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    11 Must-have Tools for your Dedicated Software Development Team

    11 Must-have Tools for your Digital Team

    With the dedicated software development team approach, clients employ a group of varied cross-functional IT professionals that may flexibly work on their projects as a dedicated team, alongside an existing in-house team to supplement resources, or take full control of their product development.

    This post gives an overview of some of the most critical technologies for your Agile development team that are worth investing in.

    Tools for Managing your Dedicated Software Development Team

    Dedicated software development teams consist of diverse roles. These team members usually don’t work in the same place, but are distributed across offices, even timezones. Therefore, a  dedicated software development team must have a management tool to keep everyone on track and on the same page.

    1. Jira

    Jira is more of an all-in-one tool for comprehensive agile management. One of its most important features is customizable scrum boards, which allow you to visualize all the work being done in a sprint. 

    With Jira’s Kanban boards, you can easily manage your dedicated software development team’s workloads and progress. This helps you encourage productivity without much effort. Jira is based on Agile reporting with real-time sprint images so it’s able to cover everything from velocity to burnout points. 

    In addition, Jira has integrations with multiple developer tools and over 1,000 add-ons. Finally, it also offers an app, which makes sure your dedicated software development team can communicate on the go. 

    Although Jira serves a wide range of needs for your dedicated software development team, it has a rather steep learning curve.

    Pricing: You can either choose Jira cloud or self-hosted. Your team can also try it out with the free basic cloud version. Jira’s standard cloud version costs $10. And the premium cloud version starts from $14 each month for up to 10 team members. If you prefer the self-hosted version, you would make a one-time payment of $10 for up to 10 users.

    2. VivifyScrum

    Based on the Web, VivifyScrum is another comprehensive Agile projectmanagement tool for dedicated software development team teams to oversee multiple digital team projects at once. Like Jira, VivifyScrum has customized collaboration boards. It also offers a backlog scrum board and an in-app time tracker that automatically generates work logs for tasks. It can even be used to create productivity reports. Users can see details of each task, including assignee, checklist, description, and interactive comment section.

    VivifyScrum can be easily integrated with tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Slack. All in all, It is easy to use and can adapt to the needs of any dedicated software development team. VivifyScrum is highly recommended for distributed teams regardless of size.

    Pricing: VivifyScrum has a free basic plan. Its premium plans start at $10 per month or $96 per year (for teams of up to 10 users).

    Tools for Planning and Managing Your Dedicated Software Development Team

    Tools for managing your dedicated software development team aren’t enough. To supervise what each team member is working on, you need processes. The below tools can change the way you’re planning and managing the team workflow so you can make sure everyone stays on task and up to speed.

    3. Toggl

    Toggl helps dedicated software development teams streamline planning with its intuitive timeline. Its UI provides you with a clear overview of a project from end to finish. It can also create monthly, quarterly, and annual views to give you a higher-level and long-term look.

    Toggl allows you to define milestones, assign tasks, and develop to-do lists. Its read-only timeline review keeps everyone in the dedicated software development team updated but makes sure only project managers can edit the timeline. 

    Toggl offers a simple and user-friendly interface. Its elements are colour-coded and can be drilled down into backlogs, sprints, and more. The dedicated software development team members can comments and upload files to simplify collaboration.

    Pricing: Your dedicated software development team can try Toggl’s basic plan for free for up to five users. The premium plan starts from $8 per user per month (annual plan) or $9 per user per month (month-by-month basis).

    4. Monday.com

    Your dedicated software development team should also consider Monday.com as candidate for workflow tracking and management as it can flexibly adapt to any team size. With Monday.com, you can choose different methodologies to track projects, such as charts, timelines, or Kanban-style “sticky notes.” Monday is a visualization tool that improves the digital team’s decision-making and helps you track multiple project dashboards. It offers integrations with Slack, Google Drive, GitHub, Jira, and Trello.

    Monday.com also has features for managing user stories and individual sprints, which you can assign to team members as necessary. Thanks to the simplified team and project tracking, you will find it easier to identify bottlenecks. Your dedicated software development team can rapidly what is slowing down your project’s progress to take appropriate actions.

    Pricing: The Monday.com’s basic plan is $8 per user per month (which requires a minimum of three users). The standard plan costs $10 per user per month. And the pro plan is $16 per user per month. Enterprise plans are customizable.

    Tools for Source Control and Collaboration

    Modern methodologies such as Agile help improve efficiency. Nevertheless, it can be confusing if you have a multiple smaller teams working together at work. The below tools are critical as they promote collaboration and source control, which is the tracking and management of changes made to code. They make sure that developers are working on the latest code versions and prevent double work.

    5. Git

    Git is a distributed version control system that monitors changes in source code (DVCS). It records changes in several virtual systems rather than a single dominant central repository. This reduces mistakes and allows dispersed developers to work on multiple pathways and subsequently integrate their code. It aims for efficiency and data integrity and is particularly suited to nonlinear processes such as Agile. It's also ideal for dispersed teams, as it allows for easy branching and merging as well as seamless context change.

    Git is simple to learn and install. It's one of the most well-known programming tools, with big-name organizations like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, to mention a few, using it.

    Git is an open-source program, therefore it's completely free to use. It's only a matter of hosting it. You can utilize the GitHub service if you don't want to host Git yourself. ‍

    6. SVN

    Apache Subversion, sometimes known as SVN, helps teams to keep track of current and previous versions of development projects. It's a version-control system that's centralized (unlike Git, which is distributed). The code history is preserved in a central server with centralized version control. When a developer wishes to make modifications, they must use that central server to get the files they need. The updated files are subsequently sent back to the central server.

    The merge mechanism in SVN enables for a quick combination of codebases while maintaining correctness. Additionally, the read-only option protects data from unwanted modifications.

    Pricing: SVN is an open-source system, similar to Git. It is completely free to use!

    Tools for finding and fixing bugs

    Bugs are inevitable. Even with the greatest teams in place, it's unavoidable in software development. The ability to swiftly locate and monitor issues is critical to promptly resolving them. Here are two tools that can assist teams in doing so.

    7. Backlog

    Backlog is a popular bug tracking tool. It's also ideal for backlog management, as the name implies. Its boards make displaying data a simple, and it also improves team collaboration thanks to its easy integration with communication systems like Slack.

    Backlog also crunches data, giving burndown and Gantt reports for both regular and premium plans. A burndown chart gathers project data and helps teams to evaluate how much work remains vs how much time they have to complete it. A Gantt chart is a form of bar chart that depicts the schedule and progress of a project.

    Pricing: Backlog is a free plan that allows you to have up to 10 members and one project. The beginning plan ($35 per month for 30 users and five projects), the standard plan ($100 per month for unlimited users and 100 projects), and the premium plan ($175 per month for unlimited users and projects) are the other options. Gantt charts are included in both the standard and premium subscriptions.

    8. Katalon

    Katalon is a well-known end-to-end test automation solution that is well-suited to Continuous Testing and DevOps. Katalon is compatible with the majority of online apps, mobile apps, desktop programs, and APIs, regardless of whether they are running on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

    Katalon is popular among new testers because of its simple features and codeless extension. Experts would like it since it has a lot of scripting extensions. The Katalon Store offers plug-ins that extend automation capabilities and allow for integration with CI/CD platforms.

    Its compatibility and integrability are also market-leading. You can flexibly deploy Katalon on most infrastructures, allowing for the implementation of Continuous Testing on all OSs, browsers, and devices, no matter if the Software Under Test (SUT) is on the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid.

    Katalon makes it easier to track product quality, performance, and related issues thanks to its insightful reports, real-time monitoring, and instant feedback system.

    Pricing: Katalon offers a free version for individual testers. However, as you use it as a dedicated software development team, you should opt for a commercial license, which starts from $1,899 per license per year

    9. BugDigger

    Backlog offers a free option that allows you to have up to ten people and one project on your account. The other plans are the starter ($35 per month for 30 users and five projects), standard ($100 per month for unlimited users and 100 projects), and premium ($175 per month for unlimited users and projects). Both the regular and premium memberships contain Gantt charts.

    Pricing: BugDigger charges $19 per month for a team subscription with 10 active users and 10 projects. A business plan ($49 per month for 25 users and 25 projects), a corporate plan ($99 per month for 100 users and 100 projects), and an infinite plan ($199 per month for 500 users and limitless projects) are also available.

    Tools to continuously update code

    One of the fundamental aspects of Agile software development is its adaptability, as previously stated. Based on customer input, development teams update iterations and software versions on a regular basis. Manually upgrading code on a regular basis is time intensive. These tools make the procedure go more smoothly.

    10. Jenkins

    Jenkins (formerly "Hudson") is a code deployment tool that allows teams to develop, test, and deploy code. It makes it simple for teams to set up continuous integration (CI) or continuous delivery (CD) environments for a wide range of coding languages and source code repositories. It also enables normal development chores to be automated.

    Jenkins is noted for its ease of use and simplicity, owing to its simple online interface. It provides a wide range of extensions, many of which are free of charge. It's a self-contained Java-based software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Unix-style operating systems and is ready to operate "out of the box." It's ideal for remote teams working with a variety of technologies, and it can be deployed across several platforms

    Pricing: Jenkins is an open-source technology, which means you don't have to pay for it to use it. There is no limit on the number of users.

    11. Bamboo

    Bamboo is another solution for minimizing technical complexity and automating deployment in the so-called CI/CD pipeline. It works by recognizing changes in code repositories such as Git automatically. Teams may use Bamboo to develop multi-stage build plans and assign agents to key builds and deployments.

    Bamboo may also be configured to perform tests automatically. This makes finding and fixing issues much faster and easier. Bamboo may be used to construct up to 100 distant structures. It improves the efficiency of concurrent testing by providing faster and more actionable feedback to software development teams.

    Pricing: Bamboo's pricing is dependent on agents rather than users. For $10, small teams can acquire a plan (up to 10 jobs, unlimited local agents, and no remote agents). Choose an "expanding teams" price structure to accommodate remote agents. For $25,300, you may acquire an infinite number of jobs and local agents, as well as 100 distant agents.

    At KMS Solutions, we provide Dedicated Software Development Team Services that help enterprises accelerate all aspects of software development - from consulting, and ideation, to development and testing.

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