What are the best practices for developing web applications collaboratively?

In today's world a Single Page Application - such as Angular, React, Vue based apps seems like a natural choice, but this may also be a totally wrong choice. Heavy business logic will always put a burden on the API/middleware that will be used for your application data models and if not governed properly they may at least expose some of the data properties if not pose other threads. The promise of front-end JavaScript frameworks is smooth user experience, but in business functionality and scope of the app may overweigh that need. In Enterprise world ASP.NET MVC or Java Spring Boot seem like better choice as you have full control over all aspects of your app from design to execution. Be aware how much weight you put on the front-end!

Following the best practices across IT, and not only coding standards would give you best overall success for the project/product you are delivering.

Ensuring there are coding standards in place in your organisation is a must. There can be general best practices that apply across the board regardless of technology as a starting point (such as the sorts of points highlighted here) If this is a mature technology (within the organisation) then it's important to actually define standards specific to that technology to ensure the best possible quality. That said, it's also important to challenge and review those standards, things change, new ways of doing things appear and to truly innovate and push the quality forward we should never blindly follow what was done before.

Using version control is a crucial best practice when developing web applications collaboratively. Version control is essential for efficient and organized collaborative web application development. It promotes teamwork, accountability, code quality, and the ability to adapt to changing requirements and resolve issues effectively. Git, in combination with platforms like GitHub, is one of the most popular choices for version control in web development due to its flexibility and extensive tooling.

Use version control, it's really as simple as that. If you don't version control a project you will inevitably feel the pain. This is particularly true of collaborative pieces of work where there are potentially large numbers of team members contributing to the same area of code, unpicking issues is much harder without the history of changes to help along the way. Code reviews/Peer reviews are one of the biggest strengths of version control and are one of the most vital steps in any piece of software development. We can learn from eachother all the time, it doesn't matter how experienced you are, there's always room to improve and being open to that and utilising the tools to enable it is vital to success.

Adopting Behavioral Driven Development such as Test-Driven Development would bring the best in the testing world. Not only that you will increase your coverage, but you will design your code from the start to be testable -which is the pre-requisite and heavy dependency for successful implementing CI/CD.

Communication is key to the success of everything. When looking at "what could be better" in any retrospective, a sprint that had issues almost always has communication as the reason. - If the team aren't on the same page, they can't drive toward the goals effectively. - If the team don't feel heard, they'll lose motivation - If the team aren't aware of changes (as are innevitable in any Agile environment) they're going to miss things. - If the team aren't communicating with stakeholders, they can't course correct if needed Using tools like Azure boards or JIRA can help significantly, as will tools like teams, slack or discord. The important thing is to ensure those lines of communication never fall down.

Collaboration is the key to success for any project, and adopting agile delivery methodologies is the key to achieve that heightened collaboration need. I personally like Azure DevOps as medium for collaboration, from powerful mentions to flexibility and customizations to adopt to any methodology. It is the only tool on the market that I know of that can tie the work items from their inceptions to post implementation tracking. For example, a bug or failed test result can be tied in to release version and to source code that introduced it as well as the work item that requested that code to be written, everything in one single tool with dashboards to build powerfull reporting.

Domain-Driven Development (DDD) should get a mention. It's a practical approach that helps everyone involved in a project get on the same page. DDD encourages developers, designers, product managers, and domain experts to speak a common language. When everyone uses the same terms and concepts, it eliminates confusion, reduces errors, and makes sure everyone is pulling in the same direction. With DDD, teams follow clear guidelines, making it easier to coordinate efforts and involving domain experts in the development process, you gain valuable insights into user needs and preferences. This collaboration often leads to creative solutions. Also, because of the focus on domain models, your app can adapt as the world changes.