7 Software Product Development Challenges: How to Avoid Them?

Creating software products is challenging and requires significant planning and dedication to ensure everything goes alright. Right from ideation to software deployment, you are bound to face typical challenges of software development. In fact, in most cases, there are seven issues that businesses face on almost every project. 

However,  you can navigate these pitfalls if you know what they are and how to avoid them. Statista says 32% of software projects fail due to insufficient testing alone. Similarly, lack of good documentation leads to failure in 48% of software projects. 

With the right set of precautions, you can easily save your project from getting doomed. This article will explain each of the software development challenges & how you can successfully overcome them.

Let’s analyze and understand the major software product development challenges in detail and how to avoid them. 

Top challenges in Software Product Development 

1) Blurred Vision into the Final Product

The real key to product development is a clear image of what you’re building. Ask yourself: What does your final product look like? Does everyone involved with it understand and agree on how it will function?

Even if your team understands how something will work, make sure that users do, too. When engineers build a complex interface or platform, they lose sight of the user experience. Ensure they’re working with people who can ensure that things are intuitive.

A general rule: If you’d be confused by something you built, someone else probably will be as well. It’s a good idea to have usability testing done periodically to catch potential flaws before launch.

How to overcome:  Have a clear vision of what you want to build and ensure your team agrees on it. Try to create a user-experience expert who can ensure that developers stay attuned to how things will function from a user standpoint.

Look at successful products with similar features and determine why they succeeded where others failed. A little research goes a long way here, so don’t be afraid to look outside your company for inspiration and insight.

Product development for startups often takes place in silos—engineering works independently from design, marketing is its animal, sales operate separately.

2) Lacking Originality & Innovation

No one wants to invest time & money into a product that has been done before. Always be on alert for competitors, but you need to do more than worry about others stealing your ideas. Think of new & innovative ways to resolve old problems and look at your work differently.

Imagine your favorite app or website, and then try thinking of ways you could improve it. If you can’t think of noticeable improvements, turn around and walk away from your project for a little while. When you come back to it, there might be some missing puzzle pieces or things you didn’t think about initiatives that will help flesh out an original idea that’s all yours.

How to overcome: Investing time and money into something no one wants is a recipe for disaster. If you are going to create something new, you must know your audience. Do your research and study what products and features customers like.

Figure out why they like those features, what they don’t like about similar products, or what would want to be added if they could build their ideal product from scratch. It will help you develop a product that people want to use because you’re not just offering them an off-the-shelf solution; you’re solving their problems.

3) Loopholes in Market & Client Research

Poor market and client research are typically one of two things: either you failed to do any research or did a lot of it, but you didn’t do it well. In most cases, new business owners are tempted to dive right into development without doing their homework. It can easily lead to a product that doesn’t solve anyone’s problems or a product that doesn’t provide enough value for your clients (meaning they won’t buy).

Source: Statista- Time Spent on Research

Poor market and client research can often result in lost time, wasted money, demotivated employees, and unhappy clients. 

How to overcome: Be sure to take adequate time to understand your industry’s landscape and how your offering fits into it! It’s not uncommon for developers to build something that they think is cool or exciting without actually understanding why someone will want to use it.

• What problem are you solving?
• Who is your target market?
• Do they have a clear problem statement, and if so, what is their desired outcome?
• How can you use data and metrics to measure whether your product development efforts address real business problems or create more work for everyone?

If you don’t know who your target market is, how do you expect them to find out about (and buy) your product/service?

4) Matching User’s Expectation in UI/UX Designs

User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design are two of the most critical aspects of software development that can dramatically affect your bottom line. A pretty UI and UX will keep your customers happy and engaged, which means higher retention rates, higher lifetime value, and more profit for you.

Without great UX design, your product will be just another company trying to make a buck off other people’s needs. As per Intechnic, 52% of users stop using software due to a lack of intuitive user experience. 

To understand how valuable customer experience is for a business, consider yourself – 

• Which products do you remember from last week? 
• In a year? 
• Did any of them change your life? 
• Were they memorable at all? 

The chances are that if you remember those products, it was because their UX was so good you couldn’t forget about them.

How to overcome:  First of all, don’t be afraid to spend money on UX and UI design if you have an early-stage startup. Often, not taking it seriously enough will lead to losses. Secondly, UX designers aren’t magicians – they can make a product usable, but you should ensure that your customer will use it.

And that means making an effort to solve your customers’ problems – not only enabling them to find their solutions. After all, there’s a good chance that your competitors do just as good a job as you do at solving their customers’ problems without spending lots of money on UI/UX design.

5) Picking Right Technology Stack for Development

A common pitfall for developers and product owners is choosing technology that can’t support all of your team’s needs. If you develop your product using a language, framework, or tool that isn’t compatible with other tools in use within your organization, you’ll eventually hit a wall. Many small companies adopt agile software development practices without determining if their organization is ready to go agile. Most organizations aren’t. 

It means most agile projects will fail due to an inability to get everyone pulling in the same direction. If you start with incompatible technologies, these issues are only amplified. Ensure your organization supports your chosen methodology before investing time into learning it (or vice versa). Otherwise, failure will be imminent.

Note: As much as 17% of projects fail due to the selection of immature development tools and application platforms (Source: Statista).

How to overcome:  Consider a hybrid approach that combines waterfall and agile methodologies elements. It will let you define your product requirements with greater precision and then spend time prototyping various solutions before making any irrevocable commitments.

It’s essential to consider your business model when choosing a development methodology because if it doesn’t make sense for your organization, it won’t work regardless of how much you like or dislike agile software development.

Likewise, if you don’t have developers on board who are familiar with a specific technology, using it isn’t necessarily increasing efficiency. 

 6) Failing to Hire Skilled Developers Team

You can’t implement even great, innovative software ideas if you don’t have an experienced team to work on them. Statista says that 23% of development projects fail due to a lack of experienced developers. It is quite common for entrepreneurs to rely on internal resources or open positions without looking outside their company.

If your team doesn’t consist of professional web developers and designers, it will take twice as much time to reach a desirable result. Thus, when setting up your project, try not to do everything on your own but hire external professionals to help you overcome any problems during the development process.

How to overcome:  Try to hire a team of developers to work on your project. Their experience will help you move faster, avoid unpleasant surprises, and ensure that your product meets modern standards.

If you don’t have enough budget for hiring full-time specialists, choose a flexible option – outsource website development services or try using some product like Upwork. It’s worth it!

7) Inadequate Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is just as important in software product development as in any other form of engineering because a lot can go wrong. It’s generally easier to mess up with software than with many different forms of engineering. For example, there may be an ample opportunity for you to become well-known for having developed cutting-edge technology that nobody has seen before.

However, if your QA isn’t strong enough, then your first iteration could completely miss what you were going for and end up being junk. To avoid software product development challenges, make sure that your quality assurance is strong from the get-go so that you know what to expect out of each version—and don’t forget about beta testing!

How to overcome:  

1. Focus on your QA early and often to ensure that you don’t end up with a flop. 
2. Conduct beta testing once you’ve hit your first alpha version. 
3. Be prepared to scrap projects—or at least hold off on launching anything significant—if testers give you poor marks.

No matter how much time and money has been put into an iteration, if testers say it isn’t working right, kill it. It isn’t worth moving forward with lousy software just because you want to save face or because you invested too much effort already. 

Yes, killing a project is embarrassing—but it would be even more uncomfortable if your product tanked after going live and started driving away customers!

Wrapping Up

We’ve covered much of the ground, & our discussion of software development challenges is far from comprehensive. Hopefully, you got a better sense of what to expect when developing software products. While having a team of dedicated professionals is ideal, it isn’t always possible. If you have limited resources, don’t worry!

Just know that there are many tools out there to help you with project management. As long as your product manager and development team are well-equipped with practical tools, they should be able to take on any challenge without fail.

Remember to use teamwork instead of concentrating all power on one person—this will help keep your organization’s sanity intact. And remember to enjoy!