When it comes to software development there are plenty of different styles and methods that can be followed. And the development method that your practice management and EHR software vendor follows could have many effects on the product that you’re using in your practice. Today, we want to talk about the agile method for software development, and why, as an OD, you’ll want to know about it.
What Is Agile Development?
To break it down succinctly, agile development is a style of project management for software development. There are a few key characteristics of this type of project management. The software development process works in tight cycles to make specific updates, and after an update is made the team regroups and decides on plans for the next quick cycle update.
Feedback from users helps the team prioritize features that should go into an update. The flexibility of agile development allows feedback to update and modify the plan for each update to meet the most urgent and important needs of the user. This means that you have a say in what goes into the software, and you end up with a solution that’s truly custom designed to fit your needs.
Traditional software development methods are attacked by having a big software blueprint up front, and once that blueprint is complete no more changes are made to the software until the next “big update” is planned, which usually takes a lot longer to develop and implement.
Why Should an OD Care About the Agile Method?
If you’re using practice management and EHR software in your practice, you should care about agile development. Using a software that is developed in this way is going to result in a product that is constantly being updated in bit sized chunks so you don’t have to wait for a major update and learn a whole new software overnight.
And, those updates are driven by feedback from actual users. In the end, you’re getting the most modern software that is developed with your help and other users of the software.
How Has This Helped Improve Software in The Optical Industry?
Uprise practice management and EHR software is built using the agile development method so that users have a voice in their software, and updates can be made quickly to the most critical parts of the software. This type of software development helped Uprise have a milestone year in 2015. If you want to see some of the accomplishments, improvements and changes made to the Uprise software, be sure to follow their journey.