In a modern mid-size startup (roughly 50–200 employees), the software development process is designed to balance the speed of a small team with the predictability required by investors and stakeholders. Unlike a "garage startup" that might code on a whim, a mid-size company uses a structured
Discovery → Planning → Execution loop.
The Software development phase (product based delivery) typically involves few phases as following
Initiation: "The Why and What"
Initiation is rarely about a single person’s idea; it’s a response to data, customer feedback, or strategic goals.
The Catalyst: Usually comes from Product Management (PM) (based on user feedback/analytics), Leadership (strategic pivot), or Sales/CS (high-value client requests).
The Discovery Phase: Before a single line of code is written, a "Discovery" squad (PM, Lead Designer, and Tech Lead) validates the idea. They perform user interviews and technical feasibility spikes.
Key Output: The PRD (Product Requirements Document)
In modern startups, this is a "living" document in Notion or Confluence.
Content: Problem statement, target user, user stories, success metrics (KPIs), and "out of scope" items to prevent scope creep.
Our focus will be on engineering side, so i skip the details of PRD, you will only need to know key parts, normally engineer leads will work very close with Product manager to clarify the PRD contents.
Planning: "The How and When"
Once a project is "greenlit" via the PRD, the planning shifts to technical architecture and resource allocation.
UI designers may involved depending on requirement
Designers receives the PRD analyze the requirement, coming up with solution and provide Key output: high-fidelity mockups (usually in Figma).
The Tech Lead Discuss PRD and UI Mockup with engineers, analyze requirements and unveiling details, edge cases. Then engineering team writes a document outlining the system architecture, database changes, and API designs, key user metric gather plan, releases plan.
It is shared with the wider engineering team for peer review to catch flaws early.
Time allocation of this work referenced by SPIKE Ticket within sprint.
Key Output: RFC (Request for Comments) / TDD (Technical Design document)
Upon receiving feedback, passing reviews, Technical design is approved and proceed to
Backlog Grooming: The PM and Engineering Lead break the PRD down into "tickets" (tasks) in a tool like Jira. Each ticket is assigned "Story Points" to estimate effort.
The Flow: Step-by-Step
Startups typically run on Scrum or Kanban frameworks, operating in 2-week "Sprints."
| Phase | Key Activity | Output |
|--------------|----------------------------------------|-------------------|
| Estimation | Pointing session with developers | Sprint Backlog |
| Execution | Coding, Code Reviews (PRs), CI/CD | Feature Branch |
| QA/UAT | Automated testing & stakeholder review | Release Candidate |
| Launch | Feature flags & phased rollout | Live Feature |
Key Documents & Tools
Modern startups favor "Asynchronous Documentation" writing things down so anyone can catch up without a meeting.
Product Roadmap: A high-level timeline (usually quarterly) showing "Now, Next, Later."
RACI Matrix: A chart defining who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for the project.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Documentation on expected uptime and performance for the new feature.
Tech Stack: * Project Tracking: Linear, Jira, or Asana.
Docs: Notion, Confluence, or GitHub Wiki.
Design: Figma.
Communication: Slack (integrated with GitHub/Jira).
Timelines
While timelines vary by feature size, a standard "medium-sized" project (e.g., building a new dashboard) usually follows this cadence:
Week 1-2 (Discovery): Research, PRD drafting, and stakeholder alignment.
Week 3 (Technical Design): RFC/TDD writing, peer review, and Figma prototyping.
Week 4-7 (Development): 2 or 3 Sprints of active coding. Includes daily "Stand-ups" (15-min syncs).
Week 8 (Testing & Polish): Bug smashing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
Week 9 (Deployment): Usually a "Dark Launch" (deploying code behind a toggle) followed by a full release.
That concludes the overview process from requirement to production delivery, but its also crucial to have post-launch process
Product team
needs to gather the user feedback, monitor analytics like Amplitude, Mixpanel, or Google Analytic to analyze the impact according to initial PRD plan.
Tech team provides analytics and its metric setup and configurations beforehand.
Tech team
Observability & Monitoring
Developers watch dashboards (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, or Sentry) for a "spike" in error rates. If the new code causes the server to crash or slow down, they must hotfix it immediately.
Feature Flag Cleanup
Most startups use LaunchDarkly or Statsig to toggle features on. Once a feature is 100% rolled out and stable, the "tech debt" task is to go back into the code and remove the "if/else" logic for that toggle.
"Nothing is more permanent than temporary solution"
Addressing Technical Debt
Often, to meet a deadline, developers take "shortcuts." Post-launch is the time to go back and refactor that code to make it more maintainable. The team must create clear timeline when to refactor or completely ignore it, otherwise tech debt will be under radar forever and can hurt maintainability in long term.
Performance Tuning
Now that real user data is hitting the database, the Tech Lead checks if the queries are performing as expected or if they need to add new indexes to the database.
The "Post-Mortem" / Retrospective
This is a formal meeting and document created 1–2 weeks after launch. It is the most important document for team growth.
The Document Structure:
What went well? (e.g., "The RFC process caught a major security flaw early.")
What went wrong? (e.g., "The Figma designs were missing a mobile view, causing a 2-day delay.")
Timeline Reality vs. Estimate: Did it take 3 sprints instead of 2? Why?
Action Items: Concrete steps to prevent the same mistakes in the next project.
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