When developing a mobile application, there are five stages that developers must go through before deploying a successful final product. Before you begin, understanding the stages of mobile development projects is important. The 5 major stages in the mobile software development life cycle:
- Inception
- Design
- Development
- Stabilization
- Deployment
Inception
The inception stage involves all aspects of brainstorming and developing the ideas for the application. In order to keep up with competitors, you need to make sure your application is thoroughly thought out and will work for you. Aspects that should be focused on during inception include infrastructure, mobility, value proposition and use cases for the application. All the financial and technical resources that are required to deploy the application should be well thought out in this stage.
Design
After exploring all the logistics in the inception phase, it’s time to design your application. The design is very strategic to your application because it can decide important decisions such as which operating system your application will run on. In the design phase, all aspects of the user interface must be addressed. The UX design and UI design must be fully determined along with the design languages. After this, you should have a good idea how your application will look like on each platform.
Development
The development stage can differ greatly from application to application but you should focus on building the first prototype for the application. This will require a lot of work and can be very tedious process. During development, you will need to set up APIs, storage solutions, databases, servers and the backend of your application. In addition to the technical aspects of developing the application, there are administrative tasks such as setting up developer accounts on the app stores. This can take several days, so getting administrative tasks like these should be a priority.
Stabilization
After your application has been developed adequately, it’s time to stabilize your app through QA testing. QA testing is the process where the application is tested thoroughly to meet performance and usability requirements. QA testing is vital to stabilizing your app because it prevents it from crashing and facing other difficulties that can be costly after launch. Different people and companies define the stages of stabilization differently, but stabilization entails four stages for an application:
- Prototype
- Alpha
- Beta
- Release Candidate
Throughout these stages, an application will get tested repeatedly and thoroughly until any defects are eliminated or reduced significantly. After stabilization, your team can come up with a strategy for deployment.
Deployment
Before deploying your mobile application, several steps need to be taken to prevent mishaps and difficulties. It’s important to involve your marketing department or staff as much as possible before deployment to maximize the impact of your product after its release. Consulting with your marketing team prior to deployment will help with keyword research which is vital for SEO and app store optimization. With correct keyword research, users searching for similar titles are far more likely to find or discover your app. In addition to titles, other important aspects to optimize your marketing include well-written descriptions, great screenshots from within your app and promotional videos.
