A guide to the phases of the mobile app development lifecycle

According to the research done on the revenue generated by app stores, the experts shared their views and mentioned that by 2020, the revenue figure would reach almost $80.5 billion.

Play Store has almost 2.8 million apps and iOS App Store has almost 2.2 million apps. This huge influx of apps represents one thing for sure and that is “competition” in the market.

In order to successfully survive in today’s competitive market, you need to make sure that you are not wasting any valuable resources along with valuable time. Read on to get a general idea of ​​the different phases of mobile app development to get the most fruitful outcome from this development process.

Pre planned

See, it’s not like a good day, a brilliant idea comes into your mind and from the next moment, you start executing it! Actually, you need to do a lot of research, a lot of market analysis, you have to ask yourself a lot of questions before going ahead with your idea.

You need to understand why you should create this app, what is its main goal, how can it benefit users, how is it different from your competitors, and most importantly, how this app can help you improve your business prospects.

Everything mentioned above is in this pre-planning stage which is just as crucial as creating an app.

mental prototypes

Even before the technical part kicks in, there is too much mental work! How? Well, write everything down on paper and pencil. In the pre-planning phase, you should have a basic idea of ​​the total cost of the development. However, at this stage, add every detail that occurs to you, write it down, make a note. This documentation will help you keep a close eye on the various overhead expenses.

You can consult with a designer at this stage. The idea will definitely be yours, but consulting an expert means that you will get a more amazing, more flexible, more dynamic and interactive design that will help you in your development phase.

Technical part

You need to understand that back-end functionality and design are completely different things, but they need to work in sync. Above all, you cannot compromise on quality. However, making the decision on which platform to choose is a bit confusing. Each platform has unique features, its own set of benefits. So, depending on different aspects like available resources, skills, target audience, features you want to include in the app, etc., choose a mobile app development platform.

prototype building

A prototype will help you to have a general idea or a well-defined preview of the application that you are developing. Obviously, you can’t get all the features and functions, but it will help you to optimize the design. You can easily spot the gaps and make the necessary changes early on that will save a huge amount of the total development cost.

Design and development

It is always advisable to seek the guidance of experts in these two phases. Partnering with a well-established mobile app development company will help you gain better insights into the UI/UX that is important for engaging users. The design phase provides the visual instructions along with the plans that help shape the final product.

Next, the development phase should follow an agile method. Make your app unique, flexible and functional at this stage using cutting edge technologies.

Tests

This phase comes right after the development stage. It helps you verify the functionality, environment, features, navigation, debugging and so on of the application. Both UAT testing and Beta testing are important in giving your users an awesome user experience.

Launch of the application

Once you are done with all the steps mentioned above, you are ready to start your application. You have to give it to the app stores and wait for their approval. However, once your app gets approved and goes live, your job isn’t done! You need to work on regular updates along with adding new features.

This is a basic overview of the different stages of creating a mobile app.