The process of executing a recommendation and the result of the code audit can increase the life of digitally developed products. It possibly pushes it to the next phases of market shares. It then helps in saving the life of the entire business. It is directly a fair matter to arrange an audit, making the counting of a business with the real resulting outcome.
Businesses drive a code audit and related information for transforming and updating a platform, website, or app. It’s all about auditing the digital product. There comes a time when a business needs scaling of their large markets. Businesses also start adding newly developed features for different users.
What are a Code Audit and Its Expectation for Business?
A code audit is an exercising system of checking the digital products through an expertise reviewing method. It deeply involves checking the performance of the product, its reliability, security measures, software architecture, and the entire code quality.
A good audit continues to cover different technical-based factors of the product. It further focuses on design components and UX/UI design that impact the way of users’ experience. After completion of the code audit, the resulting outcome recommends the following:
- Mitigating technical debt
- Focusing on user interface design
- Covering user journey
- Ensuring security and maintenance
- Fixing bugs
- Reserving storage improvements
- Arranging code and architecture
- Applying business strategy
- Scaling and readiness for next level of product development
The result of a reliable UX and code audit is simply ahead of a general list of problems. Every problem comes with general advice for action to be initiated for better future advantage and evaluation. Every issue needs to be fixed on a priority basis, making the effect of the product truly improving for both the business and users.
The success of a product lies in the way of its forward-moving with the problems. It particularly involves working through three main areas of the code audit. These include sustainability, risk management, and technical debt.
Code Audit Action No. 1: Sustainability:
The objective of a code audit is simply to offer the digital products a newly developed life. Then it creates a great sense of focusing on product-based sustainability. It is a critically difficult problem that is further categorized into four components. These include security, scalability, usability, and maintainability.
Security:
It is difficult to determine the significance of assuring the app’s security risk to be truly reduced. A spectrum of factors exists in the security issue. The first one is legal compliance where related laws exist for the product usage. An example may include the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Afterward, there arises a responsibility toward the customers and users. An example may include the collection, storage, and usage of data of the users and customers. It then includes vulnerability of data loss and theft that generally occurs when the relevant data is used from the clients.
Scalability:
With every user and its requirement increasing day-by-day, the product requires direct growth onward. Otherwise, the product is left behind the general expectation and benefit. It is usually a lengthy and difficult process, initiating with a prototype to the minimum viable product.
Businesses are required assuring the product being fit for the markets. The app is also focused to be working and increasing toward the huge markets. Every step in the process develops with the product and its increasing demands. These entire issues need to be ended in the code, making the app and product workable for all users properly.
Usability:
The entire product user interface exists similar to an unrealistic thing when the code audit is not in place. It means that the digital product or an app should be utilized with the proper user interface. It becomes counterproductive when the product experiences an unhealthy behavior from any user.
The business objective is to completely fulfill user expectations with clearly set forth goals. It also focuses on intuitive navigation and accessible content. It is a great practice that every user experience can have a positive impact on the business-driven product in different manners.
Maintainability:
It is a level where the business starts understanding, repairing, and enhancing the code of products. At this stage, the code is required to be kept for proper software architecture while updating it for a better experience. The new features also need to be added to the digital product, making it clear, usable, and experiencing for all users.
Afterward, there arises a need to regularly automating and testing of the code. It helps in ensuring best practice maintenance while increasing product-based sustainability. The product then undergoes an improvement work where it is checked by several developers/IT specialists.
Moving ahead, continuous integration and setting up of programming is analyzed for the code. It includes developers’ way of merging the code with originally identified factors. It assures every conflict between varying working fields is properly and rapidly gathered and worked on afterward.
Code Audit Action No. 2: Risk Management:
Every project involves some risks. Thus, risk management is a crucially focused component of all projects. The processing factors of executing the code audit are a highly complex matter, therefore, carrying much risk in the system. It requires working on the digital product development phase from the start.
The old code seems to have a vulnerability, so it is needed an update and most priority to be focused on systemically. The existing product can also be lost and go alienated, making it complete as a result of an old code of the product. It finally requires an immediate change, making it the most business priority to be focused on time.
The success factor of risk management in the development phase is truly a strategic concern. It involves a backlog of different actions and tasks that are necessarily carried out in the code audit. These backlogs help in keeping every task and action on priority while improving them for future concerns.
This backlog then supports identifying possible weak spots and addressing every product-based risk. This process of development and improvement drives backlog to the final delivery of the product, clarifying what needs to be focused on afterward and what is achieved from it.
The success factor to risk management from backlogs is prioritizing. The backlog needs to have a clear term, such as why, when, and what needs to be done. To accomplish this:
- The business goals need to be aligned with the backlog.
- There needs to be a focus on features that have high usage and working.
- Remedial action is needed to check as to which part of the sources the code has changed frequently.
Code Audit Action No. 3: Dealing with Technical Debt:
Technical debt is an extra task that is completed afterward due to the existence of a shortcut or a fair option initiated before. As an analogical explanation, if there is a short time in cooking, then might be that the food could miss some taste, though the people might be eating it. There could be a great mess left behind. Technical debt is the same mess here that needs a proper cleaning afterward.
In different terms, a price exists for every work. The price in terms of a digital product is money and time that is collectively used in streamlining the product.
The code audit report should consist of a fully taxonomy-based term. The ideal properly defined metrics should be focused on when considering the product’s technical debt. It is particularly utilized for tracking the progressive outcome of the code. The level of urgency is dependent on the way debt being carried out. It includes different issues that can hinder the process if no action is initiated well on time.
The general strategies for addressing technical debt include the following:
- Replacing or Updating Unsupported Libraries: The factor of maintainability and security face a great risk due to unsupported libraries. It is because a new library contains an improved solution and an up-to-date result for developers. The working efficiency becomes low when an unsupported library is out-of-date. Therefore, the unsupported libraries are needed to be updated for better efficiency and service.
- Refactoring in Less Coordinated Steps: The process to restructure the current software architecture or code is termed refactoring. It is primarily done without changing the functions or external behaviors of products. There could arise several problems if other work is combined with the process of refactoring. An example is a project having different code-based working factors in the database. There was needed the addition of newly introduced features and the fixation of every bug simultaneously. Such varying work-streams started progressing in individual sate while being ending up incompatible. For maintaining good compatibility, the working progress should be done with released small changes and less coordinated stages.
- Deploy Tests and Metrics: Amid the process of post-audit work and refactoring, the programming of less and fast improvement and fixing could allow for better testing changes. The monitoring progress can also be improved and checked systematically. Businesses are suggested to use different monitoring tools and automated tests. The examples may include Datadog, New Relic, and other ones. These are mainly done in compliance with the right metrics. For example, the app performance and error rates could assure in identifying every change about the code and product at the right time.
Code Audit into Action:
To conclude, the implementation of the result of the code audit should start with the development of a business plan. The strategies should be focused on the properly prioritized product backlog. It helps in aligning the business-driven objectives and user goals to meet the development plan.
All aforesaid issues need to be addressed with a systematic approach, driving the development team to assure the working of a code audit in the right manner. The project metrics and related code quality should have a proper agreement and monitoring, together with the working progress of the product. These entire working systems ensure sustainability, risk management, and the tackling of technical debt.
Moreover, a leading business tool is generally the code audit. It is emphasized on the general and technical factors of the product. Similarly, the code audit supports providing an enhanced business strategy and a fruitful corporate plan. Therefore, the matter of a code audit needs to be essential not merely to technical decision-makers, but simultaneously for CMO, CEO, and related stakeholders.
