Phases of Mobile App Development Life Cycle

With more than 1.5 million applications each in the Apple application and Google Play Store, it is important to run the mobile application development process and how your application will fit with your marketing goals and your niche. The life cycle of mobile application development is only a representation of the conventional software development life cycle (SDLC) from the perspective of a mobile device.

In today’s weather, making a mobile application is not rocket science. However, making a successful mobile application is a process that involves extensive prior planning. Building your mobile application could be as easy as opening the IDE, putting together some things, doing a quick test round and sending it to an App Store, all in half a day of work. Or it can turn it into an extremely complicated process that involves a rigorous initial design, quality control tests on a large number of devices, usability testing, a complete beta life cycle, and then implementing it in different ways. The path you choose will shape your vision. That said, here is a look at the life cycle of application development and the goals and challenges along the way.

1. The investigation

All applications begin with an idea, even if yours is just to have a presence within the mobile application. Refine that concept on a solid foundation for an application. check that your initial analysis includes real demographics, motivations, behavior patterns, and your buyer’s goals. during each stage of this method, confine mind the end user. then try to think about the life-cycle of your client, once your characteristics are effectively established. after reaching them, they have to be converted, acquired, retained and their loyalty nurtured. In the end, you want to understand however the consumer can use that digital product. Doing this from the start can place you on the firm footing, and your clarity can offer you and your investors the much-needed confidence.

This section is essential as a result of, during this section, you identify the required bases for what comes next. Do your a part of substantial research and brainstorming before moving on to succeeding section. And another necessary part of this section is to analyze the competition. a close study of your competitor’s application can assist you discover what options are missing in your application therefore you’ll be able to include it in your application, so it stands out.

2. Wireframing

The next step is to document and structure the application to understand future functionalities. Although time is not on your side at this point, actually, drawing detailed sketches of the intended product helps you discover usability problems. Sketching does much more than just trace your steps. It can be a powerful communication and collaboration tool. When you finish drawing, wireframing will help refine the ideas and organize all the components of the design in the right way. It can overcome any technical limitations found in the back-end development process in this initial phase. Now, aim to develop a clear understanding of how your proposed features and ideas will merge into a functional application. You should also create a roadmap or a storyboard, to demonstrate the relationship between each screen and how users will navigate through the application. Look for opportunities to incorporate your brand, focus on the user experience and consider the differences in the way people use a mobile application compared to a mobile website.

3. Feasibility technical evaluation

At this point, you may already clearly understand the images, but you should also consider whether background systems can support the functionality of the application. To know if the idea of ​​your application is feasible from a technical point of view, you must obtain access to public data by obtaining public APIs. An application, depending on its format (smartphone, tablet, portable devices, etc.), as well as the platform (iOS, Android, etc.), will have different requirements. At the end of this exercise, the team may have different ideas for the application or decide which part of the initial functionality is not feasible. At this point, brainstorm, ask questions and review the status.

4. Prototype

Build a rapid prototype. Rapid is the keyword here. You can not really understand the touch experience until you touch the application and see how it works and flows. Therefore, build a prototype that puts the concept of the application in the hands of users as quickly as possible to see how it works in the most common use case. Use rugged and non-exhaustive wireframes for this phase. This will help you know if you are taking all the things in the right direction. Include the interested parties in the process, allowing them to touch prototype, give their opinion and implement those in their work. And, in addition, the prototype will give the different stakeholders the first look at your mobile application and also help you validate the information you have gathered.

5. Design

Once you get this step out of the way, you can immerse yourself in the coding. Your user experience designer (UX) designs the interaction between the design elements, while the user interface designer (UI) creates the appearance of your application. This is a multi-step process with many stages of revision. What you get are blueprints and visual direction, informing your engineers about the final end product and how the interaction should move, feel and flow. Depending on the scope of your project and the budget of the application, this design phase can be completed in a single afternoon or it can take a team a lot of hours. And remember to create multiple variations of a screen by playing with the design of the navigation, buttons and other visual elements. The more the product varies, the greater the chances that your UX will be original. The design of the application will prove to be a multi-step process, and its results should be clear visual directions that provide an abstraction of the final product.

6. Develop

The development phase usually starts quite early. In fact, once an idea acquires a certain maturity in the conceptual stage, a prototype is developed that validates the functionality, the assumptions and helps to understand the scope of the work.

As development progresses, the application goes through a series of stages. In the initial stage, the central functionality, although present, is not proven. See the application has many failures, and the non-main functionality does not exist at this time. In the second stage, a large part of the proposed functionality is incorporated. The application has passed ideally by light tests and correction of errors, although some problems could be present. In this phase, the application is launched to a certain group of external users to perform more tests. Once the errors in the second stage are corrected, the application will move to the implementation phase, where it is ready for launch.

If yours is a complex project where the user’s requirements change regularly, use the agile methodology. Help with flexible planning, progressive development, early implementation and constant improvements. A large application can be divided into smaller modules, and the agile methodology can be applied to each of these small pieces.

7. Test

In the development of mobile applications, it is a good idea to do an early and frequent test. Doing this will keep your final costs low. The more advanced you are in the development cycle, the more expensive it will be to repair the errors. Consult the original design and planning documents when constructing the different test cases.

The application tests are extensive, therefore, make sure that your equipment covers all the necessary facets of it. The application must be tested to check its usability, compatibility, security, interface controls, stress and performance. In user acceptance tests, you discover whether or not your mobile application works for your intended users. To test this, give your application to a few people in your target audience and ask the relevant questions. Once your application passes the user acceptance test, you know that your solution “works” and also makes your application available for a beta test, either by registering previously identified groups or an open application for participants . The comments you receive from beta users will help you to know if the functions of the application work well in a real situation.

8. Deployment

Your application is ready to send. Choose a day and key a formal release. For different app stores, the launch policies of an application are different. And keep in mind that this is not the end. Application development does not end at launch. As your application reaches users, comments will be received, and you should incorporate those comments in future versions of the application. Each application will need updates and new features. Normally, as soon as the first version of the application is released, the development cycle begins again. Make sure you have the resources to maintain your product. In addition to the money invested in the construction of a digital product, keep in mind that it is a long-term commitment.

Source: www.appzure.com