every case, a designer faces tough challenges and is expected to balance conflicting goals. Designers are expected to rapidly drive down the work backlog, yet produce quality products that avoid costly rejections and rollbacks. In addition, there is pressure to increase the percentage of effort spent on creative content over corrective content and do so with limited time and resources. These conflicting goals constitute tall responsibilities. If not supported with best practices, the overall design experience is a cauldron of stress and fast route to burnout.

    The following best practices improve the design experience and products of design in a way that is streamlined for the DevOps pipeline:

    Designers must thoroughly understand customer use cases

    Usability, reliability, scaling, availability, testability and supportability are more important than individual features! Quality over quantity is recommended. Designs that anticipate actual customer usage are the most successful.

    The culture needs to support designers

    Leaders must support the designers with motivation, mentoring and training. No designer can be expected to know everything. It’s OK for designers to make some mistakes if lessons are learned and improvement quickly follows. Good DevOps practices including continuous monitoring and quick remediation are examples of practices which help minimize the impact of any mistakes.

    Design coding practices are critical:

    • Products are architected to support modular independent packaging, testing and releases. In other words, the product itself is partitioned into modules with minimal dependencies between modules. In this way the modules can be built, tested and released without requiring the entire product to be built, tested and released all at once.
    • Where possible, applications are architected as modular, immutable microservices ready for deployment in cloud infrastructures, in accordance with the tenets of 12-factor immutable non-monolithic apps, rather than monolithic mutable architectures.
    • Software code changes are pre-checked using peer code reviews prior to commit to the integration/trunk branch.
    • Software changes are integrated in a private environment together with the most recent integration branch version and tested using functional testing prior to committing the software changes to the integration/trunk branch.
    • Developers commit their code changes regularly, at least once per day.

    Good DevOps design practices support QA:

    • Understand the QA process.
    • Software code changes are pre-checked with unit tests prior to commit to the integration/trunk branch.
    • Software source code changes are pre-checked with Static Analysis tools prior to commit to the integration branch. Static analysis tools are used to ensure the modified source code does not introduce critical software faults such as memory leaks, uninitialized variables, and array-boundary problems.
    • Software code changes are pre-checked with dynamic analysis and regression tests prior to commit to the integration/trunk branch to ensure the software performance has not degraded.

    Good DevOps design practices support Ops:

    • Understand delivery and deployment pipeline processes.
    • Software features are tagged with software switches (i.e. feature tags or toggles) during check-in to enable selective feature level testing, promotion and reverts.
    • Automated test cases are checked-in to the integration branch at the same time code changes are checked-in. Evidence that the tests passed are included with the check-in.
    • Tests are conducted in a pre-flight test environment that is a close facsimile of the production environment.

    Supporting tools are needed to realize Design for DevOps practices:

    • Elastic infrastructures that can be easily orchestrated, created and released as needed to support designers tasks on-demand with minimal delay.
    • Design, code management, monitoring and test tools readily available and scalable with minimal delay.
    • Monitoring tools that track application process performance and report the results to designers in easily consumable formats without delay.

    Design for DevOps Summary

    What do you think? Do you agree the above are important best practices for DevOps design? Are there others you recommend?

    While DevOps implemented with all seven pillars provides a strong foundation for long-term enterprise business improvements, it is important to understand DevOps is not an island. Enterprises implementing DevOps should be aware that DevOps interoperates with other IT systems and practices. Enterprises are well-advised to choose tool-agnostic IT partners that can provide solutions that best suit the needs of each unique enterprise and can integrate and evolve DevOps together with all of their IT systems.

    — Marc Hornbeek

  • The DevOps master process: design

    The DevOps master process: design

    In speaking, counseling and talking to people with regard to DevOps, I often frame the discussion in terms of the DevOps master process. While all of the parts of the master process are important, one aspect very often is overlooked. I call this often overlooked aspect the design stage.  The design stage includes the gathering and visualization of requirements. If we assume that our goal is to deliver higher quality and more consistent and resilient deployments, then we must include expectations for how the software should operate and perform.

    When we are able to streamline and optimize the DevOps master process we ensure maximum velocity and agility for delivery of IT services to the business. The importance of the master process is that it applies for both businesses that develop their own software as well as those that operate using only Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. Before discussing what is involved with design in more detail, let me take a moment to better define what I mean by the DevOps master process:

    1. Design

    2. Build

    3. Test

    4. Stage

    5. Deploy

    6. Operate

    In future articles I will explore each of these elements in greater depth. For this article I wanted to focus in on the design element specifically.

    To ignore the design aspect of the master process means that we have no linkage for what we are building or testing during the Dev phase and no concern for performance and service levels in the Ops phase. Simply because there are no tools that help to automate this aspect of master process, does not mean that it is not an important aspect to fulfilling our DevOps mission; it simply means that we need human intervention to ensure that our requirements are met at each stage of the process.

    However, this is not all a one-way street with requirements only dictating to operations. In the past, traditional requirements gathering often focused on function with very little thought given to performance or consumption. Through our new DevOps collaboration, we introduce operations into the requirements gathering phase, which means that we can capture critical elements, such as service levels and usage models, ensuring all work across the master process leads to meeting these operational requirements. This will, hopefully, limit the spike in support calls operations needs to respond to immediately after deploying new software into production.

    Perhaps the reason we don’t yet hear about the importance of this is because it’s difficult and the tools for requirements gathering and automation around testing against the requirements traceability matrices just don’t exist in the current popular DevOps tool chains. Dare I say, these have been completely ignored by the open source community? It would be understandable since open source communities grow out of interest more so than need and developers are more inclined to work tools and technologies that are interesting to their own efforts. Perhaps we will see better integration of automation of testing not only features but also service levels, from the enterprise DevOps software providers, such as IBM who are applying their Rational suite of tools toward DevOps initiatives.

    Regardless, to achieve optimal benefits from DevOps, we need to automate around the entire master process. This means that we must translate requirements into automatable tasks by linking them to specific unit tests and load stress testing and ensuring that the requirement is only satisfied once these tests have passed.