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The mobile development market is constantly expanding. According to statistics with an estimated value of 206.85 billion US dollars in 2022 to 2030, it will grow with a compound annual growth rate of 13.9%.
The business world’s growing appetite for apps showcases the move over the last 10 years from single vendors with all-in-one platforms to “best-of-breed” applications.Todd McKinnon, Okta’s chief executive officer, told CIO Journal
The business world’s growing appetite for apps showcases the move over the last 10 years from single vendors with all-in-one platforms to “best-of-breed” applications.
Nevertheless, making an on-demand mobile app is a process that implies quite thorough pre-planning. It’s crucial to know the concept of the software development life cycle to ensure product integrity, decrease time-to-market, streamline the mobile apps development process, and save on app costs.
NIX has provided mobile app development services since 2009 and uses best practices to build high-level mobile solutions for different purposes. In this article, we would like to share our know-how to help you understand the mobile app development steps and their specifics.
The first stage of the application development lifecycle is working out everything from what the app is about and who will use it to what technologies it will be based on and how we will measure success.
A mobile app should be based on problem-solving for the user and be handy. It’s important to ask yourself what problems you want to solve with your app and how you plan to benefit from the app.
Your research should include actual demographics, motivations, behavior patterns, and goals of your user’s persona. Whether your target audience is using an iPhone or Android, it’s essential to keep in mind the user lifecycle and its characteristics during the whole development process. This way, you can create user personas, which help understand the real goals and constraints of who will be using the app. Knowing what your users are is the cornerstone of building an on-demand mobile app.
Thorough research gives clarity and sets you on firm footing regarding what your app will be.
A detailed study of your competitor’s app will help you figure out what features are absent in their app so that you can include them in your app to make it stand out.
After identifying the target audience, it’s time to select a preferred mobile platform – iOS or Android. There are two ways to develop the app:
At this stage, it’s time to build a development team that usually consists of a product owner, project manager, business analyst, 2–3 app developers per platform (Android and iOS), back-end developer, UI/UX designer, and 1-2 QA engineers. When your team is formed, you can proceed with the design.
The design stage includes four steps.
The team examines the project’s initial data and then asks more specific and contextual questions during the workshop with the client.
At this stage, we are creating an app architecture for a better conceptual understanding and preparing the future mobile app’s prototype with as much detail as possible: each button, pop-up, and text field.
The team analyzes and classifies all the information received from the client and fills in gaps if necessary. We already begin to create the structure of the project, draw up the user flow and happy passes, and work through the edge cases. After the NDA agreement with the client, we move on to the next stage – UI.
It’s essential to keep in mind the client’s tastes and preferences, but even more important is the target audience. After successful approval of the main screens’ designs, we can create the project’s style guide and render the rest of the screens. If the client has a brand book or a unique corporate style it’s important to follow it and make sure it’s well accompanied.
When mobile app developers receive all the prototypes, the designer’s work does not end. The designer also accompanies the project team during the development stage to explain the difficult moments in the logic, structure and find a compromise between what is beautiful and technically practical to implement. The designer himself must also check the final product for compliance with its design and idea.
All these steps ensure making a high-quality and custom app sharpened to achieve the customer’s business and target audience goals.
We believe that teamwork is the driving force behind great software development. Building a trusting relationship between the client and the team is the foundation of a successful outcome.
At NIX, we are using Agile methodology – breaking development up into sprints of around two weeks apiece, and each focused on a singular functionality. This helps with flexible planning, progressive development, early deployment, and constant enhancements. At the end of each sprint, a mini-release is provided for the client’s review and testing.
As for native development, there are the main programming languages: for iOS development – Swift, Objective‑C, for Android – Kotlin and Java. For cross-platform development software, there is React Native or Flutter.
The development process can be described in the following steps:
Depending on the chosen technology for the backend (step 2), we can choose the best fit for the project.
Mobile app testing is a necessary procedure, and if applied in the early stages of the application development lifecycle, it can save your budget. The QA team needs to test a mobile application for usability, compatibility, security, UI checks, and performance.
At NIX, we plan the testing in layers. First, the priority is functionality, second is additional functionality, and third is design. The second and third items may switch places – it depends on the client’s needs and requirements. It’s better to implement a few features that work smoothly than a whole pack that creates many bugs.
Our QA engineers can calculate an approximate number of tests for each feature to provide the client with the testing stage’s estimation.
At NIX, depending on the project, besides basic testing, we conduct three more types of testing:
Performance testing determines how fast a system or part of a system performs under a particular load. It can also verify and validate other system quality attributes, such as scalability, reliability, and resource consumption. Performance testing answers questions such as how well the app responds to the user requests, how fast the app’s screens are loading, or if your app’s size is bigger than what it should be.
Directions of performance testing:
After your app passes the necessary performance testing, it is still crucial to test the API and backend for load by simulating the maximum quantity of simultaneous users. The app should be able to handle a high load and perform well even when usage spikes.
Security testing is a crucial part of the mobile apps development process. It’s especially vital for mobile enterprise solutions that any potential vulnerability can lead to a hack.
Critical user data includes any data that should not be accessed by a third party – both personal user data such as date of birth, residential address, personal correspondence and private data such as passwords, credit card data, bank account numbers, order numbers, and so on.
This is a way of evaluating a mobile app’s security, which consists of systematic testing of its protection effectiveness. The testing process involves actively searching for any weaknesses, technical flaws, or vulnerabilities in the application.
Essential rules:
Usability testing should accompany software development at all its stages. This will allow timely detection of many problems, many of which can be identified before or during interface design.
The purpose of usability testing can be to check the specific functionality, the user’s overall impression of the app or design, check the user’s happy passes, or compare the application with competitors’ analogs.
To ensure your application works smoothly with no bugs and that it will be comfortable in use, it is essential to perform beta testing. This involves external user testing – a limited, targeted audience uses a beta version of an app and provides real feedback to understand the usability flow or possible issues with it.
Benefits of beta testing:
Once the team performs the app testing in-house, it’s ready for the release of the beta version of the app to market.
The first release usually contains the app’s priority features and the extended functionality for the following releases.
It’s the final stage of SDLC mobile application development when the app is ready for market launch. However, you should keep in mind app stores’ particular policies for accepting and verifying mobile apps. After the app submission to the Apple App Store, it goes through a review process that may take from a few days to months depending on your app’s quality and how closely it follows Apple’s iOS development guidelines. App reviews on Google Play are different from App Store, but often your app will show up in the market a few hours after submission.
After app submission, it is essential to keep track of the trends upgrade the features according to the audience targeting requests, and process user feedback for future improvements.
App development is an ongoing process and will proceed after the first launch as you receive user feedback and build new functionality. The most important thing is to build an expert team that will help lead you through all steps of the mobile apps development process and ensure the product’s integrity.
We hope this article helped you understand all app development phases – from strategy and identifying the target audience, to app release and its ongoing support.
Why outsource mobile app development to NIX? Our mobile development department consists of more than 50 experts and the entire team consists of 3000+ technicians experienced in various business domains. Depending on your current needs, we build a team and work with you side by side through all steps of application development.
You can use our brief request for proposal (RFP) template which will save you time and will allow you to present your idea and development needs in a well-structured form.
The steps for application development are generally similar for different types of apps. App creation consists of working on mobile app development strategy, design, development, testing, app release, and ongoing support. However, the specific requirements and complexity may vary based on the nature of the app. Some steps to create an app may require adding extra modifications to accommodate specific features or functionalities.
The duration of the mobile apps development process depends on various factors, such as the app’s complexity, team size, and resources allocated. On average, the planning and design steps to build an app can take a few weeks, followed by development and testing phases, ranging from a few weeks to several months. It’s important to note that these timelines can vary significantly depending on the project scope.
Skipping any of the mobile app development stages is generally not recommended, as each stage plays a crucial role in ensuring the app’s success. However, some stages may be combined or prioritized differently in certain situations, such as when modifying an existing app or developing a simple prototype. It’s important to assess the project’s specific requirements and consult with the development team to determine the best workflow with all the steps to develop an app adapted to the business context.
It’s essential to be aware of common pitfalls during app development to ensure a smooth process. Some key pitfalls to avoid are inadequate planning and requirements gathering, insufficient testing and quality assurance, poor user experience design, ineffective communication among team members, and neglecting post-development support and maintenance. A seasoned team differs from the newcomers, which are many, by additional stages of the mobile apps development process they take aim at double-checking the strategic data and communication flow. You can proactively enhance the overall app development experience by addressing these challenges beforehand.
The stages of Android app building typically include:
Yes, optimizing app performance is crucial for providing a seamless user experience. Some specific mobile apps development process steps include:
To ensure security during the development process, be sure to include the following stages of the mobile apps development process:
Ensure you haven’t missed any of these steps to make an app that will pay off handsomely.
These are the steps to create an app that precede the deployment stage:
While there are no universally enforced standards, several industry organizations and frameworks provide guidelines detailing mobile application development stages. Some notable ones include the Mobile App Development Lifecycle (MADLC) by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the Mobile Application Development Framework (MADF) by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and platform-specific guidelines provided by companies like Google and Apple. Adhering to these guidelines can help ensure best practices and increase the chances of successfully completing the mobile apps development process stages.
With a decade of experience in mobile development, Jane enjoys tackling tech challenges and creates powerful solutions from simple apps to complex IoT systems across multiple industries. She masterfully leads the way inside her team and beyond, acting as a tech advisor.
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