Every business wants its application to be successful and on top among competitors. But, to ensure success, the process of application development should have a concrete strategy to follow. When everything is defined from the start it becomes easier to make plans ahead. And predict future outcomes. Planning allows you to reduce many risks, save up valuable costs (if you are a startup) and, even, use your time more efficiently. How is that possible? Is there a magic key? Of course, there is. There are steps you can take to ensure your project development will be a success from the start. These are called the application development stages.
How many app development stages are there?
By so far, any software development provider would recommend you 8 app development stages to consider. Basically, every company relies on its model of “client-project team” interaction. So, these 8 stages might be not exactly in the order Inoxoft is going to discuss. But, all in all, they lead towards successful results. Let’s get to know them more precisely.
Application development stages
Here are the stages every client should be aware of. These are approximately 8 and they can be changed or altered per client request. For instance, the main pack of stages includes:
- Project initiation
This stage is the opening of the project development. Here, the client comes to the software development vendor with the project idea, needs, requirements, and objectives. The concept of the project is still undefined and needs certain help like
- who is the target audience?
- what are the market trends today?
- will the app meet user goals?
- would the app be cost-effective?
- would the team meet the deadline?
And there are many more questions to cover. Every question matters as it is a part of the whole picture the client gets after the discussion. It is sort of a discovery phase.
- Requirements gathering and analysis
The second stage revolves around the professional project team analyzing the client’s needs and goals. A business analyst should do his/her best work to ensure any detail of the project has not been missed. For instance,
- business requirements
- user requirements
- system requirements
These requirements are pretty important to understand how the system should perform, how much money would it cost, and what the timeframes will be.
- Planning
To ensure the client, every stage of the project development will be carried out without delays and additional costs, the team has to produce reasonable planning. Due to planning the client will receive a whole picture of the project timeline and sprints. With planning, the team becomes more flexible, reduces risks, avoids uncertainty, enhances decision-making, promotes trust, and conveys reliable information.
- Designing
Usually, some of the providers start from designing as soon as the requirements are more or less known. A team of designers has to create a user interface (UI) of the app and its user experience (UX). This is called prototyping when the client has a visual mockup of the app and can click through its navigation. Everything should be seamless and smooth for the end-users. When the prototype is approved by the client, the next stage is to start coding.
- Development
When the production begins, it is vital that the team sets priorities and carries out tasks accordingly. Here, the team uses requirements, the defined tech stack, and many more of the set requirements. Critical tasks are done beforehand and then the team of coders shifts to the ones with lesser priority. Usually, every task is carried out in a single sprint, which lasts for about 2 weeks. After every sprint, the client gets to see results – a demo.
- Testing
Despite being only the sixth stage here, most of the companies initiate testing at the initiation phase. Why? For it is crucial to involve quality assurance engineers as soon as possible. This way, they will conduct research with the business analyst and create the acceptance criteria for an app. What does Inoxoft mean by acceptance criteria? This is a detailed and technical explanation of every feature of an app. Using this acceptance criteria document, the team of testers will understand what the app should look like in the end. Besides, involving testers from the start allows testers to test every feature after its development on the spot.
- Deployment
After the stage of testing, the team has to make final adjustments before the release. For example, the team checks the process to find and eliminate issues. The finalized project, which is a fully-functional app, is being prepared to be released.
- Maintenance
This stage is optional, but Inoxoft truly encourages clients to think about its benefits. When you ask your software provider for maintenance, you get your app’s functionality monitoring 24/7 after the release. What does a maintenance developer do? he/she opts to fix bugs, upload updates, and monitor user feedback to understand if any enhancements are needed and what do people think of the app. If you have such an expert following your app’s growth on the market, then you can relax. Every issue occurring is being dealt with right away. No need to wait. And, as you know, waiting and app crashes irritate users stimulating high bounce rates. If your mission is to increase the ROI, app maintenance is a great way to do so.
Conclusion
To conclude, there are 8 application development stages that ensure clients’ understanding of the potential workflow. These stages are helpful both in presenting clients how their application development process will look like and what stage will go one after the other. Having a set process is reliable and many clients want to know what they will get out of their cooperation with this or that vendor. The development team, in their turn, will achieve certain flexibility in carrying out tasks. And, developing sprint after sprint, software engineering experts will be able to present a fully functional and innovative app that will be popular among the tech-savvy end-users.