3 Key Steps to Building Software Applications

Creating a software project can be really intimidating. It can seem like such a large task when you're already havening trouble following youtube tutorials. Yet you hear so many developers say, building something is the best way to learn. Even I say this when people come to me and ask how do I get started learning to program

This is because finding a project that interests you stay focus while persevering, and cement the concepts you've learned.

But how are newcomers suppose to create a project if they don't know where to start

Well today, I'll show you the 3 key steps developers use when starting projects.

These key steps are used from small to large companies and once you get these key points down you won't need tutorials to show you step by step guide on how to build an application. Instead, you'll learn how you can use online resources, like stack overflow, to solve problems you are facing.

Define Project

The first step when starting a new project is to define it. As a software developer, you need to ask yourself,

What is the project? and which features are nice to have?

The answer to these questions should be simple and sweet. By doing this we help divide the work you need so it feels less intimidating.

Example

Let's say we are making a to-do list app.

First, we'll want this application to be accessible on the web, which means we will need to use HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It should allow users to create tasks and remove them from the list.

It would be nice if users could have shortcuts for creating tasks, and maybe even drag and drop for reordering the list.

Workflow

The next step is the simplest, and it can be used across future projects. It is to create a workflow. You can use Trello or Github which are free tools to help you manage projects and they let you create Kanban boards.

We'll take a look at Github Project Management to show you how you can use this tool. First, you'll need to create a new repository on GitHub, next you head over to the projects tab, and create a new one. I like to divide everything up into four columns

1. TODO
2. DOING
3. DONE
4. BUGS / UNSURE

In each of these columns, we can add cards. As we work on the cards we can move them into doing and once completed, into doing.

Now we have our workflow set up we can get onto the last step.

Task breakdown

The key to building your own projects is by breaking them down into smaller, and less intimidating components. These smaller components are what become our cards in TODO.

The first thing you need to do is look at your project definition and then break it down into smaller parts.

Let's continue using the todo app example to make our component cards.

In Github, we can create two types of cards. A note, which serves as a task reminder or adds information related to the project.

We can also create issues which provide more features such as labels, assignment, and milestones.

I'll break these down into smaller components based on what we talked about. The biggest benefit of the cards is that they simplified what we have to do.

But we are not done yet. Once we have the high-level cards we can then break those components down again into smaller tasks by breaking those tasks into checklists so we can track our progress.

In GitHub, we can create checklists by using markdown.

and you'll notice the tasks we create will show you on our project board, showing use the progress.

Once we have the high-level cards we can then break those components down again into smaller tasks by breaking those tasks into checklists so we can track our progress.

We can create these checklists using markdown.

We have now broken our calculation functions card into 4 little projects that we can work on and can now focus and figuring out how to make each of these functions.

Then once we have done all of the items in our list we can move the card into the done column and get cracking on the next card.

You can also leave comments on these issues as you work through them. This way you can pick up where you left off or even come back to them for reference.

Conculsion

The key is to clearly define the project, set up your workflow, and then break the project down into smaller components that all build towards creating the larger project.