Is it possible to develop software without writing codes, testing them and putting the application live after testing is successful? With Automation kicking in at industry and tools that provide automation gaining market, it is important to evaluate the real importance to software developers. In other words, will the demand for software developers decrease? Well it is too early for us to decide on this burning question.
However, looking at present situation in industry all, it can be understood that the entire process for software development is not becoming automated for now but rather it is further evolving towards a better way to automate repetitive steps or replace SW coding by a visual modelling of processes and then the generation of code which is pretty good, both technically and economically.
Rising demand for innovation in technology coupled with a rise in automation is influencing software development industry in a holistic manner. Every business is striving to bring innovation in services, products and operations to serve their customers better, add value to their money spent and thus remain competitive in global markets. Why there is so much need for innovation in technology? Simple answer is “No Innovation means No Business”, at least in future.
Pic 1: Automation in SW development (source: pixabay)
pliXos (a German based software sourcing advisory firm with own SaaS products) agrees with an article by Forbes that “Software Development industry will become automated and obsolete to some extent“. Many of the basic repetitive tasks in software development are already optimized and automated with the help of tools and platforms. But to manage and configure these automated tasks human efforts will be definitely required.
With so many tasks to become automated in future, the need to manage the backend configuration, integration and performance will be dependent on high skilled software developers. Hence the tasks for software developers are not going to be obsolete but it will become more responsible in terms of quality.
In short, we think the demand for high skilled developers should not decrease in next 20 years at least. Hence skills rather than mere degrees will have an edge in market.
Besides in the software development process itself, automation has a major effect in related services. Already stated in Automation of Data Driven Sourcing and Governance by SaaS tools global sourcing will become more data driven and less cost driven for long term benefits in outsourced software development projects.
A rapid increase in online transactions concerning provider selection and project initiation will be impacted by online customer reviews.
A lot of sub process can be automated in sourcing advisory, provider selection and project delivery/governance. Taking the example of an online marketplace for SW service providers, online customer reviews, verified providers and transparency will be the key points in considering outsourcing software development.
pliXos also agrees with the article from Forbes on the three most important aspects of software development and would state:
- Flexibility: Flexibility is the basis on which customers should build up bespoke software/application. For a true competitive advantage, one will in nearly all cases need a bespoke SW development. Still, the governance, tests, major parts in DevOps can be automated. When talking about DevOps, a lot of monitoring tasks should be automated anyway. This is better to be achieved by building on SaaS solutions from the Cloud instead own operations.
- Performance: Building on automation in the SW development process, wherever suitable is always better from a performance perspective than any manual process. On top of this comes that an automated process is expected to have less errors.
- Security: As technology becomes more sophisticated, it will carry higher risks of being wrongly used by hackers. Cases on Customers data theft and cybercrime have increased over the years. This will be a key aspect in future in all cases. Sophisticated Cloud based tools might help, e.g. in analysing source code before its put into production or to improve continuous monitoring.
In order to support the growth and the importance of SW in our digital world, one needs to build on the global workforce (thus to build upon offshore and nearshore SW development). Automation in collaboration, governance, tests, DevOps, monitoring etc. will be key. Using SaaS components is a perfect way to build on solutions readily available by others for this. And pliXos is active in a certain part of it with some tools and lots of expertise.
Additional Reading:
www.forbes.com
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