While it may seem like a purely technical discipline, at its core software development is 50% technical skill and 50% mindset. Anyone can write code that accomplishes the given task at first, but true quality engineering requires code that is scalable, understandable by other software engineers, and works in any given scenario. To be a good software engineer you need to have a mindset of not just checking off the boxes, but of doing quality engineering work to advance your project and help your organization’s customers.

Clarifying requirements

One helpful way to accomplish these goals when writing software is to clarify your customer or organization’s requirements before you even start working. One important factor for any successful project is a team that all understands what the goals of the project are. Always ask any questions you might have before you start coding, and be sure to outline your plan for the work so you don’t get stuck mid-project not knowing what to do next.

TDD vs BDD

The foundation of quality engineering in modern software development is found in a process called test-driven development, or TDD. TDD is the idea of testing your software with realistic variables and fixing all possible failed cases to improve your program while you are in the process of development. By using test-driven development you work out any bugs in your code while you are writing it instead of having to address any issues after the entire program is completed.

You can take your test-driven development to the next level by implementing principles of behavior-driven development, or BDD. One of the primary purposes of BDD is to allow software engineers to cooperate with people in non-technical roles to ensure that software programs adequately fulfil customers needs. Using BDD involves extensive meetings with product developers, designers, marketing team members and the software engineers to decide what expectations to have for full functionality of the program. After guidelines and requirements are set in place, the design of a quality product will go much quicker because you have the ability to build your tests for functionality and then build your code around what works for your tests.

Automated Unit Testing

Automated unit testing is one of the core methods used in both test-driven and behavior-driven development. Essentially, automated unit testing is a way of testing code by having the computer automatically run multiple different scenarios and see which ones work, instead of you as a developer having to do it all manually. This gives you a much more realistic picture of how your code will work and ensures that you are creating a program that will fill all of your customer or organization’s needs.

Conclusion

As you continue to work on your mindset, problem solving and higher reasoning, you will be able to use your technical programming skills to do better and better work as a software engineer. Make sure you always keep scalability and the end user of the software in mind, and