At Unstoppable Software, we’ve worked with countless teams to build and maintain custom software solutions. Over the years, we’ve encountered recurring challenges that negatively impact software quality. Left unchecked, these issues can lead to unstable systems, increased costs, and frustrated stakeholders. Here, we share the seven most common challenges we’ve faced and the processes we’ve put in place to address them.
1. Obvious Cosmetic Defects Making It to Production
The Issue: Small but glaring UI or visual defects can slip through the cracks, damaging the user’s confidence in the software’s overall quality. These flaws, while often superficial, can create a perception that deeper issues may exist in the system.
Our Solution: Our senior developers take pride in their attention to detail. Rarely would a spelling error or formatting issue make it past the software development phase into testing, but for those cases we recommend additional backstops. A robust QA process should include detailed UI testing checklists of all front-end work. Additionally, automated UI testing tools help catch visual anomalies before code reaches production.
2. Production Pushes Killing Production
The Issue: A rush to deploy updates or features often relies on manual deployment processes that are error-prone and inconsistent. Skipping critical steps, misconfiguring environments, or deploying code without proper testing, can result in production outages or significant performance issues.
Our Solution: We advocate for a DevOps-driven approach that emphasizes automated deployment pipelines. This ensures that updates can be safely rolled out without risking live systems. Pre-deployment testing environments mirror production as closely as possible, and performance monitoring tools immediately alert the team to anomalies, enabling rapid response and minimizing downtime. For a simpler approach, we minimally require post-deployment acceptance testing.
3. New Features Break Old Features
The Issue: Introducing new functionality often results in regression bugs, breaking previously working features. These issues are particularly problematic in complex systems where dependencies between components are not well understood or documented.
Our Solution: Our developers are skilled at using patterns and practices to limit the amount of code required to make necessary changes. We maintain thorough documentation of all features and dependencies to help developers anticipate the impact of their changes. To further mitigate risk, comprehensive regression testing can be performed. Similarly, automated tests can be implemented to cover key functionalities, while manual testers verify edge cases.
4. 3rd Party Code of Dubious Quality
The Issue: Using third-party libraries or APIs can introduce bugs or vulnerabilities when their code quality is subpar. In some cases, dependency updates may introduce breaking changes or compatibility issues that destabilize the system.
Our Solution: Before integrating third-party tools, we conduct a code and performance review. We also keep an internal list of trusted libraries and avoid “cutting-edge” packages without a track record. To mitigate risks, we sandbox third-party code during testing to observe its behavior in isolation, ensuring it won’t compromise the overall application before integration.
5. Hacks Left in Code Because of Time Crunches
The Issue: Temporary fixes or “hacks” can become permanent due to tight deadlines, leading to technical debt. Over time, this debt compounds, making the codebase harder to maintain and slowing down development on future projects.
Our Solution: We embrace the philosophy of “paying the debt.” We include some slack in our milestones to allow dedicated to refactoring and cleanup. Any “hack” added to the codebase is documented and a task to replace it is added to the product backlog. We also prioritize transparency with stakeholders, explaining why resolving technical debt is critical for long-term success.
6. Misunderstood Requirements Resulting in Weird Software
The Issue: Vague or misunderstood requirements often lead to features that don’t align with user needs. This misalignment results in costly rework and lowers user satisfaction, as the delivered solution doesn’t solve the intended problem.
Our Solution: Our Design and Discovery process ensures clarity before development begins. We hold multiple collaborative sessions with stakeholders, build interactive prototypes, and create detailed user stories. Additionally, we work in an iterative fashion, delivering working software frequently to the users for feedback. It is rare that we would be completely off-base with a feature, but when we are, there is still adequate time to resolve it.
7. Lack of Code Standards Across Developers
The Issue: When developers on a team don’t follow consistent coding standards, the result is messy, unmaintainable code. This inconsistency also makes onboarding new developers more challenging and increases the risk of bugs due to miscommunication.
Our Solution: We establish clear coding standards at the beginning of every project. Our team leads perform code reviews, ensuring adherence to agreed-upon practices. We have also incorporated tools such as syntax checkers into the development workflow to enforce consistency automatically.
The Takeaway
These challenges may seem daunting, but addressing them doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your processes overnight. Incremental improvements, such as automating one step of your deployment process or standardizing a single aspect of your codebase, can lead to meaningful progress over time. Each small change builds momentum, gradually improving software quality, team efficiency, and end-user satisfaction. If your team is ready to take the first step toward solving these issues, we’re here to help guide the way. Let’s work together to create a system that evolves and improves with your needs.
Have you encountered any of these issues on your software projects? Let’s discuss how we can help you solve them.
