A (Gentle) Introduction to the Mobile App Development Process
Once you’ve built your mockups, obtained funding, and found your engineers, you are ready to jump headlong into the app development process. But apps don’t build themselves, even if you have someone to design it and another ready to code it. Like the conductor of an orchestra brings together the various instruments to compose a [...]
Posted on September 18, 2012 by Bobby Gill+ in Process
Once you’ve built your mockups, obtained funding, and found your engineers, you are ready to jump headlong into the app development process. But apps don’t build themselves, even if you have someone to design it and another ready to code it. Like the conductor of an orchestra brings together the various instruments to compose a single musical piece, you need to bring together your designers, engineers and others so that their work culminates in the creation of your app. The truth about developing apps is that without proper management your project is liable to go off the tracks and turn into a complete train wreck.
The best way to keep your app on track is to keep your development schedules short, and to release often. This brings two benefits: you don’t let issues go undetected for very long, and you validate your assumptions with customer feedback before investing a huge amount of time in development.
I like to break down a single release of an app into the following milestones:
1.) Plan
2.) Develop / Test
3.) Release
4.) Gather feedback
You shouldn’t view these milestones as a linear set of steps; it’s more like a cycle. Each iteration of this cycle is called a ‘release’ and can end with an app shipped to the App Store, or just privately distributed to test users. While we all want to release an amazing app on the first go, the reality is that your first release probably won’t be very good. You need to assume this going in and aim to develop your app over a series of releases. The commandment that you need to follow here is “release early and often”. The more you are able to iterate and get your app in the hands of your users, the more feedback you’ll get to develop it further and improve on it. In my experience, it usually takes 3-4 iterations of this process before I’ve built an app that I can truly say is ‘finished’.
Over the next few articles I will break down each of the milestones and give you the tips you need to successfully release your app.
Next in the series, PART 2: CONCERNING BETA RELEASES
Bobby Gill is Editor-in-Chief of IdeaToAppster.com, author of "Appsters: A Beginner's Guide to App Entrepreneurship" and the founder of Blue Label Labs, a mobile development lab based in New York and Seattle. In addition to building its own apps, Blue Label Labs provides design and engineering services to mobile app clients across the world. Prior to starting Blue Label Labs, Bobby spent 4 years at Microsoft as a Program Manager within the Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) product group. During this time, Bobby served as an engineering and architectural lead for the FIM server specializing in database and web service design. After Microsoft, Bobby worked as a Summer Associate at McKinsey & Co. where he was part of a service operations enhancement program within the high-tech industry. Bobby holds a Bachelor of Mathematics specializing in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo and a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia Business School.
