Change Management Process for Software Development

Imagine you are about to start your software development project. You have a flawless project plan, and a perfect work breakdown structure. Do you allow a thought that they may change during the process of your software development??

It may sound uncomfortable at first, but staying flexible and embracing the changes required by the users or shifts in a market is the key to delivering a market-fit product your audience needs.?

Here I’ll share the insights into change management process at Apiko

User feedback as the center of change management process

User feedback provides the insights that may be necessary for building the best version of your app possible. You want to get it early in the software development cycle to steer the project towards the right direction as soon as possible.

With the insights from your user audience, you will omit building redundant functionality and develop only needed features in the most user-friendly way.?

Another important reason to leave room for flexibility is possible market changes. Software development may last from a few months to a few years. You must understand that what looks like know-how today may be not enough to outperform your competitors after that time. That’s why it’s a good idea to get a first version of a market-ready product as soon as possible.

Thus, agile software development is a great way to save your time, budget, and get a clear perspective on how to reach your software development goals.

MVP development and iterative project management

Once you have a defined software idea and requirements, I recommend beginning with building the minimal viable product (MVP) . It includes only the main features that are necessary and enough to correctly convey and introduce the overall app idea to users. Although the MVP scope is smaller than the one of the whole project, it can already be presented at the market and gather a much-needed feedback.

Are you thinking of building a complex software, possibly with several modules? Is it challenging to select the core functionality? Or do you suppose some of it may be a subject to change in the development process?

In this case iterative project management is the right approach for you. It consists in splitting a software development project into smaller parts called iterations. Each of those parts is formed as a complete little project, providing a ready-to-use product at the end of an iteration. So, it can be tested by the users, and their insights will be taken into account during the following iteration.

Iterative project management is a continuous improvement strategy. Each iteration includes all the steps of a software development cycle, from planning to development, testing and conducting retrospective analysis. Such an approach with the collected user feedback after each iteration ensures higher software quality, risks mitigation, along with improved user experience.?

How to gather user feedback

Collecting user feedback is one of the cornerstones of the change management process. It’s crucial for the success of your software development project. The most suitable approach can vary depending on your product's nature and user base, as you should consider?

• the functionality being tested??
• users' preferences and technical expertise
• the size of your user base.

For instance, discussions are really productive for small groups of people. For somewhat larger user communities it may be more effective to conduct surveys. Simple tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey cope perfectly well with collecting user feedback.?

However, when the user audience is big, it will become a challenge to analyze the survey responses, let alone to hear everyone’s opinion in a discussion. That’s when specialized tools like Hotjar come in handy. Besides basic functionality, like creating surveys, they allow for heatmaps analysis, user sessions recording, commenting directly by the object the comment refers to, etc.

Our 10 steps for feedback processing

Here’s how we process feedback at Apiko.

1. Collect the feedback and make a list of relevant tasks. Set the priorities.?
2. Consider the resources required for this functionality implementation. Add relevant information, e.g. tasks descriptions, screenshots, etc.?
3. Add the tasks to task trackers like Jira.?
4. Let the business analyst review the tasks and check if their description and requirements are explicit enough to proceed with the development. If not, gather more details.?
5. Mark which Jira tickets correspond to new features and which are the change requests.
6. Keep a change log. It’s especially crucial when you collaborate according to time and material model.?
7. Review the tasks, come up with a plan for changes implementation, and proceed with the agile development.
8. Besides, review the bug reports to check if they are relevant. For example, sometimes a user may report that a button doesn’t work. But it’s possible that the functionality behind it hasn’t been developed yet, or that they have forgotten to check a checkbox that leads to the button activation.
9. After the analysis, add the tasks regarding bug fixes to Jira, and assign them to QA engineers.
10. Mark such tasks, e.g. with a “Feedback” tag, to see which work has been added to the initial project plan.?

To summarize…

• Introducing changes to the project scope may extend the estimated software development timeline and budget.?
• The later the change is required, the more work may have been done in vain, and the harder its implementation becomes.
• Try to get user feedback and a market-ready version of the product as soon as possible. This is the way to save your time, costs, and deliver the software your audience needs.