Every day, there are thousands of mobile apps created and published on Android and Apple app stores. Whether they are games, social networks, or eCommerce apps, they should follow an effective mobile app development process to be successful. While every app is different and methodologies are constantly evolving, the development process generally includes ideation, strategy, design, development, deployment, and post-launch phases. 

All apps begin with an idea. However, if one does not have a solidified idea quite yet, the best place to start is to think of it in terms of problems and potential solutions. With this approach, you’re already 50% of the way towards an app idea which solves a problem or fixes a market inefficiency. The next thing that should be done is to understand why the problem exists, whether anyone has tried to develop something similar or why nobody else has made an app to solve the problem previously. In order to get a complete grasp of the situation, app creators usually need to talk to others about it and immerse themselves in the problem space as much as possible. This is where having an understanding of the mobile app market and how apps can benefit users becomes extremely valuable. After all,developers pour a considerable amount of time and money into an app. If you’re a creator, this is the point where you need to figure out how valid and viable your idea is. 

Once you’ve established your idea, it is time to plan for the success of your app by establishing a strategy. The best place to start is by identifying the competition. Begin by seeing if any other apps serve a similar purpose and look at the number of installs, ratings and reviews, and company history. Next, you need to do your research to see if people are using competitor apps, decide what youlike and dislike about them, and see if the apps have changed over time and whether there were any challenges along the way. There are two main goals in this process. Firstly, you need to learn as much as you can for free since making mistakes can be very time-consuming, frustrating, and expensive. Secondly, you need to see whether you can effectively compete in the existing marketplace. If gaps exist, you should tailor your solutions to meet them. If your idea is entirely new, you should seek out other “first to market” apps and figure out how other companies educated their consumers about their new product. 

The next step in the app development process is to consider monetization. Unless you enjoy building apps just for the sake of it, you are probably hoping to make some money off of it. If that is the case, you should consider in-app purchases, subscription payments, premium features, ad revenue, selling user data, and traditional paid apps as you determine what works best for the app. Finally, the last step of the strategy process is to define the app’s roadmap. The goal is to document what an app could become and what it needs to be successful. The roadmap should include what the app’s core functionality will be, what is required to gain users, and what can be added later. 

Once you’ve created a strategy, the mobile app development process begins. In order to be done effectively, you need to do it iteratively. This means you should break all the work into smaller milestones and then build in a series of cycles. Each cycle should include planning, development, testing, and review. Much like creating an app strategy, the planning phase involves dividing tasks that need to be implemented during different iterations. These tasks need to be clearly defined and designed to solve any assigned problems during this phase.

Usually, skilled software developers can find ways to reuse the same code throughout the application, which is essential for implementing styles and shared functionality. This positively affects efficiency because you do not need to update codes in numerous places if a design needs to be changed. Instead, the software can be changed in different areas all in one go.

The next stage of mobile development is the actual development process, where teams will begin implementing styles and functionality in an app. Research has shown that successful apps have good project managers who can fully optimize developer workloads during this process by redistributing assignments properly during the process. 

Once development has been done, the next step, and most important, is testing. Ideally, you should get average users to perform most app testing to ensure a more genuine testing experience. The types of testing can include functionality, usability, performance, fit and finish, regression, device-specific, and user acceptance. Testing should ensure that the app’s features work as described in the requirements, ensure that it is user-friendly and as intuitive as possible, and ensure that the app is responsive. App designers should also test whether the app’s design and vision have been implemented as described. Since many different devices exist out there, testing also needs to be device-specific. Developers need to try their app out on numerous screen sizes and OS versions. 

Finally, the review stage is essential to the entire app development process. This should be when development teams discuss the app’s success with its stakeholders and determine how the process went. Everyone who is part of the team needs to figure out what things went well and what didn’t and improve the process from there. Once the review has been done, you as the developer should revert and repeat the planning process until the app is perfect and ready to go on the market. 

With so many apps out there at the moment, sometimes what developers and creators need is a way to jumpstart their application development. Currently, there is a lot of focus and investments on DevOps-related streams to build applications faster. However, to provide more services and fill the gap currently in the market, Open Weaver has launched their kandiplatform to help developers jumpstart their application development through global reuse of 430 million knowledge items across public libraries, source code, APIs, and cloud functions based on their specific requirements. The platform also seamlessly integrates all open sources, public repositories, package providers, and user communities, enabling developers to pick suitable reusable software components. 

Open Weaver’s platform helps people achieve productivity by enabling global reuse instead of reinventing the wheel. United by the passion for improving digital development, the vision of the team behind kandi is to reinvent digital realization and improve the way applications are built. 

To find out more about kandi, follow Open Weaver below:

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