Innovating to Net Zero for Sustained Software Engineering

While the world deals with the climate crisis, the software industry often flies under the radar. Our VP of Tech Consulting challenges this notion, revealing how sustainable software development can be a game-changer. Read on as Pratik Mistry explains how to balance innovation with environmental responsibility in equal measure that drives both business revenue and a sustainable planet.

Entrepreneurs are literally on a rabbit and the turtle race to reduce risk, increase profitability, drive disruption, and the list goes on. But what hits hard is the drastic brand enhancement through sustainability. CIOs have to metamorphose business models by thinking differently.

For many industry giants, it’s a literal paradigm shift from developing physical goods and user experiences towards smart software development.

Despite the mission-critical nature of software, what I feel and have experienced down the line, is that somehow it gets little attention from the C-suite. The essential capability that ‘sustained’ software builds, is a blind spot for most organizations.

Working on a super niche software project, my exhaustive experience of reaching the point of ‘sustainability’ is through an equal balance between ‘what's true’ and what’s new’. Phenomenally, it’s critical how quickly decisions need to be made and software development lifecycles are transformed.

Most importantly, there’s a dire need, especially in the software world, to align and mobilize not just the development team but third parties and vendors at a pace unseen before. It’s interesting how a kaleidoscopic view of phases has so much into the software engineering model (the internal, external, present trends, and future innovation).

And to win through the critical software builds, one needs to wear all of these lenses at once. Definitely, one needs to become capable to think through the whole development lifecycle, galvanizing a whole team to get this job done. These are true since the first sailing ship in the Nile many years back then. But what has changed in the meantime is the vitality, reliability, and autonomy of software development to make it sustainable and purposeful.

Thumbnails to Sustainability DNA in Software Development

Looking at the current market scenario, businesses are under an ever-greater strain to deliver value for all stakeholders. Be it developing, breaking, or bolstering the IT stacks. This is a recurring process to pause legacy systems, bring transformation, adopt innovative technologies, and thrive with it.

It’s a circular process that emphasizes the importance of what programmers and tech engineers refer to as Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to thrive with disruption. If augmenting, extending, or enhancing the functionalities of an IT stack is an organic process, it’s much easier to increase your business ROI.

You may call it ‘moving-on’ the technology way - moving to a purpose-led software engineering that delivers equitable impact, lasting financial performance, and customer value. This retains and earns the trust of all stakeholders.

To turn my responsible goals into actions and create a lasting impact, I began by shaping into a sustainable IT infrastructure. I took a lifecycle-centric view of software engineering- from strategizing, wireframing, initial prototyping, testing, to live development and legacy system retirement ultimately. What I learned was a ‘sustained’ software development focuses to break down the software lifecycle into a granular chunk. You can take it as your route forward to innovative and hi tech software development.

This concept brings a fresh awareness of how business gets done and how people are treated at work, what your customers are purchasing, and from whom. Well, sustainability also addresses how investors decide to allocate their capital. Shaping your business to be ceaseless through digital transformation should be a key end goal.

You need to rethink the need and the way decisions are made; cultivate unique capabilities and behaviors for making custom software development more sustainable to adapt well into your organization. The master key is to activate the sustainability DNA into the software development lifecycle. This is the right pathway to build end-user connections, shared accountabilities, and collective intelligence that benefits your organization, the community, and all stakeholders.

But what’s that diagnostic to measure your business’s sustainability DNA? How can your business adapt the next-gen software to become a business that your stakeholders want to deliver value and impact for all?

Answers to all these core puzzles are – The Three Phases of Sustained Software Development

This sustainability concept is created out of my awareness that people get attracted to the new and shiny. New and shiny signifies the adoption of next-gen smartphones, smart cars, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Industry 4.0, and the list continues.

Naturally, people get drawn to the outcomes which break new ground, developing techniques and tools to make our lives smarter and better. Now, this is just a fraction of software engineering to work on new elements of the software stack.

The Real Game Starts with Beta Format

No matter how exciting the new product to be released sounds, it is appreciated and reviewed only by beta users. This lands on boundaries where the future versions drive limited revenues and carry substantial development and research costs.

If my team of software developers support the present version of a product which is an enabler for even the present generation that my business caters to, it will scope out a huge portion of my customer base. I can do it by the steady service improvement of the legacy system through the fastest bug fixes.

To achieve that level of sustainability, it takes three to tango!

Working on three phases – past, present, and future is an equilibrium point of software engineering. Getting this equilibrium right, minimizes the churn and upscales customer satisfaction. It’s like a see-saw of phases where I have to unconsciously take care not to commit a lot of resources to the future and facilitate the present generation of the customer base. You must be thinking of a more sustained approach to digital engineering?

Let’s delve into the three tiers of Sustained Software Engineering :

Past phase

Developers fix the common basic errors to maintain uninterrupted user experience and run the app in a ‘lights-on mode’.

Present phase

Developers will ensure the product seamlessly integrates with new systems, ensuring that the existing version talks to almost all data sources that it needs to talk to.

Future phase

An actionable phase where a present product is reimagined with the new feature sets built at a crazy fast speed as a means of drawing new leads.

Software Development Approach to Sustainability Imperative

Most of the traditional software engineering for legacy systems is based on the grounds that only the domain experts can maintain the site without damage to the product functionalities.

But I believe, the sustained product development lifecycle takes an intelligent approach to maintain software without the need for domain expertise.

Well, you can swiftly analyze the codebase of a legacy system and discover the exact parts that cause errors. Intelligent tools seamlessly interact with the problematic spaces in your software systems. You can enjoy minor changes in software products along with drastically decreasing the chances of additional fallout from the errant fixes.

The best part is-

As companies face the challenge of ‘great resignations’, a sustainable software development lifecycle makes it possible to maintain steady performance during the hardship where a highly skilled employee leaves your company.

Injecting the sustainability DNA in your software development lifecycle will optimally decrease development costs and maintain investments in your software that matters the most.

Radixweb’s Sustainability Value Promise

Through intelligent digital engineering, we are making ‘sustainability’ a force for change. It’s a new form of digital that is permeating and enhancing everything we do. From design, development, to testing and product release.

We have more grips with greater promise than sustainability- it unlocks high business value enabled by technology and human ingenuity. Adhering to the international quality standards of development and design, making sustainability the core part of achieving your business goals through our digital transformation services, we deliver on Radixweb’s sustainability promise. That day is not far from when we will talk about making every software development lifecycle a sustainable one.