List 25 Software Development Project Ideas based on Industries

You have decided to pick up Software Development! That is a great start to have, but what do you have to do now? It is generally believed that one of the best ways to learn software development is by building real-life projects that pertain to your skill level. In this post, we will be discussing software development project ideas that you can use to better your own skills, or better yet, to resolve problems you might face in your life right now.

List of Software Development Project Industries:

1. Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI)
2. Retail & eCommerce
3. Logistics
4. Personal Services
5. Human Resource
6. Entertainment
7. Healthcare

What is a Software Development Project?

A Software Development Project is a complex assignment often done by teams of two (or more people), although for simpler ones a single developer will suffice. Its goal is to create and generate new or enhanced pieces of computer code that aim to tackle a specific problem and add value to an existing process. They can also be used to improve one’s coding skills and have fun when it comes to solo projects.

Software development projects are done under time, budget, and staff resource limits. No two projects are the same in terms of those limits, and thus the end products from different developer teams vary wildly from each other. However, since the results are often pre-determined, the variations do not matter in the end, with most of them being creative differences in problem-solving between developers. 

Learn more about Outsourcing Software Development

How to Carry Out a Software Development Project?

A software development project should be following several steps to build the best software, and the typical steps are outlined below:

• Evaluation: Analyze your project’s feasibility, including the software development ideas, goals, and scope. 
• Requirements: What are the requirements for your project? Who is it for? How does it help users? Answers should be found in this stage of the software development process.
• Planning: Determine the deadlines for components of your project, while taking into consideration the budget you can allocate to them and their impact on the software development process as a whole.
• Conceptualization: Create prototypes for your software to visualize its functions. 
• Development: Actual coding part of the software development process. Often takes the longest time in software development projects.
• Stabilization: Thorough quality control test of the software to evaluate its performance. You should be looking for whether the requirements are met, as well as the code’s quality. 
• Launch: Release the software. You can perform a beta release before the official version to gather feedback and improve on users’ pain points.
• Post-production: Perform updates and fixes to the software as needed. Updates can include new features, compatibility updates, quality-of-life updates, and more.

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30 Software Development Project Ideas based on Industries

Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI)

1. Stock market tracker

A simple project for both enterprises and independent developers alike. By using the API from stock exchanges, you can build a custom market tracker to follow specific companies you bought stocks for. The software can include visual representations for changes in the market as well. 

Further updates to the software can be the ability to purchase stock directly in the tracker, international stock exchanges, and/or trackers for different products altogether (namely crypto).

2. Expense tracker

Create a simple tracker for your expenses throughout the day. It can be as simple as an interface for you to input data or be more sophisticated by connecting the tracker to your e-wallet/mobile banking app to directly track and input your data without you having to manually do it. You can also set up customized notifications for specific events, like ranting about your coffee habits or lunch choices, to spice up the program even more.

Naturally, the most fitting platform for this software development idea would be a mobile app, but having a separate desktop client that syncs itself with the app is also helpful when you inevitably calculate your expenses at the end of the month.

3. ATM Banking System

Technically only feasible for software development companies, every bank needs its own Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) banking system. ATMs are hooked up to the bank’s main network and offer basic banking functions for its customers. These features include (but are not limited to): cash withdrawals and deposits, account inquiries, bill payments, and more. With technology advancing, you can incorporate technologies like fingerprint and other biometrics scanners into your ATM system to increase security for users.

4. Mobile Banking App

Similar to an ATM banking system, a mobile banking app connects to the bank’s main network and allows users to perform a variety of banking tasks on their mobile phones. It would also ideally be able to connect and send SMS to the user’s phone for extra security measures, and/or be able to use biometrics data, similar to the suggestion for ATM systems mentioned above. The range of actions that can be taken on the mobile banking platform is much more diverse than those of the ATM, however. Users can view their account statements, check their cards’ statuses, report lost cards, and transfer funds between accounts, among other things.

For feature updates, you can have the app communicate with external systems and allow your users to do other tasks not related to banking directly in-app. For example: paying bills, purchasing tickets, or reserving restaurants.

Retail & eCommerce

5. Price tracker

Automate your shopping by building a program that connects to the API of common online shopping platforms to scrounge and compare prices between them, returning the lowest price for each item. This should also keep track of the lowest prices the items have ever been.

Possible expansions of the software idea can include wishlists and notifications for the best deals sent to your e-mail/phone.

6. Digital Storefront

Creating a digital storefront from scratch is harder than it seems. You have to connect it to a database to update stock status in real-time, incorporate payment methods for the customers, and have an input method for customers to give out their data as well. On top of that, everything has to be done securely so that essential information is not stolen. Building one from the ground up, or even from a development template, is surely a challenge for developers wanting to hone their skills in the craft.

7. Rating sentiment analyzer

This software development idea aims to infer the tone of customer online ratings (reviews or testimonials) from their wordings. By analyzing this data, a business can tell what customers really think about its products rather than relying on arbitrary numbers. 

With this program, you can either use natural language processing or build yourself a databank of keywords sorted into categories, such as “good” or “enjoyable” sorted into positive. This way, it is harder for malicious ratings to sneak themselves into being positive reviews to deface your business online.

8. Customer relationship management system

Following up with customers after a sale is hard. Simplify it by creating a system that keeps track of customers! It can either accept manual input of information or automatically updates based on a business’ database of customers. By having customers’ contact and purchase info as well as their level of engagement in one place, businesses can better evaluate their customers’ loyalty and how they can change it for the better.

Logistics

9. Route planner

Optimize everyday routes with a route planner! This software development project pulls the map data from somewhere like Google and builds the most convenient route between stops for you to take every day. You can also have roads that are under construction or are having a traffic jam be excluded from the route for smooth transport.

10. Parking spot finder

Utilizing GPS, the parking space finder would identify the user’s current location, then returns nearby parking lots with available spaces. To improve it, you can implement guiding lines to the exact parking spot, a method to pay for parking inside the program, or maybe a video feed connected to your car’s camera to keep an eye on the surroundings.

11. Warehouse management system

Build a custom-made inventory manager suited to each company! This software development project looks easy enough (how different can it be from a spreadsheet?), yet carries with it hidden hurdles you would have to overcome for a functional program: clear and concise communication between divisions, accurate trackers, and of course the specific requirements of the business itself.

To resolve these issues, you would have to work closely with the company to figure out their needs and be as thorough as possible while developing the project, as one small mistake can easily derail.

Personal Services

12. Task Monitor

A task monitor helps you keep track of things to do each day, week, or month. The project can be built as a digital planner where you enter the information yourself, or as an alarm clock that reminds you of things to do at set intervals of time. You can even integrate both of them into one application!

Potential expansion: a chatbot that returns your current to-dos and reminders, synchronization between mobile and desktop, and importing data from other calendars.

13. Lunch picker

A program to choose your lunch for you! No more headaches over what to have for lunch ever again! The data can be as simple as a compiled Excel sheet of possible lunch options or be more advanced like pulling data on nearby restaurants from Google Maps. The program then gives you a random option to solve your lunch problems each day. Be sure to have chosen options removed from the pool to avoid repetition!

14. Personal cloud service

A personal cloud server allows you to conveniently and safely access all of your stored data from anywhere. The personal cloud software development project uses a device called a NAS drive – a high-capacity hard drive with networking capabilities – to set up your own cloud server. Over commercially-available services, a personal drive allows you more storage at a lower cost and a higher level of security. Besides, having a centralized sharing space for your family and friends massively simplifies the sharing of files between you and them.

15. Microlearning App

Build an app that sends a small bit of information every day for whatever you wanted to learn, be it a random Wikipedia page, a Japanese kanji character, or random stats of a sports player. The app would work based on a database of knowledge that you provided at the start, and is best built as a phone app, obviously – you can learn anywhere with it.

Human Resources

16. Slack Bot

If you and your company use Slack for communication at work, you might want to look into building a custom bot for small aspects of your team’s daily life, using Slack’s API for easy integration. Bots can have a variety of functionalities, such as ordering lunch, daily reminders, or setting up meetings. There are even Slack bots that say if someone is talking too much and for playing poker in the chat! The possibilities are truly endless with Slack bots as software development projects.

17. Dataset creator/updater

With this software development idea, you are looking to build a tool that can automatically create and update a data set about anything that you can think of. In Human Resources, this often means employee data and everything related to it. 

The tool would most likely be a scraper for data input and a CSV output. It is most important that the data is automatically updated as new data is entered into the system. For example, when a new employee enters their information, your tool should immediately notice, scrape the data and add that to your dataset.

18. E-mail newsletter compiler

Having way too many newsletters every week clumping up your e-mail inbox? Instead of unsubscribing from each and every one of them, build a web app – either from scratch or with a software development template – to compile them all into one neat package a week to organize your inbox! Simply hook it up to a mail server and give the tool the keywords it needs to capture newsletters. Never swamp in your e-mails ever again, and still get all the latest information that you care about!

Entertainment

19. Oscars forecast

This project aims to provide users with educated guesses as to who the winners for each Academy Awards category would be. The dataset is taken from past winners and previous award seasons. By calculating between combinations of awards winners, the program would then give you the most likely winners, done through data analysis. This can reasonably be done for other awards as well, so there is potential for feature upgrades to this small and fun program.

20. Spoiler blocker

It is annoying to have a recently-released movie or a hotly-debated TV show spoiled by social media and the internet as a whole. For a fun project, you can create a browser extension that removes posts that mentions the movie/show or even replaces them with funny pictures of your choosing. This is a project that would take a day at most if you have background software development knowledge. You can also use it to filter out topics that you do not care about online, making your browsing experience more streamlined and generally better.

21. Interactive Fiction

Interactive fictions are great for beginners in game development, as they are built completely with words and text-based commands and imagery while allowing readers to make their own decisions, making them videogames without the “video”. Without having to worry about graphical assets, you can spend more time building your world and story using text as your only tool . A great starting project that can evolve into much more in the right hands.

Healthcare

22. Steps tracker/Pedometer

A simple program using a phone’s motion sensors to count your steps. The app should be able to store data for multiple days of steps and create detailed graphs showing your walking trends. You can improve it by having it connect to a smartwatch and also keep track of your heart rate alongside other metrics.

23. Mood tracker app

A mood tracker can do wonders for your mental health: you know what went wrong during specific periods of time and allows you to work on the specific issues now that you know what they are. You can also tell good days from bad days and focus on the things that make you happy more. As a software development project, the app would ideally be able to utilize calendars and simply allows the user to mark each day according to their mood.

You can add features like asking for the users’ details about the day and giving out recommendations to improve their mood according to the data they entered, or being able to print out sheets for any amount of time.

24. Hospital application

As the world evolves, more hospitals are now looking to streamline their patients’ experience with diagnosis and treatment through novel approaches, one of them being mobile apps. This software development project focuses on the ease of usage for users and should be developed with a deep understanding of the hospital’s needs.

Features should include being able to set up appointments with doctors, check your doctors’ backgrounds, have prescriptions and their dosages, as well as a simple way to contact your doctor for emergency inquiries. The app must be connected to the hospital’s database to enable immediate updates on patients’ conditions and diagnoses.

25. Therapist-on-hand service

This software development idea’s goal is to connect patients to qualified therapists so that their treatment goes smoothly and regularly. Ideally, the service will have a rigorous screening procedure for its’ selection of therapists, alongside the ability to video chat for more intimate sessions between the therapists and their patients.

The service can be offered both as a mobile app and a website/desktop application, allowing patients to attend their therapy sessions anywhere they needed.

Looking for a Software Development Provider?

Software Development can be done by anyone, but learning it is a long process that will eat your time up, leaving no time for you to focus on your other endeavors. That is why Software Development providers like Rikkeisoft exist: assisting you with any and all of your software development projects so that you can devote more time to things that really matter to your company.

Founded in 2012, Rikkeisoft is an award-winning IT firm that can help you realize your software development project with our accumulated expertise in a multitude of IT services. Our primary clients are international, coming from Japan, the United States, and many other countries. We work closely with our clients to ensure that your vision meets ours and becomes a reality through our teams of highly-skilled software developers. 

Final Thoughts

We hope that this list of software development projects has proved itself to be of help to anyone reading. Software development is not easy, and having guidelines in the form of real-life projects benefits your growth as a developer immensely. If, however, you found an idea that would be of use to you but do not have the time to realize it, our teams of experienced developers at Rikkeisoft are gladly at your service.