Features of the software supply chain

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How Industrial Best Practices Impact Software Development
16.10.2024
Just as industrial companies reduce risk by choosing trusted vendors, software development teams should avoid poorly managed open source components, writes Aaron Linskens, technical writer at Sonatype, on The New Stack .

Traditional best practices used in industry offer valuable insights that enrich our approach to modern software development.

Industrialists rely on quality control, supply chain management, and strict standards to produce efficiently. Software developers can adopt these principles when incorporating open source components into their development processes.

As software development increasingly resembles assembling complex products from small parts—many of them open source—lessons can be learned from how industrialists optimize their processes to ensure quality and reduce risk.

Let's explore these lessons and see how they can help organizations manage their software supply chains.

Just as a traditional supply chain involves sourcing, aggregating, and distributing physical goods, a software supply chain consists of collecting, integrating, and maintaining software belgium mobile database to build applications.

In both industries, quality, reliability, and transparency directly impact success. A broken link in the physical supply chain can lead to production delays or defects.

Likewise, a vulnerable or outdated software component can lead to security risks, licensing issues, or performance problems.

Quality control of software components
One of the fundamental principles borrowed from industrial manufacturing is quality control. In traditional manufacturing, companies rely on high-quality components from reliable suppliers to ensure the safety and reliability of the final product.

In software development, this means carefully selecting open source components that are well supported, secure, and free of vulnerabilities.

Manufacturers conduct quality checks early in the process to identify and fix problems before they occur. In software development, this approach is reflected in practices such as automated testing, code review, and software composition analysis (SCA) to continuously monitor the health and safety of components.

To improve software development using industrial manufacturing principles, the following should be practiced: