Software Development Updates

There is an increasing need to find ways to make custom software development more efficient due to the growing reliance on software. An auspicious approach in this context is automation. Automation in software development has the potential to simplify routine and repetitive tasks, thereby allowing programmers to dedicate more time to strategic efforts in software development.

In this post, we dive further into the software development automation process and examine various activities that can be automated. We will also discuss the future of software development automation.

1. What is Software Development Automation?

Software development automation refers to the process of developing software applications without human intervention. The goal is to minimize or eliminate human involvement in repetitive tasks during the software development process. 

To simplify, with software automation we can reduce human involvement during development processes by utilizing automated tools and methodologies.  It also speeds up the software development process without sacrificing quality.

2. Benefits of Implementing Automation in Software Development

Automating software development has several benefits such as lowering software development costs, enhancing efficiency, and boosting productivity. Let’s discuss why we should automate software development.

2.1 Enhanced Efficiency

Automating manual processes such as testing and code review relieves software developers of a significant amount of labor. By automating repetitive tasks, their time is freed up to concentrate on more strategic endeavors, including generating ideas for new features. One way to save time and ensure the code quality is to automate unit tests for each update.

2.2 Enhanced Quality

In the software development process to keep development times down, code quality is crucial. However, errors can occur while coding manually. By utilizing automation, software developers can avoid this obstacle and create high-quality software efficiently.

2.3 Improved Productivity

Developers’ productivity on software development projects will increase due to the implementation of automation in monotonous tasks. One example is testing automation, which will shorten the time it takes to detect and fix errors. Another example is continuous integration, which further enhances efficiency.

Further Reading on: Test Automation Best Practices
Test Automation Frameworks

2.4 Cost Reduction

There are several ways in which automation could help your company save money.  First, it frees up employees’ time from monotonous tasks, allowing them to concentrate on higher-priority projects that demand more creativity and analysis, which in turn saves money. 

You’ll be able to lessen or perhaps eliminate the portion of your budget that goes toward these kinds of expenses. With this, you can reinvest those savings into the company in ways that will have a more significant effect.

2.5 Increased Scalability

Through the automation of repetitive tasks across different projects and teams, software development becomes more scalable. Automating the management of the CI/CD pipeline is a common use case in software development for several businesses. This enables the rapid development and deployment of features.

2.6 Efficient Collaboration

Automation has the potential to enhance software development teamwork. Software developers can collaborate on the same code source, and if someone makes a mistake, they will be warned automatically.

3. What Can You Automate in a Software Development Process?

Following is a discussion of the several software development processes and the technologies that can use automation:

3.1 Code Generation

In code generation, you can generate code based on high-level specifications or descriptions to cut down the amount of manual coding required. It guarantees consistency and eliminates the requirement for human coding. You may generate generic code, style guides, and more based on the specifications you provide with automation tools like GitHub Copilot and Tabnine, which offer language support. Here’s an example from ChatGPT itself.

3.2 Rapid Application Development

Quickly creating new applications requires a lot of repetitive code. The framework or structure generated to assist in software project launches sometimes includes pre-defined unit tests. These tests are universal across all projects and are relatively simple. They serve as ideal candidates for automation as they verify basic operations without requiring complex or project-specific logic.

3.3 Testing

Software quality relies on testing, which entails the tedious but necessary tasks of planning, developing, and running tests. To improve software quality, software engineers utilize a variety of automated testing frameworks and technologies like Selenium, Mocha, and Appium when creating new software.

Unit testing tools and frameworks are plentiful across platforms. Examples include JUnit for Java, PHPUnit for PHP,.NET’s NUnit, and JavaScript’s Mocha. These frameworks and technologies allow software developers to automate the tasks of creating and executing test scripts. Developers may streamline and quicken the automated testing process with the aid of software testing automation.

3.4 Development

Automating the software development process is possible in several ways, including code writing and collaboration on a shared repository. Software Developers may need to do more research in addition to the repetitive tasks involved in coding.

Many AI-powered solutions are available to automate and speed up the development process. The two most effective automation tools that developers use to boost their work efficiency are ChatGPT and Tabnine. When working in a code editor such as Visual Studio Code, Tabnine can automatically complete lines of code as you type. Here’s an example from Tabnine automatically completed the line of codes.

3.5 Deployment Automation Tools

The following step after software creation and testing is deployment, which heavily relies on automation. The usage of automation technologies enables rapid provisioning of updates to software in production settings.

Deployment automation can streamline software deployment by handling mundane but necessary processes like environment setup and program configuration. Developers can generate software more often if they automate the software deployment process.

3.6 Monitoring and Observability

To understand the real-world performance of your software, monitoring, and observability are of utmost importance. Monitoring tools, such as New Relic and Prometheus, are examples of automated monitoring and observability solutions that collect and analyze data regarding the state and effectiveness of your software. This data can be used to discover and resolve issues early on.

4. Software Development Automation Tools for Developers

Let’s explore some software development automation tools. The tools mentioned below can help software development teams automate the development process.

4.1 Gradle

Gradle manages the process of creating software that can be used in multiple languages and offers a wide array of features. 

With Gradle, developers can build several projects simultaneously, making it ideal for large projects with numerous subprojects. With its robust API, developers may customize builds to meet their specific requirements, and the automation tool handles dependencies, ensuring that projects always have access to the most recent versions. Gradle simplifies the software package development and code compilation processes.

It also lets you test your project’s functionality and distribute it to various destinations, such as servers or cloud platforms. Popular integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA are also easily integrated with Gradle.

4.2 Postman

One of the best API testing tools, Postman, is cross-platform and works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. With its many useful capabilities, users may quickly and easily build integration, regression, and functional tests. Postman offers an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line interface (CLI) for users to utilize.

4.3 Katalon

One software testing automation platform that provides a comprehensive solution for testing apps from start to finish is Katalon. Automating tests has never been easier than with the user-friendly UI of this automation tool.

With Katalon Studio, programmers can automate tests using various data sources. This is particularly useful for programs that handle private or sensitive information. With the automation software’s keyword-driven testing capabilities, programmers may write test scripts once and use them across all of their projects.

Back-end apps and services can be easily tested using API testing. In case of test failure, Katalon will fix them immediately. Katalon Studio provides comprehensive data to aid in troubleshooting, as well as records and replays user activities on apps to facilitate the process of creating automated tests.

4.4 Maven

Apache Maven is an open-source build automation tool. It has evolved from a Java developer-centric launch over 20 years ago into a widely-used DevOps tool for Agile teams, project managers, and others. This evolution is thanks to its many useful characteristics, such as its capacity to aid in the concurrent development, publishing, and deployment of multiple projects. Additionally, Apache Maven offers robust dependency and release management capabilities.

By streamlining the development process of adding new projects and modules and enabling developers to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Maven increases productivity. Plugins developed in scripting languages or Java make the automation program highly expandable, as does the presence of a large library and metadata repository.

You won’t need to spend time configuring Maven when new features become available. Model-based builds and fast documentation created from project information also save time. Finally, Maven provides features for managing releases and dependencies (such as temporary dependencies, Ant tasks, automated updates, etc.).

5. The Future of Software Automation

The use of automation in software development is expected to grow in the next few years. Throughout history, automatization has occurred in domains where human creativity is no longer required. Crop picking, package making, and shelf stacking are all automated processes that have all been automated successfully. We are starting to use Robotic Process Automation to automate application-related repetitive operations. QA engineers find ways to streamline the process of navigating through applications instead of doing it by hand. All of these things liberate the human mind from mundane tasks, allowing it to concentrate on more artistic endeavors.

To keep up with the increasing complexity and demands of the sector, teams will need automation to build and deploy high-quality software effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is software development automation?

Software automation is the practice of creating software applications to reduce or eliminate human intervention in repetitive, time-consuming IT tasks and cloud operations.

What are some examples of automation in software?

Here are just a few of your options:

• Robotic process automation (RPA)
• Business process management (BPM)
• Integration platform as a service (iPaaS)