How to Save Time When Developing an App

Having an app developed is a fantastic way for a company or business to stay in touch with its customers. However, having the app developed the right way takes a lot of time.

If you need the app to reach the market sooner for any reason, such as if your competitor wants to release a similar app, then you have to find out ways to reduce the time it takes to have the app developed. Below, we will look at some strategies that will help you do exactly that.

Plan

The first step should always be doing your research. While doing the research, it is important to try to find out if there is a market for the app you are developing and how large this market is. Next, you have to write down the needs of the users in this market. This way, you can cater to the needs of these users instead of adding features that do not provide them any value.

Also, you need to consider other demographics such as gender, age, cultures and regional influences and how they will affect the way consumers use the app. Once you have a clear understanding of who will use your app, how they will use it and what platforms they are likely on, you can begin mapping the functions and features the app will have.

By having a plan from the start, you will always know what you need to be working on at all times. This prevents context switching and leaving features that you can come back to later as that might lead to a lot of time wastage.

Decide on Your Platform Early

Developing an app for a single platform is always easier and takes less time than trying to get the app working on all available platforms. In addition to saving you a lot of time, it will save you money in the long run.

If you need to develop for more than one platform, for example Android and iOS, you will save a lot of time if you develop a cross-platform app. The technology is now mature enough that you can use tools like NativeScript to develop for both platforms and have your app work flawlessly on both.

User Wireframes

Wireframes are low-fidelity iterations of your app’s design. They allow you to explore different structures, designs and architectures before you start writing code. They help you identify any potential user design and experience issues as early as possible.

Their main advantage is that they give you a final design, albeit a low-fidelity one, that your developers can follow. This way, you do not have to redo the design once the user feedback starts coming in and users have a hard time using the app or do not like its design.

Get the First Version Out of the Door as Fast as Possible

A common reason why a lot of apps take more time to develop than they should is that developers try to add too many features to the first iteration of the app. To save time, start with an app that has basic features that are critical at the time of the release. This way, you do not end up adding too many features and wasting time because no one will use them.

When the first version is out in the market, you can concentrate on adding other features that add value to the user and if done right, users will only have to update the app to get the latest features.

Get Regular Feedback

If you decide to use the approach discussed above, use feedback to keep the development on track. Remember that every feature builds upon the next one, and a delay at one stage can affect the development timeline.

When looking for feedback, try to find out how far the team has gotten, offer suggestions for improvements and changes as early as possible to have them implemented as soon as possible, and see if your team is on schedule.

Use Test Automation

Testing is a critical step in the app development cycle. Testing allows you to find bugs and problems with your app so that the users are not inconvenienced by them. Although manual testing can find most bugs and issues in an app, it takes a lot of time. The reason is that the app has to be downloaded onto a device or emulated on a computer, and the tester has to go through all scenarios that can manifest as a user uses the app. They then have to check each result against the expected outcome.

Test automation can complete all these tasks faster and with very little human interaction. When doing test automation, scripts are written to handle all the repetitive tasks humans have to do during manual testing. These scripts run through all the different scenarios and give you the results that tell you if the tests failed or passed.

The one thing to understand is that if automated tests are not set up the right way, they will not yield good results. This is why it is so important to get them set up right. If you have never set up any automated app tests, this guide from Global App Testing will show you How to Implement Test Automation for the First Time. The guide is particularly useful for new software testers. Global App Testing can talk about the functional and fundamental concepts of app testing because it is a leading web, app and software testing company that leverages automated and crowd testing to help you find bugs in your app before it is released to your users. By helping you do this, it saves you a lot of time and helps you get your app to the market faster.

Hire the Right People

Having a good development team behind the app is perhaps one of the best ways to save time. Competent developers work faster and produce fewer bugs. This means you will not have to spend extra time finding and dealing with bugs and can be sure that the first iteration of the app will be ready to go live.

A good tip here is to hire the right number of people. This number should be adequate and not too large as to make the development complicated. When you have a large team working on the app, communication can break down, some people can lag behind thereby holding the whole team back, and app testing can get complicated if there is no unified way of testing new features and code changes quickly and efficiently.

Get and Implement Feedback Quickly

Getting feedback from beta testers is an important step for a lot of apps that are designed to reach a larger audience. It is therefore important to have plans in place to receive and act on this feedback as quickly as possible.

Doing this will save you time because the feedback might also reveal to you which features users care about the most. You can then focus on these and have the app released faster with the functions and features needed the most.

App development is a very involved and time-consuming process. If not done right, it can take a lot more time than it should. Fortunately, there are a lot of things you or your team of software developers can do to save some time and get the app to the market quicker.