Powerful ways you can save on Sitecore development time

Working on Sitecore? How much time are you actually wasting, instead of getting work done?

Maybe you’re a Slack-er.

Maybe you just think, ‘that’s how it is’ and you do things the hard, time-consuming way.

Or maybe you actually want something better…..

Anyone that knows me in the Sitecore community, knows my love for the tooling and processes of Sitecore development. Working at Hedgehog, it’s something we are constantly analyzing from our own projects, and something we are always trying to improve on. We aim to keep development costs down on projects by not cutting features, but by working better. This leads to happier clients, who get more bang for their buck when hiring a Sitecore development team.

So how do we do it?

Well, at Hedgehog, we not only do client work producing websites, but we also dedicate people to work on tools and modules that help improve things. Most of the time, these tools are born out of the frustrations that we’ve found with the paradigm, but also from the general murmurs from the community. Having hands-on experience with the problematic stuff in Sitecore development, we’re in a position to try and find ways to improve it. Sometimes this leads to shared source modules that we create, sometimes it’s examples of projects for people to see, and sometimes, with enough demand, it can result in full-scale, commercial products with 24/7 support and dedicated development teams.

TL;DR

Use all the productivity features of TDS Classic Use Sitecore’s own tooling Use what others before you have already created Don’t wait for Sitecore’s lengthy app pool reload….use ZeroDeploy instead!



How can developers work more efficiently with Sitecore?

By no means is this a comprehensive list. There are other blog posts our there on Sitecore tools, like 10 Essential Sitecore Tools for Developers, Top 10 Sitecore Dev Tools and even my own post. This is just some things I have been using on team projects that have been having issues with getting stuff done.

Here is what I use to save the most development time, so you can get some work done!

Don’t suffer in silence. Get moving!

You can save huge amounts of time with Sitecore development when using the tools and modules mentioned above.

There are even others out there that could be added to the list, depending on your situation/client. Front end devs could use Feydra, script-monkeys can use Sitecore PowerShell Extensions, and you could even use accelerators like SCORE or SXA if you want pre-built components and configuration, or something like Ignition to give you a starting framework.

It’s one thing we do at Hedgehog…. we do our research on our ways to save on development time. When there’s a good tool for the job, we use it….. when there’s not, we break barriers, shift paradigms, and push for a better way to develop smarter. TDS Classic pioneered the back end development process, and Feydra has started shaking up how front end developers work, saving time that is otherwise wasted.

ZeroDeploy is doing what people thought wasn’t possible, and the Sitecore Package Deployer gives a nice touch to making deployments easier.

All up…..stop wasting time when developing….. get your work done so you can have happy clients, and then go and enjoy your weekends with family or friends.