So, you have a promising mobile app idea. What's next? Starting the mobile app development process. With so much information out there, often contradictory, it’s tough to figure out the best approach and how to bring your app idea to life. How many stages of app development should you go through? What are the deliverables? What is the point of this or that stage?
With a track record of more than 300 projects, Orangesoft has driven mobile apps from A to Z quite a few times. That's why we've decided to shed light on mobile app development stages and share our time-tested tips and tricks for supercharging and de-risking your mobile app development process.
What it looks like without a well-defined application development life cycle
It may seem like a strict, thoroughly documented software development life cycle (SDLC) lends itself only to larger companies with bureaucracy. Unlike Fortune 500 companies, startups are fast-paced, but that doesn’t make them immune to:
Costly rework
Software rework often accounts for 50% of all app development budgets, costing businesses of all sizes millions of dollars a year. Documented requirements, prepped designs, defined scopes, and calibrated testing processes can prevent defects from creeping into your software during later phases of development (when it’s the most expensive to fix them!).
Launch delays
Startups tend to operate in a constant mode of firefighting, ultimately hindering their ability to ship on time. They fail to launch on schedule, while their competitors, who have an organized and predictable development process, gain a crucial market advantage. A tidy and efficient application development lifecycle helps teams of all sizes identify and address issues before they become emergencies, rather than reacting to crises ad hoc.
Subpar product quality
Building an app without knowing what the final product will look like is like painting with a blindfold on. You’ll waste time and money and end up with something your audience doesn’t need, want, or understand. Conversely, building with a defined, data-driven vision allows you to create a product that resonates with your target audience and solves their specific problems.
Tech debt
Even if the reactive startup dodges a bullet in its early days, the issue of tech debt will inevitably catch up with it during the growth stage. We all know what it’s like: the development team delivers a batch of features, often relying on some shortcuts, commits the code to ‘refactoring'/'cleaning up’, and never revisits it. The snowball effect gradually reduces product agility and raises costs, and you’re back to the first point…which is costly rework.
A planned SDLC instills a culture of quality and incremental refactoring from the very beginning, preventing tech debt from arising in the first place.
It all starts with the right app development approach
Choosing the right development approach is one of those make-or-break commitments that impact the entire application development process. Some approaches or methodologies offer more flexibility, while others focus on documentation and defined product criteria.
Waterfall, Agile, and RAD are some of the most popular approaches to handling app development. In most cases, no approach is used in its pure form, the development team usually meshes techniques from different methodologies in infinite variations to accommodate the unique needs of each project.
Waterfall
The Waterfall methodology follows a sequential, linear process where your development team consistently transitions from one stage to another. With this method, your development team completes one stage before moving on to the next.
Waterfall isn’t exactly the go-to development methodology for startups, as they operate in hectic environments where requirements and priorities can shift rapidly. However, healthcare and fintech startups might benefit from some elements of Waterfall, as they often require more formal documentation and a structured approach.
Pros:
- Best for high-certainty, low-ambiguity projects.
- Allows for upfront project planning.
- Provides a foundation for healthcare and fintech app development projects.
Cons:
- High risk and uncertainty for projects with evolving requirements.
- Doesn't allow for dynamic, real-time changes and scope adjustments.
- Doesn’t allow for feedback-based adjustments.
Agile
A favorite among startups, Agile is an umbrella term and a philosophy that revolves around incremental and iterative development. Instead of frontloading the app's functionality, Agile focuses on flexibility, allowing teams to change requirements throughout the development process based on user feedback.
Due to its flexibility, Agile is a perfect match for projects where there is a lot of uncertainty about achieving the end goal. In this case, the development team helps the client gradually shape the product's vision based on analysis and customer feedback.
Using this method, cross-functional teams work in iterations to produce a working product at the end of each iteration.
Pros:
- Enhances the flexibility and adaptability to changes.
- Allows for early validation and proactive mobile app testing.
- Places a greater focus on customer needs and feedback.
- Thrives on short, fixed-length sprints to accelerate the delivery.
- Reduces the risk of building the wrong product.
Cons:
- If mismanaged, it can lead to scope creep.
- Makes it challenging to give accurate time and cost estimates.
Usually, an app development team uses a combination of Agile methodologies for their projects.
Scrum
Scrum is a preferred methodology for implementing complex, dynamic projects. As an Agile-based approach, Scrum helps the team to deliver value incrementally in a collaborative way. A scrum team works in sprints.
Sprints are short, fixed periods during which the team completes a set amount of work. This method allows the team to regularly push out workable software.
As Scrum is rooted in Agile, it also focuses on early delivery, continuous improvement, early issue resolution, and visibility into the process and the current state of the product.
Kanban
As a complementary framework, Kanban is laid on top of other methodologies to break a project into smaller, more manageable stages and establish the grounds for iterative development. Essentially, it is a visual method for managing and organizing work. Team members can view the status of every piece of work at any time using a Kanban board.
Lean
The Lean methodology is an Agile-driven development framework that focuses on optimizing the development process and implementing only the features your product needs. By incorporating the "build-measure-learn" cycle, the Lean framework embeds ongoing feedback loops into the development process.
This framework also promotes continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, which automate the build, test, and deployment processes to enable frequent releases.
Five mobile app development phases that turn your app idea into a successful product
No matter how cool and innovative your app idea is, it won't see the light of day unless backed by a solid development process. At Orangesoft, the software development life cycle is mainly Agile-driven and includes five key stages. The iterative development process also means that stages may overlap and are repeated in cycles, building on each other.
Stage #1: Product discovery — shaping your vision (2-3 weeks)
During the discovery stage, you and your app development team create a blueprint for your mobile app development project. This phase is all about researching, analyzing, and going from “I have an idea to sell” to “I have an idea that sells”.
Your development team iteratively reduces uncertainty around your product idea by:
- Researching the target market, including trends, dynamics, and saturation.
- Scrutinizing competitors (both direct and indirect) to see how your app idea stacks up against the competition and what core features similar products bundle.
- Analyzing the target audience to uncover their pain points, needs, and user expectations.
The app design also traces back to the discovery stage. During this phase, your design team deepens its understanding of your user persona and the user flow, using these insights to create wireframes. Wireframes map out the structure and layout of key screens, focusing on user interface elements and user interactions.
Wireframes are then combined into prototypes — visual mock-ups showcasing the app's fundamental design and functions. App prototyping minimizes the risk of reworks and revisions later in the development process and ensures that all project stakeholders are on the same page.
During this stage, your development team tests the prototypes to get validation from real-world users through feedback and surveys.
Based on the findings from the discovery sessions, the development team also helps you shape your mobile product's unique value proposition and select the right monetization strategy.
People involved:
- Product specifications
- Wireframes and a clickable prototype
- Product business model
Deliverables:
- Product specifications
- Wireframes and a clickable prototype
- Product business model
Stage #2: Development planning — allocating development resources (3-5 days)
Although this stage spans a brief period of time, it’s crucial for establishing the product’s foundation, including deliverables, resources, and development approach. It’s also during this stage that your app developers select the most optimal tech stack for your project, prepare time and cost estimates, and suggest success metrics.
The planning stage also finalizes all details of the project scope, which is then documented in the software requirements specification (SRS). The latter describes what the software will do and how it is expected to perform. The SRS also outlines technical requirements and details the core features of your app’s minimum viable product.
Based on the requirements outlined in the SRS, your developers build your app’s architecture — the underlying system that defines how the different components of the app interact with each other.
The foundation for app quality is laid as early as the planning stage. The quality assurance engineer teams up with the development team to establish clear quality criteria for the MVP, including quality objectives, performance expectations, and user experience goals.
People involved:
- Software architect
- Project manager
- Business analyst
- Development team
Deliverables:
- Tech stack definition
- Timeline and team composition
- Solution architecture
- Cost estimate
Stage #3: MVP development and testing — where it all comes together (2-3 months)
The point of launching an MVP is to build an early version of the product that is valuable enough to attract lighthouse users so that you can gather user feedback as early as possible and continue perfecting your product based on real-world data.
Usually built in short iterations, MVP development is done in two-week sprints, with each sprint delivering a specific portion of the value to the customer. This approach allows the team to ship software on a regular cadence, getting your product in front of users early and often.
If you’re planning to integrate your mobile app with the internal infrastructure or third-party systems and services, that’s also when your developers set up those integrations.
Product testing begins early in the development process to catch critical issues, increase product reliability and user experience, and improve development velocity. Plus, early testing actually helps your team move faster – it prevents them from following the wrong path and having to rebuild things later.
Development teams usually use a combination of manual and automated testing to ensure complete test coverage. Repetitive, time-consuming tests, such as regression or stress testing, are automated, while aspects like usability, user experience, and visual appeal are usually checked manually.
During testing, your development team also ensures that your application meets data security standards and applicable regulations, such as HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, and others.
People involved:
- Product manager
- UI/UX designer
- Business analyst
- Development team
- QA team
Deliverables:
- Feature implementation: code, documentation, and testing
- Product (web / mobile / backend / admin panel) functionality
Stage #4: Product launch and post-launch polishing — releasing your app into the wild
Once your MVP is all set for the big reveal, your development team will ensure it meets the app store's guidelines (Google Play Store or App Store) and submit it for approval. After the launch, your development team monitors your app’s performance, fixes any bugs that arise, and collects user feedback to inform further improvements.
After the launch, you should also monitor key metrics, such as MAUs, DAUs, retention, activation rate, conversion to install, and others, to determine the success of your product. Insights into conversions, activities, and usage can be gained through Firebase, Mixpanel, Amplitude, or other behavioral data sources.
Once you have enough feedback to fuel your strategy, you should prioritize the findings and decide on the upcoming updates and releases. Your release cadence is usually reflected in a post-release roadmap that includes new improvements, features, and bug fixes planned for the next release cycles. Remember, a regular update cycle is key to maximizing the success of your product and keeping your customers happy.
This constant cycle of launch, feedback collection, performance analysis, and refinement moves your MVP toward product-market fit.
People involved:
- Project manager
- Product manager
- Development team
- QA team
Deliverables:
- Product metrics analysis
- Bug fixes
- Updated app versions
Stage #5: Product growth — scaling your application
Once your mobile app has proven traction and accumulated a significant user base, it’s time to prepare it for further growth. Techwise, this includes adjusting your app’s server architecture, databases, and code, so it can welcome more users without drops in performance.
What can go wrong — and how to make it right
Failure happens for many reasons, but there are some common patterns spotted in product flameouts. The question is: How can you sidestep common pitfalls in your mobile app development? Let our experts tell you.
Design and UX issues
What happens when your app’s design is created in a silo, as a product of your UX’s team guesswork? Most likely, your mobile app will fail to meet user needs, resulting in low adoption rates and high bounce rates. To avoid that, your user should always be the front and center of everything you do.
You or your development team can’t predict every friction point or bottleneck users will encounter in your mobile app. Neither can you think of all feature variations to ensure the full inclusivity of your mobile app. Making users part of your design research efforts helps you get the user’s perspective on your app design and ensure the UX aligns with the needs and behaviors of your target audience.
Once you’ve drawn design hypotheses from the research, you can run user testing to validate those hypotheses. Combined, these tactics will help you create more user-centered designs without making uninformed assumptions.
Project management mishaps
While project management issues can occur in any project, they are particularly common when partnering with a disorganized app development company or a company that lacks hands-on experience in delivering projects. The best strategy to mitigate management-related risks is to hire an experienced tech partner who has a calibrated, time-proven delivery workflow.
Project management platforms and unified communication channels also facilitate tracking and controlling projects, allowing the team and the client to stay on the same page.
Running out of cash
Some projects are halted because a company's resources dry up. This halt often happens when product owners can't prioritize the right features for a mobile app and stuff the solution with unnecessary features that bloat the product and drain the money.
That's why the discovery and planning stages are so important. During these mobile app development steps, your team selects a set of must-have features that bring maximum value to users and reduce development costs.
Talent shortage
The ongoing talent shortage also has a track record of stalling new projects due to the increased complexity of software development and the limited pool of qualified software experts. Things get even more complicated when you're building large-scale projects with cutting-edge technologies.
To tackle this challenge, you should choose an end-to-end mobile app development partner with a complementary knowledge of other technologies. In this case, you won't have to juggle between teams and can get your project delivered faster and in one place.
Regulatory load
If you're building a mobile app for a regulated industry, you'll inevitably face the challenge of regulatory compliance. GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, SOC 2, and other regulations can significantly delay your development timeline or expose you to compliance violations — unless you know how to navigate the regulatory landscape.
That's why selecting a mobile product development partner with regulatory knowledge is essential if you want expert guidance through regulatory complexities.
Let Orangesoft guide your product to success
The mobile app development process is challenging, and dozens of substeps can go wrong. But with the right tech partner on board, you can work your way up the development pipeline faster and with less stress.
If you need a mobile app development company with a product-first approach, technical expertise, and a business mindset, drop us a line. We’ll tailor our time-tested app delivery approach to your project and help your initiative take off and grow.