What Do We Mean By Software Development Best Practices at Semaphore?
Building custom laboratory software from the ground up requires robust planning and meticulous attention to detail. In the process of doing this for our clients and ourselves on our forthcoming product, we have developed our own software development best practices to ensure the implementation meets all the requirements. We’ve found this to be a magic mix — user and regulatory requirements built within sustainable business practices.
When building software, we use all the most common practices, such as version control (we prefer Git like the rest of the planet), and have talked before about the importance of software testing and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD). Here’s a look at some of the processes we’ve invested in that enable us to provide high-quality software while using a development environment that has numerous advantages for developers.
Collaborating to develop software requirements
As a software engineering-led company, we believe the computer science principle “garbage in, garbage out” applies directly to laboratory software requirements. Say, for example, little effort and understanding are put into translating lab requirements into development tasks. The resulting software will not be of good quality because it will not meet end-user needs.
