Software development often feels like a high-wire act: balancing ambitious deadlines with the well-being of our valued teams. Pushing boundaries in an agile environment is crucial, but we want to avoid tipping the scales into burnout or diminished performance. This post is your roadmap, your supportive net beneath the wire, guiding you through the challenges of meeting deadlines without compromising team health.
Tackling Inefficiency Head-On
Clear Backlog Vision
Before embarking on the development odyssey, ensure you have a detailed roadmap. Our seasoned Test Engineer Lead, Angeles Banda emphasizes the importance of “knowing your team” during this stage. “Refine the backlog with your team,” she advises, “understanding their strengths and weaknesses to assign tasks strategically.” Break down epics into clear, user-centric stories, and estimate complexity realistically, and this should happen first, before breaking down epics. Epics could live in the backlog for a long time if they are not a high priority, sometimes those epics are no longer needed down the road, so why use our time focusing on those at the beginning? This focused vision eliminates confusion, fosters ownership, and keeps everyone marching toward the same north star.
Team Capacity Check
Don’t overestimate your team’s sprint pace. Analyze past project data and factor in individual strengths. Are you expecting a lean team to scale Mount Everest in two sprints? Allocate tasks strategically, considering both workload and expertise. Remember, overburdened teams lose momentum and need help to maintain their stride.
Scope Creep
The Feature Intruder: Feature creep can derail even the most meticulously planned sprint. Define clear acceptance criteria for each user story and prioritize ruthlessly. Don’t hesitate to raise the red flag during daily stand-ups on enticing yet resource-intensive additions. Jesús Magaña, a senior Project Manager recommends “I recommend to do this right away when noticing a roadblock in our goal path, not necessarily waiting till the next daily Scrum meeting, as we would be wasting time if we do so”.
Building Bridges of Collaboration
Open Communication Loop
Information silos are communication breakdowns waiting to happen. Foster a culture of open dialogue through daily stand-ups, regular sprint reviews, and candid retrospectives. Remember, transparency builds trust, prevents misunderstandings, and keeps everyone on the same page.
Taking it further
As Jesus Mañaga, a senior project manager, suggests, add a “question of the day” to daily scrum meetings. Encourage team members to share their ideas and beliefs. This fosters a more cohesive team spirit, where different perspectives fuel creativity and strengthen solutions. You’ll find performance naturally blossoms by going the extra mile to build connections within the team.
Prioritizing the Critical Path
Not all user stories are equal. Identify the critical path and the sequence of dependencies that must be completed on time for the sprint to deliver value. Prioritize these stories ruthlessly, allocating resources efficiently to achieve core objectives. Think of them as the urgent bridges on your product roadmap, paving the way for successful sprints
Motivating Your Team for the Long Haul
SMART Goal Setting: Unattainable goals are morale-sappers
Set SMART objectives for each sprint – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Break them down into bite-sized, trackable tasks, and celebrate each completed story as a mini-victory. Remember, progress fuels motivation, keeps spirits high, and propels the team forward.
Recognition: The Morale Booster: Don’t let hard work go unnoticed
Publicly acknowledge and celebrate individual achievements during stand-ups and retrospectives. As Jesus Mañaga, suggests, take this gratitude one step further: dedicate time within retrospectives for team members to express appreciation for each other. A Kudos board is a perfect tool for this. Encourage specific and heartfelt acknowledgments of how a teammate’s effort, skill, or even positive attitude had a positive impact. These “powerful gratitude words,” as Jesus calls them, go beyond simple praise and build bonds of trust and support within the team. Remember, a team that celebrates together, and excels together…
Beyond the Blog: Sharing the Agile Wisdom
Scio believes in high-performance collaboration and the power of strong partnerships. This post isn’t about selling you anything. Instead, it’s an invitation to share your own experiences and hard-won knowledge.
Have you overcome deadline challenges with innovative techniques? We want to hear from you. Sharing your experience can help others to navigate the same terrain.
If you feel like it, comment below with your tips for overcoming sprint challenges.
Remember, conquering deadlines is a continuous journey, not a one-time feat. Let’s share our playbooks, celebrate our victories, and learn from each other’s stumbles. Together, we can create a future where ambitious delivery is synonymous with team resilience and shared success.
Debugging software is an important, if often tedious, the task for any programmer. Finding and removing errors generating crashes, freezes, or incorrect results is critical to ensuring the quality of a piece of software, and while some bugs can be fixed with a few simple tests, more difficult ones require special approaches and techniques. And thankfully, there are many resources available to help programmers debug their software; after all, with patience and perseverance, even the most difficult bugs can be squashed.
One such technique is the popular Rubber Duck method, which may already be familiar to a seasoned developer. In short, the Rubber Duck method is a debugging approach in which developers explain their code line by line to an inanimate object, such as a rubber duck. This may sound silly, but it’s an incredibly effective way to find and fix mistakes.
“Computers process information differently than humans do. Anyone who’s first learning to program understands this well. What’s hard about programming for a beginner isn’t really big hard esoteric concepts, but that you’ve got to be so painfully exacting in how you describe everything to a (dumb) computer. That’s why we do rubber duck debugging.”
However, have you ever been curious about why this approach works? What exactly happens in our brains when we verbalize a problem to someone else (even if that someone just happens to be a bath toy), that could lead to a solution that was obvious all along? And what is the best way to implement this method to finally find and solve that bug that has been bothering you all week?
The challenge of language
Computers are dumb. And we don’t mean that in a Luddite, anti-tech sort of way, we mean it in the original definition of “dumb”: incapable of human speech. And speech here is more than just talking; speech includes context, mood, choice of words, familiarity, and an infinity of other variables that a computer can’t understand (yet).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we cannot communicate with computers, it just means that we use specialized languages to do so, and every single one of them works with the principle that computers are dumb: unless you tell a machine exactly what they need it to do, or how to react when something happens, they will not produce a desirable outcome. Thoughtful Code put it best:
“‘Is it cold outside?’ is a question that most humans, having some idea of the weather, will answer pretty easily. They’ll say something like, “No, it’s pretty nice.” Asked that question, a computer — or a really finicky and hyper-rational person — will need you to define each of those words.”
A computer understands the most literal and absolute terms and learning to manipulate those terms is the basic principle of programming. This also means that computers don’t make mistakes, people do. So, if something within the instructions given to the machine doesn’t add up, then the program will not work as intended, and finding the exact place where the communication between a person and a computer got out of alignment can be a challenge. Here’s where the rubber duck comes in handy, thanks to the way we process language.
Here’s a fun fact: did you know that reading, writing, and speaking are located in completely different parts of our brain? Our understanding of the way we use and apply language is always evolving, but it is understood that we use different functions depending on the type of language we employ, which is why it’s so useful to verbalize a problem to find a solution: you involve a completely different part of your mind to help.
Of course, the Rubber Duck method is not useful only in software development, but since computers are very linguistically complex tools (being probably the only ones we need to “speak to” to use), verbalization is useful here, forcing developers to slow down and think about the minute details of their code, which can help to spot mistakes that they would otherwise overlook. As the blog “The Psychology Behind Rubber Duck Debugging” puts it:
“A lot of times, I’ve experienced some programmers that will ask my help about a specific bug they are fixing. I will then ask them how their application and their code works. I literally have no idea how to fix a program that is not mine and have no idea about the flow. However, I let them explain the flow of the process and the connection between functions and files. Oftentimes, they think of a solution before I even understand what is happening. Many people have been so thankful for me — for doing literally, nothing.”
Programmers understanding themselves
You can see the same principle at work in the classroom. Teachers probing students with questions are intended to make sure a lesson has been learned, forcing the students to consider and explain it by themselves. The only difference is that a programmer using the Rubber Duck method is taking both roles (teacher and student) at once.
In other words, this method allows developers to share their thoughts with a neutral party, questioning and probing themselves regarding their code, which can help identify areas of confusion or misunderstanding. And most importantly, it encourages developers to develop a clear and concise explanation of their code, which can be useful for future reference.
“The real magic doesn’t happen on the rubber duck itself (sorry, Duck Norris). However, it happens in our minds. It uses the same psychological principle wherein we are encouraged to explain to ourselves why we did such actions and have a self-realization about what we’ve done. It is usually used by most psychologists to fully understand a person and, at the same time, for the person to understand himself/herself fully.”
And understanding yourself is fundamental to being a good programmer. Just like writing any other thing (a novel, or a sheet of music), everyone has their own style, approach, and technique when coding an application, which makes the ability to explain what you wrote so important; if you aren’t able to understand your process inside and out, then debugging will always be a challenge, especially when working as part of a team, where the code must always be in sync. In fact, the Rubber Duck method can be used as a form of collaboration, as another programmer can serve as your rubber duck and offer feedback or suggestions while you go through your code trying to find an answer.
“When working on a software development project, it’s important to have a good collaboration method in place, and the rubber duck method is one way to ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page”, says Jesús Magaña, Senior Project Manager at Scio. “It can help a developer to articulate his or her thought process, and as a result, team members can quickly identify any gaps in understanding and address them before they cause problems. Additionally, the rubber duck method can help to uncover errors in logic or coding syntax, and overall is an effective way to ensure that everyone on the team can contribute.”
In a Nearshore development environment, where collaboration has come a long way in recent years, the Rubber Duck method can also be useful to bring keep everyone on the same page by improving communication, helping maintain contributions clear, and easing the challenge of solving a tough bug even in remote settings (where a developer may not have anyone to immediately bounce ideas or solutions during debugging), which can help projects to come together more easily. After all, Nearshore software development has its challenges, but by using the proper approach (or bath toy), teams can overcome obstacles and build better software together.
The Key Takeaways
A bug in the code is basically a mistake in communication between a developer and a computer.
Following this, it’s no wonder that approaches to problem-solving like the Rubber Duck method can help to find the precise place where a code is not working.
Although you only need something to talk to (like a rubber duck), this process can involve many people in a team, offering advice and feedback.
However, in remote setups (like with a Nearshore development partner), having a way to find and fix bugs without the insight of anyone else can be a valuable resource.
Scio is a Nearshore software development company based in Mexico where we believe that everyone deserves everyone should have the opportunity to work in an environment where they feel like a part of something. A place to excel and unlock their full potential which is the best approach to create a better world. We have been collaborating with US-based clients since 2003, solving challenging programming puzzles, and in the process showcasing the skills of Latin American Engineers. Want to be part of Scio? Get in contact today!
We all know how it feels to have a long, stressful day at work. After sitting in front of a computer for hours, staring at code on a screen, or attending back-to-back meetings in faraway places, the last thing you probably want to do is come home and use even more technology, even if it is to relax.
However, there are some great ways to take advantage of technology to unwind after a stressful day, from streaming music to meditation apps can help to calm your mind and ease anxiety, and this is thanks to the rise of the “self-care” movement and increasing awareness of the critical importance of mental health in the workplace, where the plague of burnout and social anxiety has made more difficult for many developers to keep a healthy relationship with themselves.
However, when people think about self-care, they often think of things like taking a bubble bath or going for a massage, but this is far from the truth. Self-care is an important tool for software developers, who do an activity that can have a physical toll (is well known how sitting in front of a computer for long hours can lead to eye strain, back pain, and even carpal tunnel syndrome, for example), as well as a mental weight thanks to the continuous challenge of solving technological puzzles under constraints almost every day.
And today, this is the raison d’être behind the rise of a new field of software development currently known as “soft tech”; the idea of creating applications, interfaces, and programs whose purpose is helping us take care of ourselves, especially during those short windows that sometimes appear during a stressful day (or week, or month). The essay “Radical Softness” by Kat Brewster, from the boutique videogame magazine A Profound Waste of Time, explains it best:
“To be radically soft in the digital age is not simply to recognize caring for one’s self as potentially a radical act, but also to recognize the unique strengths, limits, and realities of soft things. The radicalization of organic, messy, squishy, real-world bodies through creative technologies”.
“Soft tech” has been gaining traction during the last decade, and that shot up in importance since the COVID pandemic began in 2020, helping people to get through the isolation and anxiety that those circumstances brought in. In short, what “soft tech” wants to accomplish is using technology to create self-care tools to relax and regain a lost balance, a few minutes at a time. And when it comes to software development of every kind, whose demand skyrocketed during the pandemic, creating unending deadlines to meet and problems to solve, these kinds of applications can be a great resource to take care of oneself.
The best “soft tech” applications you can get
It seems like everywhere you look these days, a new app or software tool is promising to help you take better care of yourself. And it’s no wonder that this is becoming such a popular topic, especially with so many people moving towards working remotely, which can be isolating depending on your set-up. When you’re not surrounded by colleagues and are just working all the time, it can be easy to let your health and well-being fall by the wayside, but with soft tech apps, you can stay on track and make sure you’re taking care of your mental health.
Many of these apps even offer helpful tips and articles on everything, from reducing stress to eating better, and with so many people now working remotely, it’s easier than ever to find an app that fits your needs and lifestyle. Whether you’re looking for help with meditation, fitness, or diet, there’s sure to be an app that can help you out, so we compiled some recommendations from our team on the best ones you can get right now:
Headspace
If you’re looking for a meditation app that will help you relax and de-stress, then you should check out Headspace. This app is extremely user-friendly, and it has a ton of great features; you can choose from a variety of different guided meditations, and some helpful animations that explain the concepts behind this practice. In addition, the app keeps track of your progress, so you can see how your meditation practice is improving over time. “I’ve been using Headspace for a while now, and I can feel a notable difference”, says Denisse Morelos, Marketing Executive at Scio. “With just ten minutes spent on it, my day can always get better.”
Mountain
This is a simulation game with a pretty simple concept: the app procedurally generates a digital mountain, with its own geography and climate, and you watch it evolve through simulated time (hours, days, years). It sometimes generates some insights to share, but that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t have controls, or anything else; it’s about stopping and enjoying the passage of time, a pretty calm, and even meditative, experience.
Viridi
Depending on the type of person you are, you might find gardening either very stressful or one of the most rewarding pastimes you can have. If you are one of the latter, Viridi was made for you. Similar to Mountain, this game lets you watch the growth of a digital object (in this case, a succulent plant), giving you the task of watering and taking proper care of it, accompanied by nice, soft visuals and a relaxing atmosphere with nothing pressing on you.
Throw cubes into brick towers to collapse them
Yes, the title tells you everything you need to know: a “sandbox” game where you can generate block towers (choosing everything from the shape of the bricks to the configuration of the tower, to even the parameters of the physics), and you just topple it down throwing cubes, selecting their size and mass, or even dynamite, if you want something messier. It’s basically a digital Jenga tower that you can collapse over and over, so just put some of your favorite music as background and unwind after a stressful day. “Toppling down writer’s block is more literal than you might think”, says Sergio Martinez, Content Manager at Scio.
An application for every need
“Technology doesn’t need to be this hard-edged dark thing. It can be something that embraces your body, where the interfaces are designed around you, where the colors are warm and gentle, and promote health and well-being. And that’s really different from the attitude a lot of people had in the 90s, which was ‘Jack me in the Matrix and get rid of my physical body”, indicates the aforementioned “Radical Softness” essay.
We know that, as a software developer, a lot of your time is spent sitting in front of a computer screen. And while you might be used to working long hours, it’s important to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself both mentally and physically. That’s why learning some basic self-care techniques can be so important; things like getting enough sleep, eating healthy meals, and exercising regularly can help improve your focus and concentration and reduce your stress levels, and something as simple as an application on your phone can make the difference in your day.
It’s no secret that the workplace can be stressful. But by taking a few to focus on your wellbeing, you can increase your productivity, improve your mood, and reduce your anxiety levels. So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed at work, be sure to download a self-care app and give yourself the break you deserve.
The Key Takeaways
Self-care is not bubble baths and having your favorite tea; it’s a discipline where you take proper maintenance of your physical and mental health, keeping a proper balance in your life.
In software development, which saw demand skyrocket during the pandemic, taking proper care of yourself is becoming more important than ever to keep performing as well as you can.
This resulted in the rise of “soft tech”, applications meant to help you reach a state of relaxation through meditation guidelines, or simply engaging, low-stake activities designed to bring mindfulness a few minutes at a time.
Scio is a Nearshore software development company based in Mexico where we believe that everyone deserves everyone should have the opportunity to work in an environment where they feel like a part of something. A place to excel and unlock their full potential which is the best approach to create a better world. We have been collaborating with US-based clients since 2003, solving challenging programming puzzles, and in the process showcasing the skills of Latin American Engineers. Want to be part of Scio? Get in contact today!
When it comes to software development, the core principle of “Know Your Customer” is as important as ever; after all, you can’t develop a truly useful application without a deep understanding of your user base. And when it comes to the world of Financial Technology, this is especially true, as the stakes are higher, so to ensure safety in your product, there’s simply no substitute for due diligence. And by collaborating closely with our clients and understanding their unique risks, we at Scio can develop FinTech applications that are both useful and safe.
“With FinTech apps constantly flooding the market, FinTech app design might seem like a pretty sweet and easy job to do. But, in reality, designing a FinTech app is probably one of the toughest jobs out there, as it carries a number of unique challenges that can significantly impact the efficiency and adoption of the final product. One such challenge is the “KYC” or “Know Your Customer” requirement that all financial services providers need to comply with”, explains the article “The pain of KYC in FinTech”.
In other words, developing financial software is a challenge that requires regulations and laws that avoid any serious issues for the user. It’s a puzzle of many pieces, and getting them to fit together can be a tricky situation, but when everything comes together, the result is a beautiful thing. So by taking the time to get to know your clients inside and out, you can develop a much better FinTech application that meets their needs and exceeds their expectations.
However, when it comes the time to expand your team, and choose to collaborate with a Nearshore partner like Scio, what are the challenges faced during the project by our teams, and what are the best ways to ensure the products we helped create are the best they can be, and guarantee that KYC checks are followed properly?
Keeping Your Compliance: The other meaning for “KYC”
Very few industries have higher stakes than FinTech, and that’s a core belief that any team developing financial service software has to internalize down to instinct: money is no laughing matter. Be it transferring, keeping it, or doing important operations with it (such as insurance, or billing), regulations on money and banking are an issue taken seriously by all, both private and public organizations. This is, then, what poses the biggest challenges faced when developing FinTech products, summarized so well in the initialism “KYC”: Knowing Your Customers.
“KYC is a regulatory requirement for financial institutions. By law, they are obliged to verify the identities of their clients to prevent fraud and constrain the service access of users who don’t fulfill certain standards of credibility”, says the article Keep Your Compliance: The FinTech’s Guide to KYC. “But Know Your Customer policies are not just regulatory boundaries. They also act as competitive factors. KYC yields insightful data on one’s own services and customers.”
So mastering KYC is critical for any FinTech related-product, although it should be noted that this concept doesn’t establish a concrete set of guidelines, and different types of clients (from a single person to an entire corporation) may have different requirements for their projects, with varying levels of detail, based on the type of transaction needed from the application. This, in turn, can have an extra layer of complexity by building an application meant to work in different territories, each with its regulations, laws, and context, which means that profound knowledge of the financial sector is often required to successfully develop such products.
And although following KYC to achieve the best outcome in FinTech products is necessary for any successful project, the truth is that the costs of these procedures add up, with the average cost of a single KYC check between 13 and 130 dollars (depending on the personnel number, as well as the cost of the particular platform used to do the checks), and up to 25% of FinTech platforms abandoned it due to friction in the customer’s end, which can require a long process to verify one’s ID.
This poses FinTech as a notoriously risky venture, where tight regulations, costs, and market demand for easy interaction that, nonetheless, also require a rigorous procedure to avoid issues like fraud and money laundering, so any organization attempting it is incentivized to look for any help that might alleviate development, and Nearshore development might hold an answer.
Nearshore and FinTech: Easier than you may think
When it comes to software development, a FinTech company has options; either choosing to do everything in-house or looking to augment their team with the help of a Nearshore organization. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but it can be a particularly good option for FinTech companies, helping them access the expertise they need to build a successful product by working with a partner with a deep understanding of the financial sector, with the skills they need close by.
Opting for team augmentation this way allows companies to tap into a larger pool of talent, or “Adding workforce the Nearshore way” in the words of Rod Aburto, Service Delivery Manager, and Co-Founder at Scio, ensuring that communication and progress overview is done in a timely and convenient manner. This ability to collaborate in real-time is another key advantage of Nearshore partnering, and critical to ensuring that KYC is followed, with the final product meeting all the requirements needed.
Ultimately, there are many reasons why these partnerships are a good idea for FinTech companies, and the biggest one is that you can get the best of both worlds: someone who knows the ins and outs of the industry and can help you navigate the regulatory KYC landscape and also shares a passion for developing amazing software.
After all, FinTech companies are under constant pressure to release new features and products quickly, without compromising on quality or security, so to meet these demands, many firms are discovering that by expanding their team resources with a Nearshore organization, a Fintech company can access some expertise that might otherwise be unavailable, and in the case of the financial sector, the proximity between the US and LATAM means that companies like Scio already have a close understanding of all the culturally and legally relevant details that are so important for the correct implementation of KYC checks.
As a result, FinTech companies stay ahead of the competition, speeding up the development process, easing the costs of KYC in the project, and all in all, getting all the talent and expertise you need to develop FinTech applications. So if you’re looking to develop FinTech applications, don’t be afraid to reach out and collaborate with a Nearshore partner: with the right team in your corner, anything is possible.
The Key Takeaways
Although FinTech solutions are in high demand, developing applications for it is full of challenges and obstacles that need a critical eye.
One of the biggest is KYC, or Know Your Customer, which dictates plenty of the requirements of any software, platform, or app.
KYC can be costly, so most FinTech organizations need to proceed with development in an especially careful way, and seek the best support available.
Nearshore development can offer plenty of solutions for the FinTech sector of the US, as the geographical, economic, and cultural proximity between North America and LATAM can ease many of the challenges of KYC.
Scio is a Nearshore software development company based in Mexico where we believe that everyone deserves everyone should have the opportunity to work in an environment where they feel like a part of something. A place to excel and unlock their full potential which is the best approach to create a better world. We have been collaborating with US-based clients since 2003, solving challenging programming puzzles, and in the process showcasing the skills of Latin American Engineers. Want to be part of Scio? Get in contact today!
With the need to be more environmentally focused every day, we look at an approach to software development that can help our industry utilize its resources better and more efficiently: Green Coding.
When it comes to good practices in software development, there’s more to it than just efficiency and delivery of results during every sprint; there’s also a lot to consider about the impact caused by the products we make, both for our clients, final users, and the world at large.
After all, we all know that software development can be a resource-intensive process. First, it generally requires a significant amount of development time to create robust and efficient applications. And second, developing software often requires the use of multiple tools and technologies, which can add to the cost of development. However, beyond these normal cases of resource investment from any software development company, what many people don’t realize is that coding can have a significant impact on the environment. After all, software development has always been a complex and time-consuming process, but in recent years this process has come into sharp focus, as the effects of global warming (and the time we have left to mitigate its effects) have become more and more pressing.
In the case of technology, the creation of new software often requires the use of powerful machines, which consume large amounts of energy, and generate considerable amounts of heat and noise, in addition to the involvement of dozens or even hundreds of software development tools, each of which has a footprint. As a result, the environmental impact of software development can be significant.
Fortunately, there are several ways to reduce the environmental impact of software development, like using more efficient development tools that consume less energy or developing software in collaboration with other developers, which can help to reduce the overall number of development tools in use. However, all this could be for naught if our approach to software development doesn’t include a responsible mindset, which is the origin of a new way to approach the creation of new applications: Green Coding.
Green Coding: Efficiency in balance
By taking these steps, developers can help to protect the environment while still creating high-quality software products, which is why more and more companies are adopting “Green Coding” practices. Green Coding is all about developing software in a way that minimizes its environmental impact, and that means anything from using energy-efficient hardware to writing code that is easier to recycle or reuse.
There are a lot of reasons why green coding is becoming a necessary practice in the software industry. For one, it’s simply the right thing to do: we have a responsibility to take care of our planet, and Green Coding is one way we can make a difference. But there are also practical reasons for adopting these practices; energy-efficient hardware, for example, can save developers money on their electric bills (an essential concern in remote setups), and code that is easier to reuse can save time and resources in the long run. So no matter what your motivation is, there are plenty of ways to go, so let’s review some techniques to ensure your code is as environment-friendly as possible.
Efficient writing: Before going into coding itself, let’s take a step back and think about the physical tool you use to write: your keyboard. How much energy does your keyboard spend during the day? Although the amount might seem negligible (around 1W per hour on average, maybe even less), most USB keyboards increase around 5 times the amount of energy they consume the older they get, depending on their build type and brand. And going along with the energy used by the whole computer setup, this energy adds up, which is why using wireless, rechargeable keyboards is getting popular in Green Coding circles, as it only needs a single 3-hour charge to work most of the day, and doesn’t consume energy directly while you use them. It may seem like a very small change, but considering how, on average, 600,000 people hit a space bar at the same time every 1/10 of a second, saving energy will have benefits in the long run.
Efficient coding: “Coding, for the most part, can become greener almost instantly if we adopt the same software development processes as our industry did 20+ years ago, when coding was confined to strict lengths and sizes”, is an interesting point mentioned by Dean Clark, Chief Technology Officer at GFT, regarding the idea of implementing Green Coding practices. The truth is that, while our ability to code today is virtually limitless, the lean way of writing code when you had to make the most with limited space also meant that no waste of resources was allowed, and optimization was a day-to-day practical concern. “Nowadays, with a lot more leeway in the way we write code”, says Adolfo Cruz, Project Management Officer, and partner at Scio. “And these approaches to making software could still teach us a thing or two in regards to taking care of our resources, allowing us to create more environmentally-responsible applications whose efficiency could save us a lot of energy and time in the long run”.
Efficient debugging: “Coding will inevitably result in bugs, and the act of debugging is, by itself, a way to improve the energy efficiency of software”, is the opinion of the blog TechXplore, which is why having a strong QA department with the appropriate tools is so important to achieve a true Green Coding approach. Following the last point, making sure that our applications are using resources responsibly, and wasting the least amount of energy possible at every step, could go a long way toward making software development more friendly to the ecosystem, and leading to more environmentally responsible practices overall.
Collaboration as a key to Green Coding
So to recap, Green Coding is the process of developing software in a way that minimizes its impact on the environment. We already mentioned some ways to achieve it, but a key practice in environmentally-friendly coding includes collaboration, Nearshore development, and expertise sharing. Collaboration is essential to Green Coding because working closely with others helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that no one is duplicating effort, allowing for more efficient use of resources, which can help to reduce a company’s carbon footprint.
In the specific case of Nearshore development, working with developers in countries closer to their clients and end-users helps reduce travel emissions, allowing you to take advantage of different time zones so work can be done around the clock, which combined with good Green Coding practices, can make a difference when it comes to leaving a carbon footprint.
“You might not think that Nearshoring your software development would have anything to do with the environment, but the truth is it can be very beneficial, helping to improve efficiency and cut down on waste”, is the summary Adolfo Cruz offers about the advantages of collaborating within your same time zone, as expertise sharing is crucial to Green Coding, helping to raise the overall level of expertise in the industry to not only improve the quality of software but also help it reduce the need for training and support.
Development involving a team of experts can often get the job done faster, with fewer errors, and less need for constant testing and development, saving a lot of time and resources. As a result, expertise sharing is an essential part of green coding. All in all, there are many good reasons to consider outsourcing your software development – even if you’re worried about the environment.
In the software development industry, going green is not just about being eco-friendly; it’s also about being efficient, effective, and collaborative. When development teams adopt Green Coding practices, they can work faster, and more efficiently, and as a result, have a positive impact on the software development process. In addition, by adopting green coding practices, development teams can help to make the software development industry more sustainable, and in turn, help the march towards a better future.
The Key Takeaways
The technology industry as a whole is very resource-intensive, and thus, a good starting point for more environmentally friendly practices.
However, beyond adopting hardware that spends less energy overall, there are practices in the software side of things that could help to be more responsible with resources.
Green Coding is an approach to software development where code is as efficient, light, and bug-free as possible, helping to run applications that overall leave a smaller footprint in the environment.
Nearshore development is a good approach to green coding, reducing the need for long travels (and thus, the emissions they involve), as well as sharing the necessary knowledge to always improve software, achieving a better balance with our environment.
Scio is an established Nearshore software development company based in Mexico that specializes in providing high-quality, cost-effective technologies to help you reach new heights. We have been developing since 2003 and our experience gives us access not only to the knowledge but also the expertise needed when tackling any project. Get started today by contacting us about your project needs – we’ll be happy to help you achieve your business goals.
