Software development is a highly competitive market. When it comes to releasing software which you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into, there are numerous factors to consider if you want a successful—and profitable—release.
Below are twelve factors that can contribute to a successful software release.
1. Competition
Ensure that your organization is open to competition. Remember that even tiny businesses can end up being huge competitors.
2. Schedule
Make sure you have a schedule for your software’s release and stick to it. The best way to create a schedule is to set a release date and work backwards from it. Even more importantly, inform your team of the schedule to make sure the right tasks are prioritized.
3. Stakeholders
Your software’s roadmap should be prepared with stakeholders. This will double as a document for strategic orientation. Just remember to notify your stakeholders if you make any changes during the process. This will make the operation run smoother.
4. Beta
A terrific way to test your software before the main launch is to reach out to any trusted clients you have and ask them to beta test it for you. You can also open this up to opinion leaders, like bloggers, who have a substantial presence online. You can ask these influencers to do blog post reviews for your software.
5. Self test
Along with having trusted clients beta test your software, download and test your release yourself. You know how your software is supposed to work, so downloading it will let you know if there are any issues with the install and make sure all download links work properly.
6. Don’t stall
It’s understandable to want to wait to release your software until it’s absolutely perfect, but sometimes it’s impossible to predict every eventuality. Once the software is ready for release, small bugs can easily be patched after the release date and you can stay on schedule.
7. Caution
Be more conservative with changes the closer to release you get. It’s risky to make major changes to your software’s code near release. It will also lead to more testing that could delay your schedule.
8. Clean machine
Use a clean machine to perform your tests. This will help eliminate issues with missing dynamic libraries and the software not working on a customer’s machine.
9. Analysis
Utilize good planning to track both user behavior and metrics.
10. Legal
Ensure all your customer’s conditions, contracts, and any other sort of regulatory documents have been read and are kept by your legal department. Also, make sure that any supporting documents are accessible to those who will need it.
11. Advertise
Even software development companies that have established trust with their customers need to convince the rest of the marketplace that their new software is useful, and that people should buy it. Investing in advertising and marketing is essential.
12. Copyright
Make sure to obtain all necessary patents and trademarks to protect your company’s ideas and the software itself from idea theft.