Application development can take longer than you expect. The app development timeline is one of the most critical factors in creating a successful app. The timeline can make or break an app before it even launches. Because, the longer it takes to develop a new app, the more it costs.
To be successful, it is essential that the timeline is realistic. A timeline full of unrealistic deadlines can hinder your team's ability to create a high-quality, error-free app.
As such, developers are always looking for ways to shorten the development process without sacrificing quality. Employing specific methodologies can offer several advantages and reduce the delays in the development process.
Why App Development Can Take Too Long
A key reason apps often take longer than planned is a lack of preparation. If the project is not adequately planned at the start, it is likely you will underestimate how intensive the process is and what resources your team needs.
The development process will inevitably take longer as a result of indecision and ever-changing priorities. Ultimately, poor planning will cause delays in the development process as unforeseen problems and issues arise.
The following are some of the more specific reasons why apps take too long to develop:
- Unclear requirements: This is the number one reason for app development delays. If the client has only a vague idea of what they want or the developers don't understand the requirements, it can lead to lots of back and forth between both parties.
As a result, the project can be delayed while everyone tries to figure out what needs to be done. It can also result in changing requirements for the app throughout the development process, which can lead to further delays. - Disagreement between stakeholders: All parties involved with the project must work together and have a clear understanding of what the common goals are.
If communication breaks down or different groups within an organization don't see eye to eye on certain ideas and decisions, it can lead to miscommunication and wasted development time. It can also lead to different stakeholders providing conflicting directions to your team, which will only cause confusion. - Changing priorities: As the project progresses, it's normal for the app priorities to change. The client may decide that they like one aspect of the app but not another.
However, if the priorities constantly change or if the team is unable to keep up and adapt to the changes, it can result in missed deadlines. - Lack of experience: If your team lacks experience with a specific platform or technology, it will naturally take longer to complete the project. Your team will need to spend more time learning about how things work and how to best implement various features.
- Lack of resources: A lack of resources could include a lack of time, money, people, or skills required to meet the workload requirements and established deadlines.
In some cases, you may have a big team, but there might still be a skill gap. This deficiency can lead to errors and poor work output as your existing team becomes overwhelmed and overworked, resulting in delays. - Lack of communication: Ineffective communication can lead to misunderstandings, confusion, frustration, and conflict. For example, if a deadline is unrealistic or not clearly outlined, your team may miss the deadline or lack the critical information that could help them complete the task on time.
- Unclear roles and responsibilities: This is often the case when there's a new team member, or someone is working on a project for the first time. If everyone isn't aware of who is responsible for what, it can lead to duplicated or incomplete tasks.
Delays in client feedback: If you're waiting a long time for feedback from the client, then it can slow down your development process. After all, you may not be able to start working on something until you've received confirmation that the client likes your idea.
There are countless reasons why an app development timeline can go off track. However, by being aware of these potential causes of delay, you can take steps to prevent them from happening or at least minimize their impact on your project.
How Developers Can Shorten The Project Timeline
Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to reduce potential delays and shorten your development timeline. A clear picture of the project requirements can help your team make estimations for your project and maximize your chance of developing the app according to the schedule.
Consider these tips to help minimize any potential delays to your development timeline:
Plan The Project Well
Good preparation will help you get a good understanding of the scope of the project, including how to allocate resources and what critical issues may arise. It may require a significant time investment at the top of the project, but it will save that time many times over by minimizing the risk of delays due to errors or problems.
Get All Stakeholders Involved
There are many people involved in the app development process, meaning there are inevitably a lot of opinions. As such, get input from the key stakeholders early, including the clients, team members, and app users, so that their feedback can be factored into the final product.
Establish Communication Guidelines
Make sure that everyone on the team knows how and when to communicate to avoid any potential misunderstandings or delays due to a lack of communication. Designate certain team members as points of contact for specific tasks and ensure that everyone knows who these people are.
Define The Roles Of Your Team Members
As you begin each stage of the app development process, make sure each team member has a clearly defined role.
This way, no one gets confused about their individual responsibilities, and the project can move forward without any unnecessary delays.
Hold Everyone Accountable
Hold everyone accountable for their actions by setting both team and individual deadlines and ensuring that everyone meets them. Regular progress reports and check-ins with your team can help ensure that things move along as planned.
Use A Project Management Methodology
Implementing a project management methodology can give structure to your project.
For example, the Agile Methodology is a popular management method that helps improve workflow by breaking a project into iterative cycles. Collaboration is the key focus, which can help improve turnaround times and increase productivity. The result will be a higher quality product.
The Agile Methodology For App Development
The Agile Methodology is a project management tool. As the name suggests, it makes the app development process more agile by offering a way of organizing and managing software development tasks. It's an iterative process that allows for changes based on user or other stakeholders' feedback, emphasizing collaboration, flexibility, and constant communication.
Instead of following a traditional Waterfall Methodology, where everything has to be completed before the app is launched, the Agile Methodology breaks the project into smaller products that can be regularly tested by the app users. Because of this, the team can be more adaptable to feedback and changing requirements that would otherwise cause significant delays.
Some of the main characteristics of the Agile Methodology include:
Short Cycles
The Agile Methodology is structured using short cycles, called “sprints” or “iterations.” During each cycle, the product is tested for errors and function. The ability to iterate quickly means that you can add new features on the fly without disrupting the overall flow of work. As a result, software projects can be completed faster without sacrificing quality or accuracy.
Constant Interaction
Agile places an emphasis on collaboration throughout the entire project. For instance, during one iteration, code is developed and tested. The testers immediately provide feedback to the developers that can be used to address any issues that were found. Only then do they move on to the next iteration.
In a traditional waterfall methodology, testing wouldn’t be done until all the code has been developed, meaning that the development team and the testing team would barely interact.
Increasing interaction between teams helps developers work together more fluidly than if they were following the traditional Waterfall process. This way, everyone is on the same page, and no one gets left behind.
Quick Response To Changes
The Agile Methodology is perfect for responding to changes. With its iterative process, new features can be added and tweaked on the fly, which means that you're able to take into account feedback from users and other stakeholders much more quickly than with other development processes.
As a result, it helps ensure that your product is of the highest quality possible and meets your target audience's requirements and expectations.
Advantages Of The Agile Methodology For App Development
The Agile Methodology offers several advantages for those working on app development projects. Besides helping to reduce potential delays in the development process, there are many benefits that include:
Transparency
The iterative process of Agile Methodology offers a great way to build trust with your team. Milestones are made clear and every team member is made accountable for completing their tasks and meeting their deadlines. Everyone has the opportunity to see how the project is progressing, which helps improve communication and collaboration throughout each stage.
With the waterfall approach, team members won’t know what’s happening with the development process until it’s time to complete their task. With the agile approach, everyone is involved during each cycle.
Such transparency keeps everyone on track and ensures that there aren't any miscommunications or misunderstandings along the way, meaning progress can continue more smoothly than other development processes.
Interactive Approach
The Agile Methodology takes an interactive approach, meaning that team members are able to constantly interact with one another as well as with stakeholders and users to work together on fixes, communicate new options, and to clarify expectations.
As a result, such an approach allows for changes and tweaks to be made on the fly, ensuring that your app is of the highest quality possible.
Typically the team meets everyday for 15 minutes in a “standup meeting” to share their progress or challenges and get their questions answered so they can be productive for the day. Without these transparent and interactive meetings, questions linger causing delays.
In-Depth Planning In Every Stage
The Agile Methodology allows for in-depth planning at every stage, which means that you're not just throwing together a plan and then sticking to it no matter what. Instead, you have the opportunity to revisit and revise your plans as needed based on feedback from those involved.
Efficient Risk Management
The Agile Methodology is great for risk management. With its short cycles and constant interaction, your team can quickly identify potential risks (such as code issues, unrealistic deadlines, or budget issues) to the project and come up with strategies for mitigating them.
Additionally, because agile development uses sprints, the risks are not only easier to identify since you’re only analyzing individual sprints, but they will be on a smaller scale than the whole project.
By increasing the efficiency of your project’s risk management, your team will be able to keep the project on track and avoid any significant roadblocks.
Better Customer Experience
The Agile Methodology is perfect for creating a better customer experience. By taking an interactive approach and constantly asking for feedback, your team is able to create an app that meets the needs of your target audience and provides the best possible user experience.
Such user feedback is possible due to the ability to launch a working product before it is complete since using the agile method allows you to add features and functionality to your working app over time.
Lower Development Costs
By taking an interactive approach and constantly adapting to feedback, you can minimize development costs by avoiding wasting time on features your audience doesn't want or need.
As a result, you'll end up with a higher quality product that requires less adjustments and fewer major changes down the road. The Agile Methodology will also help reduce the number of errors made during development, but also make it easier to fix any errors that do arise.
Higher Return On Investment
The Agile Methodology is excellent for keeping costs down and helping to reduce potential delays in the development process. Working with an iterative approach also helps ensure that your product provides a higher return on investment since it can better adapt and respond to changes along the way.
With a waterfall approach, changes to the project can be much more difficult to adapt to, resulting in more significant delays that can cause the project to go over budget.
Not to mention that because you can adapt to user feedback on the fly using the agile approach, you’ll end up with a higher quality product that meets the needs of your users, thereby being more likely to result in more sales.
Increased Market Reach
The Agile Methodology can help increase market reach by allowing for a quicker product release, which is possible due to the shorter development timeline and the ability to adapt to feedback as it comes in.
Additionally, with the constant interaction and communication throughout the process, you're able to build a better relationship with your target audience and become more familiar with their needs.
What Needs To Be In Place Before Deploying The Agile Methodology
Overall, the Agile Methodology is an excellent way of developing software and apps. Its iterative approach means that you can refine the product towards something your users will love. Your team is able to employ frequent testing throughout the process and make improvements based on the feedback and data. This will result in a superior product.
However, before you can begin employing the Agile Methodology in your app development process, you'll need to do the following:
Pre-Development Planning
The Agile Methodology requires a lot of planning and coordination before you can begin working on your product. Without clearly defined goals and user stories in place (which describe the purpose and function of each feature included within your app), it won't be easy to make any meaningful progress or have users provide feedback as needed throughout development.
Keeping this in mind, the following are three crucial elements you'll need to address as part of your pre-development planning:
Business Objectives
Your business objectives will help define the overall purpose of your app and what you hope to achieve with it. These objectives can be anything from increasing brand awareness or generating more leads, to improving customer satisfaction and driving sales.
Target Audience
Who is your app meant for? Knowing your target audience will help to ensure that you're designing and developing features that are relevant and useful to them.
Competitor Audit
A competitor audit will help you understand what your competition is doing and how they're performing in the market. Your team can then use this information to differentiate your app and make it more appealing to users.
Requirement Analysis
Once your business objectives are defined and you understand your target audience, the next step is to carry out a requirement analysis to understand your app's specific needs. Doing so will involve listing all of the features you want your app to have and determining how they should function.
By taking the time to map out all of your requirements and desired features, you'll not only save time and effort later on, but you'll also have a better idea of what's achievable within the given timeframe.
Design
Your app's design will be one of the essential factors in its overall success. The look and feel of your app should reflect your brand and be intuitive to use. To achieve this, you'll need a design that is both creative and user-friendly.
The Agile Methodology can help with this by allowing for more frequent feedback and revisions to be made as needed. This way, you can ensure that your app design is constantly improving and meeting the needs of your target audience.
Development
Development is completed in iterations, with each iteration building upon the previous. As a result, as soon as testing is complete for one feature or aspect of your app, you can immediately begin developing other features and functions.
Testing
The Agile Methodology allows for testing at each stage of the product cycle. By allowing testers to provide feedback before a new feature is integrated into your existing codebase, you can avoid any significant issues that could impact the quality of your app.
Testing should be an ongoing process, as it allows for defects and other problems to be identified and addressed before they have a chance to cause significant damage. By incorporating testing into your development process, you'll help to ensure that your app is error-free.
Writing and using automated tests will allow for regression testing throughout the project, ensuring the implementation of new features doesn’t break functionality previously developed.
Continuous Integration
To ensure a smooth and successful launch, you must have a process to promote your code to production and ensure a smooth and successful launch.
Such a process could involve using a tool like Jenkins or Travis CI, which will help automate the process of code checking and deploying your app to production, thereby minimizing the chances of any errors or compatibility issues.
The Post-Deployment Stage
Once your app is live, the work doesn't stop there. To ensure that it continues to meet the needs of your users, you'll need to provide regular updates and improvements based on user feedback. This feedback could involve adding new features, fixing defects, or changing the user interface.
Post-Deployment Review
To further improve your app, you must conduct a post-deployment review. This review should take place shortly after launch and will help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your app and what can be improved or changed in future updates. The more information you have about how users interact with your product, the better.
Avoid A Prolonged App Development Timeline
The Agile Methodology can help you shorten the app development timeline by minimizing and eliminating many of the problems that typically hinder development and cause delays.
By taking the time to map out all of your requirements and desired features, you'll not only save time and effort later on, but you'll also have a better idea of what's achievable within the given timeframe.
