Mobile App Development Process Steps to Build Your First Successful App

Successful mobile applications = Result

For example, these top smartphone applications Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, Tinder are results.

Wait, wait, result? These applications are results? Results of what? These top applications are the result of a tested mobile app development process.

Being a custom mobile app development company, we have developed over 800 mobile applications on Android and iOS platforms. Many of those apps are featured in CB INSIGHTS, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Financial Times, and BBC News. In short, we know each and every step that is required to develop a successful mobile application. Today, we are going to share this step-by-step mobile app development process with you.

Introduction

When you get an idea to develop a mobile app or how to make a mobile app, you will come across a lot of questions. Like

  • What to know before developing a mobile app?
  • How to develop a mobile app from scratch?
  • What is the mobile app development lifecycle?
  • What are the steps in developing an app?
  • How much time does it take to develop an app?
  • How to streamline the mobile app development process?

In fact, we receive a lot of such questions. So we decided to write a blog on the same topic which we can share with our future clients to help them get introduced to app development. Bookmark this article if you want to know the answer on how to make a successful app. Reason? Because this article will help you to understand the basics iOS and Android mobile app development process step-by-step and its methodologies. There are many answers on what to do with your new idea for mobile app, but extensive research on the process of developing an app has not been done in an open article like this. 

9 Mobile App Development Process Steps

Below we have discussed steps of mobile app development which help you create complete mobile app development strategy to build quality mobile applications for your business.

1. Project requirement discussion

App development process

The initial stage of mobile app development process involves discussing about the project. We will have a typical phone call, casual, short, just to identify if we can assist you if we can take this project forward.

What do we expect from you, from our clients?
First, we want the basic details from your end. Like what kind of application you want to develop, what is your app development budget, what is your timeline, do you have any other app similar to your app concept? At Space-O Technologies, we believe that “healthy conversations lead to trustworthy relationships for future ventures.” The more we know about your idea, the better we can assist you.

30-min free consultation
Our sales representative team provides a 30-minute free consultation, where you can ask questions related to app concept. Then, our team prepares a proposal for you along with WBS (Work-breakdown Structure). Our aim is to check the feasibility of your idea and suggest the best technical go ahead.

2. Business Insight & Estimation

app insights

After consultation with you, we have a kick-off meeting, wherein we decide the team members and provide recommendations or suggestions for your app development. Our process in the meeting starts with a QA involvement and test case availability.  The early involvement enables QA to understand customer requirements better. Application flow-related queries get resolved in the very initial phase. 

Once requirement analysis and designs get freeze QA starts with the test case creation. It requires 20% extra effort of whatever efforts we have estimated for testing.  We try to cover the maximum positive and negative test scenarios while writing test cases. We also create a test plan document to define the testing scope and objective but it depends upon the project requirement. This allows us proper cost estimation for your app and provides a feasible concept of a real mobile app or website.

3. Signing NDA

NDA for app development

Now after the test cases and cost estimation, if you are willing to go ahead with us for your customized mobile application development, we make it official by signing the agreement, NDA.

Why NDA for your app idea?
We ensure that your idea is safe with us. In fact, it avoids misunderstandings or miscommunication between us.

What you will get in the project development agreement?
After completion of the project discussion and providing an estimation, the next step in mobile app development is to sign a project development agreement which is the key to associating with Space-O Technologies. The agreement contains – Project deliverables, Milestones, Legal clauses, and Reference/Annexures.
Being a professional in the app world, we provide mobile application development services specified on paper. Our real work starts after signing an agreement which consists of understanding project requirements, defining communication methods, scheduling scrum meetings, file sharing, and expected delivery phases in set milestones. For development, we do a kick-off meeting at our company. This meeting defines the application developers and other team members, who will work on your project.

4. Wireframing of the app

app wireframing

This is one of the crucial mobile application development steps after the project, requirements are understood and communication methods (Slack, Skype, Basecamp) are set, the question of how much time will it take to design an app arises. The designing part is the most intricate step of developing mobile apps. Before starting the development it is essential to finalize wireframing steps in mobile app development.

What is the wireframe?
The wireframe can be understood as a pillar for application/website. It helps you to understand the flow of the system and gives a rough idea of how the system would function. The wireframe helps in the precise estimation of the development timeline. It also helps the designers get a gist of the system flow and aid them in creating flawless and accurate designs.

Which tools does our BA team uses for wireframing your app idea?
Our Business Analyst team analyzes your app concept to make a wireframe of required features using Balsamiq 3.5.17 and AdobeXD wireframe design tool.

Why do we need a wireframe? What is the importance of a wireframe?
An app has many features, for instance, you want a chat feature in the app. But there are a variety of different chat types viz one-to-one chat, group chat, timeline management. That particular requirement can be clearly penned down in wireframes and gives an idea to the stakeholder how the chat flow would work.

5. UI/UX design

UI/UX design

Before starting to prepare initial app designs, we sent you a questionnaire that helps us in knowing your preferences. It consists of questions like.

Questions we ask our clients:-

– Which color would you prefer for your app?
– Basic preferences for color and fonts?
– Which apps do you like?  

Tools our UI/UX designers use

According to your taste, we make sample screens using mobile app design tools like

– Adobe XD
– Sketch and
– Adobe Photoshop


Here is the app design process to follow.

UI/UX Design App
The core purpose of designing UI/UX is to offer a seamless experience to users with a sharp and polished look. The usability of the mobile app plays a huge role while designing an app. The polished UI design helps to attract clients and help them have to intuitive experience. That will help you to convert your prospect into customers as well.

Workflow Design
The initial step is to invest your time in designing a proper workflow. The design also depends upon the data which will be fetched for users, the collection of the data, and user interaction with the application. Additionally, the mobile app of enterprise mobile solutions contains varieties of roles and privileges while building the app’s architecture.

Wireframe Design
The wireframe design starts by sketching the concept of the mobile app on paper. Then, designers perform digital sketches by applying those designs in software such as Adobe XD. It is also known as a low fidelity design. The purpose of low fidelity design is to give a polished structure to your app’s functionalities.

Style Guides
A style guide includes the guidelines on which the application will be designed. App’s design standard, branding guidelines, and even, navigation symbols will be included in the guidelines.

The following are some examples of style guides:
– What font family will the text in your app be?
– What color scheme will you use?
– Does your mobile app represent your company’s brand?

Only after creating style guides, you can understand the design strategy of a mobile app. Additionally, following the style guide will help you enhance your mobile app. Also, it is essential to consider the style guidelines of Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

What do we deliver during this phase?
The sample contains an app icon, splash screen (first screen), log in, or sign-up form, the home page. We prepare two UI/UX choices for you. After sending the samples, we wait for your feedback and make the changes, if any, according to your preference.

After the final approval of the design, we make a systematic mobile application development process flow to start the process for making it a user-centric product by using Flinto or Invision. We prepare an up-front design of your complete app without writing a single line of code.

6. App development

app development

After coming together with app designs, the mobile app developers get down to bring everything into action. The project manager defines tasks to the developers and develops app development step by step process to achieve the set milestones. You should remember that there are many app development technologies out there, however, you should always choose the technology which suits your mobile app development needs.

Also, the process of mobile app development is divided into 3 parts.

– Defining Backend Development
This section contains the database and server-side objects required for your mobile app’s supporting functionalities. If you’re using an existing back-end platform, you may need to make some changes to accommodate the desired mobile capabilities.

– API Integration
API integration needs to be done to make communication possible with the app and backend servers.

– Front end App Development
It is essential to design an interactive UI of the front end. Even in many cases, when the application requires to work without the internet, local data storage utilization is needed as well. To make the mobile app usable for everyone, it is suggested to design an interactive and engaging front-end. Only the perfect blend of front end and back end will make an app interactive and usable for the end.

We value your time and money, thus, a discussion of every thought, suggestion, or decision is done with you. The progress of the mobile application development process steps is given to you by a “walk-through of the developed app screens” via project management tools like Basecamp and Trello.

For Android development, we use the following technologies
– Programming language: Java, Kotlin
– IDE: Android Studio
– Database: SQLite, Realm
– Tools: Android SDK, Android NDK

For iOS development, we use the following technologies
– Language: Swift, Objective C
– IDE: XCode
– Database: SQLite, Realm, CoreData

For Backend development process, we use the following technologies
– Languages: PHP, RoR, GOLang, Node js, Angular Js, React Js, .Net

7. Q/A testing

App QA testing

When you decide to create a new app, it is inevitable to keep testing the app. It helps in keeping the cost low and building a qualitative app. The farther in you go into the mobile app development cycle, the costlier it becomes to fix the bug. 

When developing mobile apps whether it is a hybrid app or native mobile apps, before the finalization of the app reveals to the world, the process of app development includes the testing of the mobile app by our QA team. Who runs various tests to make sure that the app works flawlessly. Have a look at the difference between functional and non-functional tests included in the process of mobile app development.

– Functional test: Through this type, the app is tested against the functional requirements/specifications of the client. It provides the appropriate input and expects the correct output, testing the user interface. In short, all the user requirements are specified by the business are well tested.

– Non-functional test: It focuses on the good quality of app software especially the nonfunctional aspects such as response time, security, scalability, usability, performance. It covers all the tests that are not covered in functional testing.

The application is tested to check its usability, compatibility, interface checks, and performance. We have around 50 iOS & Android devices to check, locate, and fix issues that arise due to UI. The devices come in different dimensions, screen sizes, OS versions. Thus this type of testing ensures that there are no functionalities that are causing the problem to the application when it is live and used by the app users.

For keeping track of your mobile app testing phase, QA sends a release note with every build release.  We develop and test simultaneously to find bugs as early as possible. Parallel testing is done as soon as a module s developed or milestone is completed. First, we perform the unit test, QA testing using a black-box testing method that is commonly performed for functional and regression testing.

After completing testing and making your application 100% bug-free and smooth from our side, we send it to you, and we call it UTA (User Acceptance Testing) testing.

8. Launching the app

launch an app

How to publish app on Appstore and Playstore?
Don’t worry. We assist our customers in uploading their application on Appstore and Playstore without charging any additional cost.

What do we need from your end?
We only need developer account credentials from the customers to upload it.

Is it easy to publish the application?
The AppStore and Playstore are having strong policies to make the app live, but we do have quite good expertise in this domain where our experts help our customers to get it live. In fact, we have successfully launched over 3500 mobile applications to date.

An app’s release in the app store includes:

  • Your app’s title
  • Description
  • Category
  • Keywords
  • Launch icon
  • App Store screenshots

Once when you submit your app in the Apple App Store, the iOS app goes through a review process that takes a few days to several weeks. It depends on the quality of your app and how closely it follows iOS development guidelines. If your app requires user login, then you also need to submit a user account along with the developer account. Unlike iOS, Android does not have a review process. The app becomes available in the app store within a few hours of submission. Once your app is deployed, our team constantly monitors its usage through mobile analytics platforms and measure your app’s success. We also check crash reports or other user-reported issues.

9. Post-production support

app and web support

As the application gets in the hands of app users, feedback will pour in and for future versions of the app, you will need to incorporate that as an app update. Every app will need new features and technological updates, thus this is the last mobile app development process step. Typically, as soon as the first version of the app is released, the development cycle begins anew. 

We, at Trident Technolabs, provide you with an “after launch service program” which is 3-month support.

What you will get in this free support?

During or after the mobile app development process, if we face any issue or bug, we will instantly fix the issue. Once the duration of free support is finished, if a customer wants to extend the support period, we prefer to sign an annual maintenance contract that can protect the app owners. If any new issue/bug arrives then, it can be immediately fixed.

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