Enterprise Software Development lifecycle

What is enterprise software development?

Enterprise software development focuses on a company’s needs rather than individual user’s needs. Since enterprise apps are used within a company, they are developed based on the internal environment and business processes. Organizations of different sizes and industries have different demands. The goal of enterprise applications is to fulfill a company’s specific needs and meet specific business goals.

The majority of modern enterprise systems implement the SaaS model when software is developed using web technologies and is hosted on a cloud. Sofware as a service approach ensures rapid performance and flexibility of a system. However, some organizations still prefer traditional desktop apps as they provide greater security and control.

6 steps of enterprise software development lifecycle

The development of enterprise software requires thorough preparation, careful planning, and well-established processes. A clear vision of the project’s goal and qualified implementation get a fair opportunity to penetrate the market and even set an industry standard.

Here is your step-by-step guide to efficient enterprise software development.

Step 1: Product discovery

The product discovery phase involves an in-depth analysis of the organization’s needs. The process starts by gathering requirements from project stakeholders and adapting existing ideas to current workflows. In this way, you can answer some important questions that will affect the course of your enterprise software development project.

Step 2: Planning and estimating

Planning determines the project roadmap for meeting business goals, budget, and deadlines. Effective planning helps allocate resources wisely and avoid typical stumbling blocks during software product development. With detailed technical specifications at hand, you can identify the rough estimates for delivering an MVP.

Step 3: Design

Armed with the results gathered in the discovery phase, product designers step into customer’s shoes and walk through multiple use scenarios. After determining usability logic, designers create functional prototypes of the future enterprise system. This approach eliminates the risks of system redesign at a later stage.

Step 4: Development

From now on, developers come into play: they will set up the cloud environment and create the business logic and the user interface. Focusing on the core features is critical while developing software for the enterprise. Remember that you don’t need the most advanced software. You need software that suits your organization and delivers business value. 

Step 5: Testing

The quality assurance team will perform a series of manual and automated tests to ensure the quality of code and user experience, including functional, load, compatibility, performance, and security testing. Often it means going back to the previous stage to fix bugs and improve performance, but worry not — it’s a good thing. It’s always better to find the bug yourself than letting users find the bug for you.

Step 6: Deployment and maintenance

At this stage, the freshly built and tested product moves to a production environment where users can see and try it out. Now is the best time to fine-tune your enterprise system by adding new features and improvements according to user feedback.

Technically, enterprise software development is a niche in software development. The main difference lies in the context of its use. While general software development refers to both customer-focused and business-focused products, enterprise software development targets specific organizations within a specific industry.