What Are Some Phases of Mobile App Development?
Developing mobile apps is a relatively easier thing nowadays with tons of ideas cropping up in the market, but you know what the real deal is? Apps doing good in the market.
You can quickly build an application in a day or two, buy Apple App Store or Google Play Store account, and upload it there, but what does it offer besides a few screen transitions and mere textboxes with no actual use?
Building mobile applications has become a lot easier nowadays, but building an app that offers value to its users and can leave an impression on the market requires a lot more than a dozen hours of work.
Professionally, mobile applications are built in phases, and today, we will discuss them briefly and try to understand the significance of the process and different steps.
Analysis, Research & Documentation
The primary step to begin formally with a mobile app development process is to put your idea on the roundtable and analyze it from head to toe. By this, I mean that this should be studied and discussed for its feasibility and value addition.
Research and analysis hold significant importance in a smartphone application’s development. The research must surround a number of various parameters, including similar concepts in the market, the business model, the market gap, idea’s limitations, etcetera.
Finalizing the project scope leads to the project’s documentation, where all the project’s features and aspects are listed and documented for future guidelines. The documentation phase, sometimes, can proceed in parallel with brainstorming, but a good practice is to omit the extras when documenting after winding up the analysis and research phase.
Design, Wireframes & Platform Review
Keeping the project guidelines in consideration, the design phase cautiously proceeds, and the design of the application is built, followed by wireframing. The design phase involves trial and test strategy depending upon the app’s timeline where screens and app’s flow is developed.
After the initial design directives, wireframing begins. Wireframing helps the stakeholders and solution architects understand the app’s functionality and practicality and identify any possible shortcomings that are then taken care of subsequently.
In the design phase, another critical consideration is the selection of platforms such as iOS or Android, where the application will finally be released. A good mobile application development company makes changes to the design per the design constraints.
Alpha Build
Alpha Build is a prototype of the final mobile application, a toned-down version, which doesn’t have most of the features but has the capability to hint at the final working of the app. Developers and mobile architects usually go for the Alpha Build to ensure that the application is flawless and free of design predicaments.
This phase helps the decision-makers identify various drawbacks and weaknesses, which are duly noted worked upon until perfection.
Design Adjustments & Full-Fledged Development
After the Alpha Build phase concludes, the learnings are then used to adjust the design features of the application (if necessary), and the full-fledged development of the mobile application commences.
Developing such an application has different development phases such as frontend, backend, APIs, and more that are concurrently worked upon according to the needs and timeline. The development phase can alone consume more than half of the project’s time and take a month or year, reckoning the requirements.
Test
Testing of mobile applications is essential, which is often skipped by small or medium-sized organizations. Testing of a mobile application can be of different types. More work is done here than we can enlist, from unit testing to load testing to performance testing to user acceptance testing.
If built according to the standards and devised plan, the testing phase does not usually discover bugs and errors that are nearly impossible to handle but some minor issues. Testers are heavily relied upon and rightly so because they are ones to be confronted if a defect is found post-release.
Release
Sometimes, the Beta version of the mobile apps is released to check whether the application is working fine or not. The final release typically comes after thorough checking and ensuring all the functions and features are working as they are intended to.
The application is then made available on the application store, whether for iOS or Android, or both. However, the app’s release is not the end but a start to new life. Maintaining and supporting the application is an exhaustive task and requires diligent efforts to keep things afloat. The app needs to be marketed well to attract audiences and make the venture successful.
