The number of items in Google Play has reached 3482452 in 2021. And this number is constantly growing. About 100 thousand new ones are uploaded every month. Just imagine: this is more than 3 thousand daily! And all of them are created with the same app design and development process.
The new app development process usually includes the following steps (also called phases):
- Requirements.
- Business analytics.
- Signing NDA (optional).
- Planning.
- Designing and prototyping.
- Coding.
- Testing.
- Release and support.
Here is a mobile app development process infographic that can be one of the first steps to understanding the mobile app development:
Read further to dive deeper into the topic of app development process flow.
What’s App Development Project Plan?
This is a document created during the analysis and planning phase. The whole team together with a project manager analyzes all requirements and makes a plan of how they will organize every further step, what technologies and methods they will use for this, and how much time it is going to take. The whole process of development goes according to this plan.
Mobile App Development Guidelines
Below, you will find the detailed descriptions of various phases of mobile app development.
Project Requirement Discussion: What the App Should Be Like
This is one of the most important mobile app development phases as the result depends on it. At this stage, a project manager finds out a client’s expectations from the future product:
- For what tasks he needs it.
- What problems he wants to solve with the help of it.
- What peculiarities of business processes the app should meet.
Based on this information, a system analyst gathers, formulates, and documents requirements. A system architect and key developers also take part in this process as they need to analyze whether requirements are possible to realize.
A result of this step is the software requirements specifications document. It includes the list of 2 types of requirements:
- Functional. They are formulated as usage scenarios — variations of users’ interactions with the system.
- Non-functional. Some additional confines, such as performance, reliability, security requirements.
Business Insight: Finding The Best Solution For a Client
The next, not less important one of the mobile application development phases is business analytics. In good IT companies, there is a special professional responsible for this: a business analyst. He explores all the details and nuances regarding the business processes to find the best solution that will be compatible with all of them.
Signing NDA: Ensuring Your Private Information Security
An IT company and all its employees that have access to the confidential data of your business sign an NDA drawn up by professional lawyers. This helps to prevent the information leak and material losses that it can cause.
Analysis And Planning: How to Realize an Idea?
A team analyzes requirements and thinks over the mobile app development timeline and stages. Developers find the best mobile app development strategy to realize the idea in the most effective and fast way. During creating the mobile application development strategy, a team decides what mobile development languages are most suitable for realizing the requirements, in what way they will develop a product, and how much time it will take.
UI / UX: How the Product Will Look Like
The next stage in the mobile application development plan is designing. Designers make a concept of the user interface (everything users see and interact with) and user experience (usability of a product).
Information Architecture
This is a model of the product structure. It looks like a logically connected set of application screens. It can be represented as a user flow or a screen map.
Here is an example of a screen map:
While thinking over the hierarchy and location of the screens, designers take into account typical user behavior scenarios. They do everything possible to make a product convenient and easy to use.
Wireframes
When the structure and hierarchy of the screens are ready, designers start the next stage in the mobile app development plan. They create the preliminary version of the design of each screen. It reflects:
- What elements should be there on the screen.
- Where they should be located.
- What they should look like (without detailing).
Wireframes are usually in black and white and contain only the structure of a screen without any extra details.
Style Guide
For passing to the next steps of the mobile app development strategy, the leading designer creates a style guide for the whole team. This sheet contains the rules that help to make a result meet the tone of a client’s company. Also, they ensure that all the screens will be of uniform style for a product to look like an organic whole.
Mockups
This is the last but one of the app development stages related to design. At this step, a team creates highly detailed static images of all the screens. They can be used as the working version of a UI/UX design.
Prototype
This is a final step connected with a visual part of the product in the app development plan. Specialists create an interactive model of how the ready-made project will look like.
After a client approves the prototype, designers give it to developers who start to realize the thought over product.
App Development: Realizing an Idea
This is the most crucial of all mobile application development steps. It consists of two parts:
- Back-end.
- Front-end.
Let’s overview them in more detail.
Back-end
This is programming all features and non-functional properties. Developers can use one of the following programming languages for this:
- Java;
- Swift;
- Objective-C;
- C# with the Xamarin framework.
Mobile App Front-end
This is coding the interface. Developers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with frameworks like React Native.
Testing: Checking Whether Everything Is OK
After there is the working version of a project, the company moves on to the next mobile application development process steps that are related to testing. Developers give the product to testers for them to verify whether:
- whether it works properly;
- if it meets the requirements.
There are several types of testing that allow checking different properties. Here are the main of them:
- UX;
- functional;
- performance;
- security;
- device and platform.
All types of testing are usually held in three stages:
- Preparation: analyzing requirements, making a plan of testing, creating test-cases for manual testing, or developing automated tests.
- Testing: making an application undergo tests.
- Reporting: documenting the results, noting all bugs.
After this, a product may be given back to developers for bug fixing.
Below, you will find more details about the different types of testing that are listed above.
User Experience Testing
It helps to find the problems with usability that may negatively affect customer behavior (for example, increase the bounce rate or enhance the number of abandonments during checkout).
For this type of testing a team needs to cooperate with real representatives of the target audience. They execute specified behavior scenarios and report whether it has been easy and convenient for them to use the system.
Functional Testing
It aims to verify if the system has all the features required by a client and whether it can satisfy the users’ needs under typical conditions of usage. It helps to find errors promptly and fix them to avoid problems in the future.
This type of testing imitates the actual use of the product. It is based on use cases and is most often done manually.
There are three kinds of this type of testing:
- White-box: testers have access to the code and can edit it.
- Black-box: a team has no access to the code and works only with the interface.
- Grey-box: they work only with the interface but know the main peculiarities and properties of the back-end.
Performance Testing
Its goal is to check non-functional properties, such as:
- efficiency;
- stability;
- resource consumption (how much memory does the app need, how long is the battery life while using it);
- reliability;
- speed of work;
- ability to work under various levels of load;
- ability to recover after failure.
Security Testing
At this stage, a team checks all security parameters. The most essential of them are:
- safety of the users’ personal data (first of all, credit and debit cards details), logins and passwords;
- resistance to hacker attacks.
Device And Platform Testing
This helps to make sure that an app works correctly on different models of mobile phones and different versions of OSs.
Deployment & Support
Deployment is submitting the final working version to storages (App Store and/or Google Play). But this is not when the mobile app development cycle ends. Developers keep on working on maintaining a product constantly.
Mobile Application Development Stages by JoinSoft
Our outsourcing IT company sticks to the guidelines described above and does not omit any important phases. We realize your idea in the following steps:
- Discussing requirements.
- Analyzing your business processes deeply.
- Signing NDA.
- Creating an enterprise mobile application development strategy.
- Creating an up-to-date and user-friendly design and making a prototype for you to accept it.
- Coding features and design with the help of the most suitable programming languages.
- Testing to ensure that everything works in the right way and meets your expectations.
- Uploading a product to the stores and further support wherever you need it.
Working with us, you get:
- Individual approach and the most accurate definition of your needs.
- The best solutions by specialists with more than 5 years of experience.
- Competitive pricing policy.
- Transparent workflow with weekly or even daily reports.
Final Thoughts About App Development Process Steps
A typical mobile application development process consists of 8 steps each of which is important. All of them are interconnected and dependant on each other. So, to get the best solution, find a company that does work following the guidelines described above. If a team omits some phases, it may influence the final result negatively.
JoinSoft can help you with boosting your business and standing out from the competitors with the help of a modern and useful mobile app.
