The Importance of Post-Development Support
Post-development support is one of the most important aspects of software development. This phase involves activities and services that occur after the initial development and deployment of a solution.
Deploying a new solution within an organisation isn’t always a straightforward task. Support is often needed to ensure your solution continues to run smoothly and can be adjusted to meet the requirements of its users over time.
Discussed below are some of the reasons post-development support is so important for companies that use third party software.
Bugs & Issue Resolution
Over time and with the continued use of any software solution, bugs and issues will arise. It’s important for an organisation to have an appropriate service level agreement in place with any software provider to ensure issues are resolved as soon as possible.
The team involved in post-development support can deploy fixes to get around any problems users may be having with the software.
Regular patches will greatly reduce frustration users are having, especially where bugs are having an impact on the performance of the software.
Feature Updates
With improvements in technology over time, the basis for additional product features may arise. Post-development support will allow for new features to be installed within familiar software to the developers in line with user expectations.
Consistently improving a solution’s features keeps users happy while also ensuring it remains aligned with the evolving requirements of its user base.
Post-development support teams can roll out feature updates to a solution they have experience with.
Security
The software needs to be kept protected for the duration of its use at an organisation. Software applications often deal with sensitive customer and company data, so it would be in the organisation’s best interests to ensure security patches are included in your post-development support package.
The fewer security patches your applications receive, the more vulnerable they become over time to malicious attackers. A malicious attack can result in data leaks or fraud if a vulnerability is taken advantage of.
Regular backups and an appropriate disaster recovery strategy in tandem with a skilled post-development support team will help safeguard data integrity and ensure business continuity.
User Feedback
As part of their roles, organisation employees often spend a vast amount of time using the solutions that have been deployed. As a consequence, they’ll likely have appropriate feedback for the development team to assist with product improvements with continued use.
Conducting regular research and performance reviews can help create an iterative feedback loop, helping in continuously refining the software, based on users’ needs.
Cost Savings
Post-development support isn’t always the cheapest option, but it’s a far cheaper than receiving little or no support.
If your software isn’t being supported it’s more likely to cause major issues down the line, costing the organisation more in the long run.
Additionally, without a post-development support agreement or plan with an established supplier, it is likely there’ll be a substantial cost involved in getting a different developer to fix the issue instead of the original solution supplier.
Long-term Relationship
Receiving excellent post-development support can foster trust and satisfaction between users and the development team. A better working relationship between the supplier and users is likely to benefit both parties, potentially leading to a longer working relationship.
Ultimately, having an appropriate post-development strategy in place reduces risk for your organisation. Once a solution goes live, that’s often where the real test begins, as not all issues or use cases might have been identified in the development and early testing stages.
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