How to avoid mobile app development failure

Companies are rushing to put out mobile apps to better serve their employees and customers and in that rat race, unfortunately the mobile app gets pushed out prematurely leading to an utter failure of that app.

Here are some strategies and things to keep in mind to avoid mobile app development failure.

Research and analysis:

Think about the overall goal of the app, how you will measure its success, how people are going to make use of the app and make their life easier.

Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at ‘J Gold Associates’ says that ‘the biggest problem for most companies is that they don’t have a good definition for what they really want’. A thorough research about the users, their habits should be done prior to app development. Define what you want and get feedbacks from customers.

The project developer:

You should carefully evaluate and decide as to who should be given the task of app development, whether your in house techie or a freelance developer or contracted to an agency.

It is always better to give the task to independent developers or any agency team, because one person alone can’t handle designing and programming and an entire project.

Prior to assigning a task to any app development agency, demand for their prior work and find out how they have integrated apps with existing software systems or lifecycle management systems at previous companies and how they plan with yours.

Nominate an IT project manager or business sponsor:

After selecting your agency to develop your mobile app, entitle someone in IT or business field to become the project sponsor. For instance, a person from marketing department can be designated as the project sponsor to oversee the project, if the app is designed for marketing employees, to ensure it aligns with their goals all the way through.

An IT person together with a business person would be an ideal option.

Significance of pilot test and user feedbacks:

After the completion of the development process, doing a pilot test is necessary. In order to get a feedback from the user’s perspective, ensure that tester’s test the app very minutely and give feedback.

Evaluate the pros and cons and make necessary changes in the app. throughout the life cycle of the app, a feedback tool should be there. You can utilise feedback management tools like HockeyApp or App47 to automatically collect feedback from users. Social media can be used to get customers feedback. After evaluating the piled up feedbacks, circle back with users especially the unhappy ones.

Test your apps thoroughly:

Ensure that your app doesn’t crash, after it starts. Testing your app before releasing is mandatory. For large scale applications with multiple utilities, it is important to create a test bed and magnify the results pertaining with this app.

This will help during the app’s upgradation stage. Apart from these you should also ensure that, the app doesn’t use 75%of the device memory and that it doesn’t drain the battery of the handset.