Is software development hard? Difficult, not difficult.
Some people in the industry have publicly stated that it will be difficult if the traditional development methods are still used to develop software.
Because the needs of software users are more complex, the development team's technology stack is more abundant, but the time left for development is less and less, and the speed of software delivery is getting faster and faster. Even sometimes, in order to catch up with the project schedule, developers get involved before the architecture is designed. This is like building a house without laying a good foundation. There will be many quality problems and safety hazards.
To sum it up:
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Difficulty in team building and management;
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Demand communication costs are high, and project progress is slow;
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Code quality is difficult to standardize, and system quality is difficult to control;
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It is difficult to implement agile management;
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The project has a long schedule, and the delivery system cannot meet the needs of some of the business;
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The operation and maintenance pressure is high and the cost is high;
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It is difficult to accumulate technical experience, and enterprises are easily kidnapped by technology.
In fact, the whole process of software development includes design, R&D, testing, deployment, and operation and maintenance. If any of these links go wrong, it may lead to project development failure and ultimately cost the enterprise a huge amount.
When digital becomes an IT trap
Sainsbury's and Tesco are both supermarket chains in the UK, and a price war is in full swing in order to grab the market. In 2000, to make up for profits, Sainsbury's turned its attention to a warehouse management system based on large equipment. In fact, the system isn't just one system, it's nearly 400 interconnected supply chain software applications.
The project was outsourced to consultancy Accenture for £1.8bn over a seven-year period. However, in its fifth year, the new supply chain system, after spending hundreds of millions of pounds, ended in failure.
Sainsbury's attributes the failure to the following reasons:
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The project is too big - the "big bang" approach and waterfall project methodologies are limited;
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The project cycle is too long, the flow of personnel causes the project to be interrupted, and the key legacy systems are not understood;
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Lack of sponsorship support;
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Weak outsourcing governance;
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Bad project planning and "political infighting".
These are very common basic problems in the process of software project development. If even the most basic software development strategy is not done well, even if the two big companies Sainsbury's and Accenture jointly develop it, the project is doomed to fail.
There are also many people who think that when the software is delivered to the user, the thing is done, but this is not the case. If the follow-up maintenance of the software is not simple, convenient and low-cost, it is likely that all previous efforts will be wasted.
A typical case is Kmart . In 2000, Kmart spent $1.4 billion on an IT modernization program to regain market share lost by Walmart and Target. It then realized that customizing the new system would be prohibitively expensive to maintain, so it embarked on a $600 million project to update its supply chain management software.
The hefty costs of the two projects overwhelmed Kmart, which was already on the decline, eventually prompting it to file for bankruptcy in 2002. Later, Kmart merged with Sears Holdings, laying off more than 600 stores and 67,000 employees.
The lessons are not profound. The IT project was originally a tool to enhance the competitiveness of the enterprise, but in the end it has become an IT trap and a burden to the development of the enterprise.
For enterprises that rely on digital technology to achieve transformation and upgrading, especially those engaged in traditional retail, manufacturing, service, medical and other industries, they are relatively weak in IT technology, and it is not a bad thing to learn from it. Because digitalization may reduce costs and increase efficiency and enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises, it also hides huge risks - once the transformation fails, it is likely to worsen the situation of the enterprise, such as declining profit margins, rising cost pressures, and increased debt repayment requirements, etc. Wait.
Find experience in success
So, how to turn this "trap" into a step for enterprise development? Perhaps, the answer can be found in the following success stories.
PetroChina, a large state-owned enterprise, wants to develop a large-scale e-commerce platform, covering many complex units such as product recommendation, order placement, customer service, and instant kills. To this end, the company hired an external vendor and formed a development team of nearly 20 people, which took about a year to complete. However, after the e-commerce platform was launched, there were many problems such as unstable system operation and hidden dangers in information security, and optimization functions were urgently needed.
But it's not easy. The e-commerce platform is an annual key project of the group, and the launch demand is urgent, and the time is already very tight. Due to the huge amount of development involved in system optimization, it continues to rely on external manufacturers for development, the cost and expenditure are huge, and the development level of the internal IT team is uneven.
What to do then? After contacting a national high-tech enterprise from Shenzhen, things took a turn for the better. PetroChina completed the reconstruction and launch of the platform in just 45 days with a 9-person team. The test process shows that the stability of the platform has passed the test.
This makes people wonder, how did PetroChina break through the predicament in a short period of time, and only the internal technology team completed the system reconstruction with far more complexity than ordinary e-commerce platforms, which seems impossible. Task?
After repeated questioning, we learned that the key lies in the SoFlu software robot developed by Feishan.
It is a software robot that automatically completes software back-end development, front-end development, testing, and operation and maintenance through human-machine collaboration, helping developers achieve "one person, one project, ten people to one hundred people".
First of all, the team uses SoFlu software robot for visual interface development, replacing the original manual coding development mode, which can clearly follow business logic, develop business functions according to the needs to the greatest extent, and double the efficiency.
At the same time, because the components provided by the platform that meet the standard acceptance standards are used in the development process, the code quality problems caused by manual coding are eliminated, and the team saves a lot of time and costs such as code review and bug modification.
In addition, because the SoFlu software robot integrates security specifications and management models that meet the requirements of the third-level certification of the national information security level protection, the system robustness and security performance of the e-commerce platform are guaranteed.
Finally, because the three platforms of development, testing, and operation and maintenance are connected, the team quickly completed the whole process of development, testing, joint debugging, and launch, and reduced the difficulty of system maintenance at the source.
This is the role of SoFlu software robots in e-commerce platform projects. Lu Lingmin, head of in-app purchase mall informatization of PetroChina, said at the SoFlu software robot product launch: "Our platform has been online and running for nearly a year, and its stability and overall performance have been guaranteed. Now our team has When faced with new demands, we can also face it calmly.”
It is no wonder that Shi Yong, director of the Virtual Economy and Data Science Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, commented, "The SoFlu software robot is a pioneer on the road of software automation development, and it has well solved the current problems faced by enterprises' digital transformation. cost, technology and talent issues”.
Changes in the way of development
Seven years ago, Chen Dingwei, President of Feishuan Yunzhi, saw the limitations of traditional software development methods. Just like industrial manufacturing, it used to be manual production and now it is machine production.
He eventually decided to create a development tool that would "make development easier". First of all, we aimed at Java development, because the Internet technology is mostly Java-based, and we need to do back-end development tools, because "the hardest things are in the back-end", which is the core part. After that, it is necessary to develop tools for testing, operation and maintenance, and front-end development, and finally form a complete development system.
At the beginning, Chen Dingwei also faced resistance and doubts from the outside world, and some people even ridiculed him for being an idiot. But with their passion for technology, Chen Dingwei and Fei Suan finally ushered in the dawn. On May 24, 2022, the SoFlu software robot product launch was officially held, officially announcing the birth of the world's first software robot for microservice architecture design and best practices.
With the launch of the front-end development platform, Chen Dingwei's entire conception of the SoFlu software robot has also surfaced, which includes a (back-end) fully automatic development platform, (front-end) fully automatic development platform, fully automatic testing platform, and fully automatic operation and maintenance platform. .
There are many development tools on the market. What makes SoFlu software robot stand out and occupy the absolute advantage of low threshold and high efficiency? In the final analysis, it still has to benefit from its three characteristics:
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visualization
The SoFlu software robot has a visual development interface. Users can analyze business logic with simple flowcharts, and drag and drop components to complete software development. Whether professional developers or ordinary people with no programming foundation, can create software of varying degrees of complexity, and automated development processes can meet the business needs of accelerating digital transformation. The platform is simple and easy to use, which greatly reduces the development threshold and human resource investment.
Visual component drag and drop development
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automation
Automation is the guarantee of improving the efficiency of software development. Whether it is development, testing, operation and maintenance, it can be automated. Taking back-end development as an example, after connecting to the database, the platform automatically generates basic interfaces and SQL statements for all tables in the database, improving development efficiency by 300% and reducing time costs by 10 times. In addition, during project testing, the platform can automatically identify all changed interfaces, and automatically find all test cases associated with the interface for accurate regression testing.
Precise regression testing
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Full stack integration
Full-stack integration is the biggest difference between SoFlu software robots and general development platforms. It connects all software development, testing, operation and maintenance, and automates execution without considering the cost of integration with third-party platforms. For example, since the test platform is associated with the front-end and back-end development platforms, once the development process changes, the test platform can generate automated test scripts to achieve accurate regression testing. The fully automatic operation and maintenance platform of SoFlu software robot provides 170 interfaces, which is convenient for users to accurately locate problems and greatly improve the efficiency of operation and maintenance.
Operation and maintenance monitoring
Because of these three characteristics, even if only one person, with the assistance of the SoFlu software robot, can play the whole process of software development, which greatly reduces the dependence of enterprises on IT talents, and truly achieves "one person, one project, ten people". A hundred people."
From a higher perspective, it comprehensively improves the software engineering capabilities of enterprises.
On the one hand, it accumulates technical experience in the enterprise, establishes a corporate knowledge base, forms a virtuous cycle of reuse, and comprehensively improves enterprise IT productivity. As Chen Dingwei said: "The Internet architecture is not designed by design, but is constantly rehearsed through actual combat, so experience is particularly important."
On the other hand, it effectively implements all management modes such as CMMI, agile development, and DevOps, making the software project management process simpler and more efficient, thereby thoroughly improving efficiency and reducing costs.
The changes in software development methods brought by SoFlu software robots have solved the problems faced by the entire software development process. As Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said, "The value of SoFlu software robots is that through standardized and automated processes, the threshold from development, testing to operation and maintenance is lowered, and the agile management system is implemented to help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency. Achieving the goal of increasing the speed of innovation in the software industry.”
For many traditional enterprises, with the help of SoFlu software robots, it is no longer difficult to develop their own digital platform, and it is no longer a problem to achieve digital transformation. The so-called "IT trap" will truly become the driving force behind the transformation and upgrading of enterprises.