The software development industry has undergone tremendous growth in the last few years, and it looks like that growth will only continue to gain momentum going forward in 2022. Whether you succeed or fail as a software development firm will depend a lot on your team and how fast they can cope with the changing IT landscape. Winning business contracts shows how fast your team is adapting to evolving business and technological needs. A fast-moving team not only has to stay on top of the technological curve, but also has to bring the changes to the client side on time.

Adopting DevOps practices is no longer an option, but a necessity in order to survive in the industry. In 2022, the race is how your team is optimizing DevOps processes to further speed-up deployments.

Here is how to make the most of your software development team in 2022:

Optimize the delivery pipeline

There was a time when software deployment used to be a major event in IT companies. Software development teams would plan months in advance leading to the major release date. Operations people would spend multiple nights ensuring everything is going according to plan.

As software teams bring more of a DevOps DNA into their software development practices and move from annual and bi-annual releases to multiple releases a day, deployment has gone from a major event to a non-event.

Going forward in 2022, the frequency of deployment would reflect how competitive your organization is. If your team is lagging behind and is unable to keep up with the market trends, they might be dragging your organization into oblivion.

In 2022, they need to further re-evaluate their delivery pipelines in order to push the boundaries for what their tech stack can tolerate.

Read on: Kanban Methodology: How Can It Help Your Software Development?

Bring people and culture together

The global shortage of skilled labor has put many IT companies on their knees. Call it the great resignation or post-pandemic effect, the repercussions will be felt for many years to come. While we cannot reverse the situation, 2022 could be the year when we can start rebuilding the company culture around people.

Post the great migration, the labor market would be more inclined towards organizations that insist on personal growth, organizational values, and workplace culture. In addition, a major reason for great resignation is that people started feeling detached from their company’s culture. They felt like a unit fulfilling one task after another.

If you want to build a dependable and stable team, don’t lure them with a Tesla Model 3 as a joining bonus, rather promise them a culture that grows with them. 2022 will be the year to center your company’s culture around people.

Insist on security and compliance

When security takes a backseat, breaches happen, and the blame game starts. The security team blames the operation team for not giving them enough time, whilst the operation team blames the quality team for understating the bug report.

At the end of the day, the entire blame falls on the software development team that will be as clueless as the other teams.

Security breaches are no longer an occasional unfortunate event, they are now part of everyday threat assessments. Without a well-documented threat response strategy, you are playing in the dark and are paving a path to team conflicts and internal scuffles.

In 2022, you need to fortify your threat response plan around how to respond to breaches, avert incoming breaches, and enforce transparent security policies.

Outsource wisely

No matter how comprehensive your software development team is, sooner or later you will come across a project that you do not have the resources for. At that time, you will need to look for resources elsewhere. Outsourcing is a wise choice, but we all know how tedious it is to find a reliable skillful resource on time. Moreover, even the most prudent of organizations have a hard time finding external resources that can match the quality and teamwork of their in-house team.

Whatever your reasons are to assign the role to an external member, the resource is supposed to raise the value of the team and deliver deliverables in the most efficient way.

Before outsourcing the role, give the candidate a trial run with the team. See how they deal with other teammates before giving the go-ahead. A casual approach around whomsoever gets the job done can do irreversible damage to your company culture. It’s strongly advised to outsource cautiously in 2022.

Read on: Benefits Of Outsourcing Software Development

What’s in it for your software development team in 2022

For an IT company, its software development team is probably its biggest asset. As technology evolves, development practices change, procedures get optimized, only the sturdiest of teams stand the test of time. Only the most successful organizations can retain their software development teams through the generation of technology change.

2022 is not going to be easy for software development companies. We are experiencing the worst tech labor crisis since the industrial age and building stable and promising teams is harder than ever before.

For organizations wanting to undo the uncertainty, their best bet would be to retain their teams through these precarious times. Of course, that’s not going to be easy. Culture plays a large part as does a sense of belonging.

The new IT landscape throws too many responsibilities on the developers. They are now responsible for everything from code generation to deployment and even security.

While the new landscape considerably shortens the development cycles, it puts a fresh burden on developers who tend to already be preoccupied. Therefore, it is harder than ever before to keep your developers happy. Modern tech firms employ updated tools and techniques to automate the entire software delivery pipeline from production to deployment and reduce the burden on their development staff. Your developers will appreciate tools that make their job easier. 

2022 will indeed be the year where developers start to regain their position as the doers of software development teams. It’s time to start treating your developers like stars.