Tools for improving development efficiency

Development efficiency mainly depends on the development speed and quality. We all hope that the higher the speed, the better the quality, that is, the higher the development efficiency. However, the obvious speed and quality are the two sides of the cake, therefore, to improve development efficiency, we need to balance these two aspects.

There are too many factors that affect development efficiency. Let's first summarize how to use tools to achieve the goal.

Tool category

Various tools will be used in the development work. We may wish to categorize them.

Modeling Tools

Tools used to support business modeling, business analysis, architecture design, detailed design, and other activities, such as enterprise architect ECT and staruml. These tools often provide full Modeling Support, UML and other graphical representation, and even some provide positive and reverse engineering of code and model, which is conducive to Model Management and Maintenance of complex projects, it is conducive to high development quality.

Development Environment

Needless to say, this is the most widely used tool by software engineers, such as Visual Studio and eclipse. The development environment provides necessary support for code editing, browsing, compilation, and refactoring, which is conducive to the development speed improvement.

Auxiliary development tools

In addition to the main development environment, there are also some tools provided to developers in the form of plug-ins or independent applications to assist in development, such as findbugs and visual assist X, it is an effective enhancement to the development environment and improves both the development speed and quality.

Test Tool

Testing is an essential part in the development process. The introduction of testing tools can improve the testing speed and quality, such as some unit testing tools, automated testing tools, and stress testing tools.

Code management and continuous integration tools

The biggest benefit of code management is to maintain the historical version to support collaborative development by multiple people. With code management, you can effectively deploy continuous integration tools to support daily building, fast iteration, and other development modes. It will improve the quality.

Class Library

The long-term accumulation and accumulation of teams and enterprises will form some reusable class libraries. These class libraries can also be seen as a tool, which is good for improving the development speed and quality.

Of course, there are still too many tools not listed. The most important thing is that we can see that tools are supported almost throughout the entire life cycle of software development. As the old saying goes, "to do a good job, you must first sharpen the tool." If you use an effective tool, it may be the easiest way to see the improvement of development efficiency.

 

Tool cost

Despite the support of so many tools, the tool also consumes the following costs:

• Evaluation cost: whether the tool is suitable or not. It requires trial, comparison, and evaluation. These tasks consume time and energy, just like opportunity costs, which are hidden.
• Purchase cost: many tools can be used only at the expense of payment, which is the most direct monetary expense.
• Learning cost: to make good use of tools, you need to spend time learning how to use them. These time investments are also invisible costs.
• Maintenance Cost: the upgrade and Configuration Adjustment of tools may need to be done in the future.

Obviously, there is a price to use the tool, which raises the question of how to select the tool.

 

Principles of Tool Selection

With so many tools, you can't be confused. Instead, it impacts the main development work. I think the following principles can be followed when selecting a tool:

Select the required tools. For example, mobile application development usually does not have to be as complex as enterprise applications in modeling, so modeling tools are not necessary, you can archive a hand-drawn UML diagram or use a simple drawing tool.

Select an appropriate tool. It is also a mobile client application. In order to draw a class chart, the use of IBM Rational Rose has become a cannon. This problem is widespread. As soon as a tool is mentioned, the most expensive and complex tool is required. As a result, the cost is high, but it may not be able to generate benefits in the improvement of development efficiency.

Select a tool that meets the team environment. Tools are intended for use by people. Therefore, it is necessary to meet the user's habits, abilities, and cultural atmosphere, as well as the development methods and development processes adopted by the team. Introducing object-oriented modeling tools to teams using structured development methods will make everyone feel at a loss. The lack of continuous integration for agile development teams will also compromise the development effect.

 

Based on the above, selecting the right development tool can quickly improve the development efficiency. It is worth noting and trying.

-- Welcome to reprint, please indicate the source of http://blog.csdn.net/caowenbin --