Sharing software development progress is essential for keeping stakeholders, clients, and team members informed, engaged, and aligned. It can also help you get feedback, identify issues, and celebrate achievements. But how do you share software development progress effectively and efficiently? Here are some tips and tools to help you communicate your work in a clear, concise, and compelling way.
Before you start sharing your software development progress, you need to define your goals and expectations. What are you trying to achieve with your communication? Who are you communicating with and what do they need to know? How often and how much detail do you need to share? How will you measure the impact of your communication? By answering these questions, you can tailor your message and medium to your audience and purpose.
Define goals, beak down things into small activities or tasks which can be estimated so you know you can track and estimate it. That way your overall effort and % can be tracked
Depending on your goals and audience, you may choose from a range of formats to share your software development progress. Reports are written documents that provide a comprehensive overview of your project status, achievements, challenges, and next steps, and are suitable for high-level stakeholders, clients, and sponsors who need a thorough and consistent update. Presentations are oral or visual presentations that highlight the key aspects of the project, such as goals, milestones, features, demos, and feedback; they are suitable for medium-level stakeholders, clients, and team members who need a brief and dynamic update. Lastly, updates are short and informal messages that provide a quick snapshot of the project progress; they are suitable for low-level stakeholders, clients, and team members who need a frequent and simple update. Reports may include charts, graphs, tables, and screenshots; presentations may use slides, videos, animations, live demonstrations; and updates may use text, emojis, GIFs, and images.
The best way to share progress of software development teams is to organize bi-weekly sprint demo meeting. This is a meeting where all of the stakeholders join and SD teams share what new has been done. Everyone is able to ask questions and get all of the needed context. This is a great way to ensure transparency and alignment.
Showcasing your work in the form of show and tell approach is definitely a stand out winner as everyone gains confidence things are moving in the right track and how they are shaping up! Also it helps track that people understood the ask or are confused!
To share your software development progress effectively and efficiently, you need to use the right tools that match your format and audience. Project management software, such as Trello, Asana, Jira, and Basecamp, can help you plan, track, and manage tasks, deadlines, dependencies, and resources. Collaboration software like Slack, Teams, Zoom, and Google Workspace allows for communication and coordination with stakeholders, clients, and team members through chat, video conferencing, file sharing, and feedback. Version control software like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Subversion can store and manage project code with repositories, branches, commits, pull requests, code reviews, diffs, issues and merges. All of these platforms enable you to share project progress in real-time using dashboards, charts, reports and notifications as well as in a more informal or technical way with status updates, polls reactions comments etc.
Effective and efficient software development progress sharing requires following some best practices that apply to any format or tool. Be clear by using simple and precise language, avoid jargon and acronyms, and explain any technical terms or concepts. Provide enough context and background information, but be concise by using short and direct sentences. Use numbers, metrics, and data to support your claims, and use a positive and confident tone to be compelling. Additionally, provide examples, stories, and testimonials to illustrate your achievements and challenges. By following these tips you can communicate your work in a clear, concise, and compelling way, which is not only a requirement but also an opportunity to showcase your work, build trust, and foster collaboration.