The field of software development has undergone tremendous changes in recent times due to COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses the world over have been encouraged to transform into digital first entities, thereby pressurizing software product development teams to introduce new digital innovations and services to the market at Godspeed! 

The collective consciousness of the business community has also shifted towards building secure and scalable products, which are resilient to rapidly evolving market demands. 

In addition, all members of the IT community including IT managers, software developers, CIOs, and CTOs are trying to uncover innovative ways to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. 

That being said, let us explore the most popular product development trends which represent the overall advancement of the software development industry in 2022. You would be well advised to leverage these trends if you wish to keep your business relevant and stay ahead of the curve! 

6 product development trends that you should watch out for in 2022

  1. Accelerated design automation 

Accelerated design automation software empowers software engineers and product managers to turbocharge productivity by automating repetitive tasks such as builds and error compilation, testing, and deployment. 

It allows teams to build cutting-edge software products more efficiently and accurately. Design automation has evolved from simple automation of basic parameters to full scale product configuration. 

Software engineers can therefore employ rule based design to develop products in a hassle-free manner and avoid complex coding. 

  2. Web 3.0

 The future of the digital world relies on web 3.0. Web 3.0 represents a new age of internet development characterized by decentralized control, and powered by futuristic technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. 

The premise of this game changing technology trend is that individuals will control their data and not rely on third parties such as Google to make connections. However, this doesn’t imply that web 2.0 will vanish entirely. 

The focal points of today’s digital age, which are currently dominated by big technology platforms, will coexist alongside platforms like Ethereum that allow individuals to interact directly and more securely. 

They will enable customers to transact directly and own digital assets. Web 3.0, on the other hand, will rely on AI to link information, providing more meaningful, accurate, and comprehensive search results along with personalized online experiences. 

To keep up with this trend, software developers have to acclimatize themselves to software development languages such as Solidity, which is an object-oriented programming language used for writing smart contracts, most commonly on the Ethereum Blockchain. 

  3. GPT – 3 

GPT 3 is a machine learning model that has become quite popular in the software development circles. It is a pre-trained language model that can generate text. 

It uses a recurrent neural network (RNN) having attention and a variational autoencoder (VAE) to generate realistic text, including software code. 

It is a highly effective model,  which has the potential to revolutionize software design with 175 billion parameters and the ability to learn with virtually zero human intervention. Its current use cases include software code generation, acceleration of repetitive tasks such as writing online ads, enablement of human-like interactions in chatbots.

  4. Application modernization led by containers

Gartner had predicted that by 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications. Containers fundamentally help software to run steadily in different computing environments. 

A container comprises applications, system libraries, configuration files, settings, and other components bundled into a single package. Containers help develop, test, deploy, and re-engineer applications faster on multiple environments such as a local laptop, on premise data center, and cloud platforms. 

To put it simply, containers require less computing resources in comparison to virtual machine environments. They are also highly portable, cost-efficient, and secure, making them ideal for rapid app development and enhancement. 

In 2022, containers will continue to empower open ecosystems, improve development workflows, standardize, and automate the creation and sharing of microservice applications, enabling you to derive maximum value from application modernization services.

  5. Democratization of software with no code- low code 

Organizations will continue to observe an increase in the growth of no code low code application development platforms. These platforms enable even non technical business users in an organization to develop compelling applications quite efficiently and effortlessly. 

Business owners can leverage the possibility of democratized software development to modernize their legacy applications, accelerate the development of Minimum Viable Products, and introduce their new products to market at lighting speed.

The latest no code-low code development platforms allow enterprise teams to work on multiple projects simultaneously at an unimaginable pace, thereby reducing their dependence on IT and giving them room to ideate and manifest their plans.

  6. DevSecOps

Data breaches can quite literally burn a hole in your pocket, and the risk of breaches is at an all-time high right now. Needless to say, you must ensure that software being used internally and by end users is secure by design to protect your data. 

DevSecOps is an approach to software development that embeds security at every stage of the DevOps pipeline. DevOps quite simply signifies a close collaboration between development and operations teams and comprises practices, culture, and tools that help boost software development speed and facilitate a faster time-to-market. 

Embedding security into each stage of development as opposed to handling safety at the end of the development process makes your code risk-proof by its very nature. 

Organizations the world over have already begun harnessing the power of DevSecOps in at least one of their teams to boost security and agility. 

At the end of the day, DevSecOps can be made possible if you incorporate a mindset shift along with advanced tools that help detect security faults and vulnerabilities in the software, runtime environment, database, APIs and more.

  In a nutshell

There’s a lot more to the future of software product development that we wish to cover in subsequent blogs. At Hakuna Matata, we offer leading-edge software product development services that enable our clients to transform core capabilities and deliver highly engaging customer experiences. 

What’s holding you back then? Schedule a free consultation and partner with us to leapfrog into the future of software product development. 

Leverage the latest trends to stay ahead of the curve and position your business for success in 2022 and beyond!