Mobile App Development Lifecycle

8 Stages of The Mobile App Development Lifecycle

Mobile applications are here to stay & rule, currently, Apple & Google play store has over
a million & and a half apps each, and statistics show that an average user easily spends
more than thirty-five hours a month using them. If we just looked at our own phones &
usage patterns, we would know why these stats hold true. Let’s go through the mobile
app development lifecycle, what you should expect more, and this article could help
you along the way.

As for the commercial end of things, whether you’re a part of a service industry, or
running your own retail business, you’ve probably considered developing an app of your
own at some point. And you wouldn’t be wrong in planning to do so because an app that
is interactive & can facilitate necessary exchange with your customer base is bound to
benefit you. But creating a good app can often be tricky. It would be a good idea to first
familiarize yourself with the process of building one before deciding on mobile app
development.

The Mobile App Development Lifecycle

1. The Research/Planning Stage

Your first step should be to dive deep into the research phase- figure out your market
and existing competitor apps. Brainstorm on details like the purpose of your app, your
target audience, preferred platforms, app development language & frameworks,
features your competitor app offers (and if you’d want the same/different ones), a
timeline of development & launch, and how you’d want to market it. Strategic business
analysis at an early stage will help you with calculating the right ROI, and return on
investment factor that will eventually guide you in deciding & maintaining the budget.

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The next step is where you document and wireframe your application. Drawing detailed
sketches of your vision of the app (how it would look, the features it would have, etc)
greatly helps in bringing it to life in the later stages. Post sketching, wireframes come to
refine all your ideas. Now you can arrange all your design components accurately and
see if there are any visible usability issues. This step aims to draw a clear understanding
of how your proposed functional app will look once all your features & ideas are infused
together. Needless to say, let all your creativity kick in at this stage.

3. Technical Feasibility & Back-End Assessment

Once you have a clear understanding of your visuals, you need to consider whether the
back-end systems can support your app’s functionality. Think- APIs, data diagrams,
data integration, servers, push notifications, etc. You will have different requirements
depending on whether it is an android app development or an ios app development
lifecycle. The platform formats will also need a slightly different back-end working
based on whether it’s on a smartphone, wearables, tablets, etc. By the end of this step,
you might figure out that some of the initial functionality isn’t feasible for you. Thus,
helping you rethink & review those features.

4. Prototyping

Now that you’re at this stage, you should build a rapid prototype. One cannot truly
comprehend the experience of an app without touching it & checking how the
workflows. Build a prototype and get it into a user’s hand to get a quick idea of how it
works & feels. Take honest feedback as this will point you in the right direction in future
development stages.
5. Design

Once prototyping is done, you can dive into coding. Here, your UX and UI designers take
over. Your user experience (UX) designer builds interaction between different design
elements while your user interface (UI) designer builds the overall look and feel of your
app. What you get here are visual directions & blueprints. These act as a guide for
informing your engineers of your vision with the final product and how its interaction
with the customers should feel.

6. Develop

This phase starts quite early in some sense. From working on a functional prototype and
reviewing it with every step, it’s all a part of the development stage. But as this stage
progresses further, the core functionalities are deeply tested. The app is then moved to
the deployment phase. All the bugs are also fixed & taken care of. If it’s a complex
project, the large application is broken down into smaller modules and dealt with in
parts before putting everything together, so that the app is ready for release.

7. Testing

In the mobile app development lifecycle, testing plays a very important role. It’s often a
good idea to start testing early as this could help with keeping the final costs in check.
The farther one goes in the development life cycle, the costlier it is to fix bugs and other
technical issues. At this stage, the app should ideally be tested for every aspect
including usability, compatibility, interface, security checks, stress, and performance.
Inviting some of your target audience to test it would be a good idea. This feedback from
beta users will indicate whether your app can work in a real-world situation.

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8. Deployment

Finally, at this point, your app should be ready to submit. Select a day to keep the formal
launch. Launching policies will vary for android app development & iOS app
development. Keep those factors in check. And lastly, keep in mind that this isn’t the
end of your process. In fact, it’s a new beginning of its own. Once the app is out there,
feedback will start pouring in, which you will need to accommodate into the future
versions of your app. Thus, starting the new development cycle. Keep a check on your
resources and your long-term commitment to your project throughout this step. And
that’s it. With this, you’ve reached the end of the final stage!

Now that you’ve read about these stages, you must have gotten a fair idea that
executing the entire mobile app development lifecycle successfully isn’t a simple task.
Other than the execution of these complex stages, it’s also important to note that the
app market is a highly competitive environment. Businesses coming up with new apps
should therefore be extremely careful with their app development processes as every
mistake could cost a potential market loss.