When it comes to your project succeeding, the quality of the code is secondary to user experience. That's because software is all about making users' jobs easier. If you start coding in a vacuum without understanding what your users need to do, you can't be sure you’re making the right thing. You need UX research.

When your application is scheduled to go to production, the development team may be asked what their regression testing strategy is. This is a perfectly reasonable question, but a lot of people have a hard time answering it. Don't overcomplicate it. Analyze your process, look at the other testing, and put it together.

Organizations must embrace new technologies in their product engineering efforts to stay ahead of the curve. But there is another quality that will be key this decade to giving product teams a proactive advantage: design. Design thinking should be embraced not just by designers, but by everyone involved with a product.