Blog

While software is the answer to many problems in the modern world, you don’t need to be an IT genius to notice that the mobile app stores on our smartphones are saturated with offers for these solutions.

We’ve reached a point where the world has apps for everything (sometimes with multiple versions for the same thing) and yet society still isn’t satisfied with the way these products are sold or offered.

Sometimes the problem lies in development: the product didn’t follow basic structural pillars to reach the end consumer. Even if apps are produced at enterprise scale, it’s necessary that all of them start from an MVP and are sustained by an agile methodology, which will help the final version reach the app stores with fewer issues and more advantages.

After all, that is exactly the purpose an app exists for. Otherwise, we would still be calling taxis from the phone book…

The pillars of app development

Selling app development is not an easy task. Many executives turn their noses up at this solution and some even say they invest good money in building a digital solution and, even so, not all screens end up being used by the user…

The reality is that today only those who ignore structured pillars and clear stages make that kind of mistake—stages that include improving the final product based on user experience (UX, in the technical term).

Starting from the beginning: app development has a few basic phases. They are:

• Code;
• Design;
• Infrastructure.

From the idea, code is created as an MVP—that is, a minimum viable product, the bare minimum to test whether the idea will work or be rejected by the audience. This code then receives a very conceptual, minimalist design and infrastructure, just enough to reach the people who will test it in a “working” state.

Did it pass this trial by fire? Now it’s time to take those same stages and break them down into clear tasks with goals and objectives inside an agile methodology process, where the work is divided among teams responsible for each stage.

That way, the coding team will raise their demands, briefing needs, and approval requirements from the end client or from colleagues in complementary stages, and then develop the code within a schedule. Meanwhile, the design team is already thinking about how to make the app attractive while also giving it a good dose of simplicity.

Producing apps at enterprise scale demands exactly this: that the product be as simple as possible, and that it solves the user’s problem with the minimum number of taps.

If it’s not like that, the end user will abandon your app before you can show them any value.

A game that asks, at sign-up, even for your dog’s name won’t do very well. People want speed in solving their problems—even when the “problem” is simply not having something interesting to entertain themselves.

After design comes infrastructure, which is the way code and interface will be offered to the end customer: how much memory it will use, what is needed to run it, how much it will cost, and other characteristics of that kind.

By the time you reach this stage, any screen that wouldn’t be used or any flow that wouldn’t please the consumer should already be out of the final version of the app—and the only justification for keeping it inside the scope is a design mistake.

How to perform well across all pillars

The best way to ensure a corporate app will reach its final destination with good acceptance, a minimal error rate, and within the planned budget and scope is by hiring a software factory.

Software factories are companies that take the client’s idea, create a scope for it, insert all stages into an agile methodology, and deliver the final product running—without requiring the hiring company to build an in-house, dedicated IT team for this type of development.

That way, the likelihood of success is higher, along with potential savings during the process.

Want to understand better how a software factory can help take your apps off paper and develop them at enterprise scale? Talk to X-Apps!