Software Development Automation: New Era of Developing Software Solutions

Quick Summary: Software development can be tedious. Automation help developers increase their productivity and automate several repetitive tasks to reduce the development and delivery time. This blog sheds light on software development automation, its benefits, ways to implement automation, and more. Keep reading!

In this fast-moving world, people’s needs and priorities change more frequently than ever. This is also true in the case of software solutions. Hence, companies need to speed up their software development and delivery process to stay in the game.

Adding more developers to the team isn’t a wise solution in the software domain and it will only increase costs and complicate the process. However, instead of increasing the team size, companies can utilize automation to streamline software development and speed up the process.

Automation in software development helps development teams automate repetitive tasks and reduce the time taken in the process. It helps companies improve developers’ productivity and speed without increasing their numbers and complicating things.

Let’s delve deep to understand how automation is redefining software development and delivery, driving efficiency and speed.

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What is Software Development Automation?

In simple terms, it is about using automation tools and methods to minimize the intervention of humans in the software development process. It helps to speed up the development process without compromising quality by automating repetitive tasks with the use of technology.

How Does Automating Software Development Help?

There are lots of benefits of using automation to develop software, including reduced costs, efficiency, better productivity, and more.

Improved Productivity

Automation of manual and repetitive tasks will boost the productivity of developers working on a project. For example, automation in testing will speed up the testing process, allowing developers to quickly find and fix errors or bugs.

Better ROI

The use of automation in software engineering allows companies to earn more returns on their investments due to reduced costs of developing software. Automation increases the efficiency and accuracy of developers and avoidsuman errors.

Maintain Quality

Maintaining the quality of code is vital for a faster development process. However, manual coding is always susceptible to human errors. Automation allows developers to overcome this challenge and produce quality software.

Efficient Collaboration

Automation can help to improve team collaboration. Developers can collectively work a single code repository and when there is an error, the concerned contributor is notified automatically.

Reduced Burden

Software development teams are often burdened with a wide array of tasks and many of ose are repetitive and banal. Automation can reduce the burden of developers as these tasks can be done more quickly without their intervention.

What to Automate in Software Development?

It is often considered that tasks that require less human creativity or intervention should be chosen for automation. However, it’s not easy to quantify which steps of your SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) require less human attention. Plus, automation is alshelpful in those areas where you need more human attention. Generally, automation is used for the following steps.

Testing

Testing is important for quality software, and it also involves repetitive tasks of planning, writing, and executing tests. There are various testing tools/frameworks, like Selenium, Mocha, Appium, etc., that developers utilize to test various software solutions.

There are also many Unit Testing tools/frameworks for different technologies like JUnit for Java, PHPUnit for PHP, NUnit for .NET, and Mocha for JavaScript. Developers can utilize these frameworks/ tools to create and run test scripting and automate the process. Software testing automation helps developers simplify and accelerate the testing process

Development

There are many ways automation can be implemented in the development phase, from writing code to collaborating on a central code repository. Coding is often repetitive, and developers may need extra research when writing code.

Today, many AI-driven tools are being used to speed up and automate the coding process. Tabnine and ChatGPT are the best examples of tools that developers utilize to increase their productivity. Tabnine autocompletes code when writing in a code editor like VSC (Visual Studio Code).

Deployment

Automation is also playing a critical role in software deployment, which is the next phase after development and testing. With the use of automation tools, software releases can be quickly provided in the production environment.

Setting up the environment and configuring the software are some of the tasks that automation tools can handle effectively and reduce the time in software deployment. AI-powered process optimization solutions enable developers to frequently release software.

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Examples of Software Development Automation Tools for Developers

The following are some popular automation tools for software development.

Postman

Postman is a handy automation tool for developers to build, test, and share APIs. With this tool, testing APIs becomes easy and quick. This tool can make various HTTP requests such as PUT, GET, DELETE, POST, etc.

Jenkins

It is one of the most popular automation servers. Jenkins helps with implementation of software development parts with regard to developing, testing, and deployment. This tool provides a CI (Continuous Integration)/CD (Continuous Deployment) pipeline for software build, testing, and deployment cycles

Gradle

It is a feature-rich build automation tool that controls the process of creating a multi-language software. Gradle automates the process of code compilation and creation of software packages.

Selenium

Selenium is a popular testing automation tool for web-based software. It can be used for functional tests.

LambdaTest

It’s a leading testing automation tool that developers utilize to test desktop and web-based software solutions.

Are There Any Disadvantages of Software Development Automation?

Automation is quite handy and enhances the productivity of software developers. However, it can do more harm than good if there is no proper implementation. There are also initial implementation costs, as you may have to spend on acquiring new automation tools and frameworks.

There are some limitations of automation in software development as follows:

Risk of Failure

Failure risk always looms over automation tools that could result in project delays and decreased productivity.

Continuous Maintenance

Automation tools and processes will require continuous maintenance and monitoring to ensure they are up-to-date and functioning without hiccups.

Lack of Quality Supervision

Automation tools don’t offer the level of supervision of a human. Hence, there are chances that automation can provide unreliable results in cases where human intervention is needed.

Limited Scope

Due to their limited understanding of the context of software development, automation tools may not consider all the factors in making decisions.

Automation with Modern Software Development and Delivery Process

Agile is a popular SDLC today that offers an efficient and collaborative software development approach. Unlike traditional SDLCs, the development process doesn’t follow a sequtial or top-down approach, it works in cycles.

The development process takes place in cycles of short sprints of 2-4 weeks that help developers create quality software solutions.

Modern software lifecycle models leverage DevOps automation and flexible development approaches like Agil DevOps is a culture for an organization in which the development and operations teams work together with increased collaboration and communication.

This model uses a CI/CD pipeline that allows developers to quickly develop and release software solutions. Automion plays an important role in this software development model that is implemented with various tools.

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ConclusionComplexity and repetitive tasks are among the factors that increase software development and delivery time. Automation helps companies reduce complexity and streamline tasks with automated tools. It is useful in various steps of the software development process like coding, testing, deployment, etc.If you need a software development company to create a custom solution for your business, look no further than Radixweb. We offer end-to-end software development services from consultation to developing an innovative software solution. With our 25+ years of experience, we can help you build the right solution that matches your unique business requirements.