Proactive approach to application support

I have been working on AppDoctor for the better part of 2018. The reason I started this work is because I believe too many companies are using a backward approach to application support.

The startup way

I have worked with many startups and smaller agencies. One thing that was very evident in all of this work was the divide between a released application and an application currently being developed. Once an application is released work is “done”. Companies then start a new sprint on a new feature. Along with starting a new feature companies wait around and take a reactive approach to supporting their existing code. When I say reactive I mean that they wait until an end user comes across a bug or issue they deem serious enough to fill out a ticket on. At that point the company decides to put resources towards the issue to fix it.

The AppDoctor way

I believe the way above is the wrong approach. While this is not true of all smaller companies, it seems to be the case for quite a few. A proactive approach allows you to prevent issues before many of your users run into them. Why should you have to wait for a user to finally reach out about an issue when you can have all that information without relying on your end users. If you have a crucial process in your application, maybe a credit card checkout, you should be notified right when something goes wrong so you can fix it before it leads to more serious issues. With this approach you can avoid your end users being your application testers.

While there are solutions out there that help companies reach a proactive approach, often times it either is out of the reach of a startup budget or requires someone specialized in devops.

When AppDoctor launches at the beginning of 2019 you will be able get insight into your application to help you reach a proactive approach of support. Test live applications periodically to make sure they are working as expected, set up rules to be notified when something does not go as expected and have custom status pages so that your end users are not left in the dark.

Follow us on twitter and/or medium to learn more about our development and receive future discounts for being along for the ride.

If you are interested in joining our closed beta, shoot us an email at beta@appdoctor.io

Until next time. ✌️