Last Updated: February 29, 2024
Mobile App Development LifeCycle
Published On: November 06, 2023

Blog Summary: Learn about the various stages of the mobile app development lifecycle to effectively map out timelines and budget. Get insights on the key success factors that determine the positive performance of a mobile app. 

There are several questions that pop into your mind as a business owner when you have decided to launch a commercial mobile app. You’ll be curious to know about the timeline for app development and the costs associated with it.

To get an idea of how much time and budget it will take to build a mobile application, you must have a sound understanding of what’s called the mobile app development lifecycle. In other words, also referred to as the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), it tells you about the process involved in app creation or development.

When you understand the various processes involved in the development of mobile apps, you can navigate seamlessly through the development phase and app launch procedures. In this article, we’ll elaborate on the individual app development phases and explain the mobile application development lifecycle in detail.

An Overview of App Development Lifecycle

Mobile app development lifecycle is a term used to describe the process of developing an app. It’s important to understand the app development process from a commercial standpoint as it helps to establish a timeline basis & budget cuts.

Right from the inception phase to the app launch, various parameters influence the timeline and complexities of app development. When you know all the stages of mobile app development, you can confidently guide your IT team to perform efficiently and monitor the progress.

Depending on the IT organization’s overall development culture, there might be small variations in app development procedures, but generally, it’s the same.

7 Stages of Mobile App Development Lifecycle

There are essentially 7 stages when it comes to the mobile app development process or lifecycle. The effective development & launch of your mobile app depends on how efficiently these individual stages of app development are carried out.

Let’s take a look at each stage of the mobile app development process:

1. Conceptualization

Without a great idea, there’s no great product. That’s the general business rule! So the first step to consider while building a mobile app is to have a clear-cut idea of your app type & niche. You need to define the purpose of your app & the target audience.

In-depth market research must be conducted to analyze the key benefits of building such an app, the competitors in the space, and scalability options. You need to also note down the customer pain points your mobile applications will solve and also decide which platform to choose for the app launch.

2. Planning and Strategy

Once your app concept is finalized and the target audience is identified, the next step is to create a project roadmap. This is where the planning phase comes in. Project roadmaps are established to help developers & other stakeholders understand the mobile app development workflow.

The roadmap defines the major milestones to be achieved during the app development process and their timelines. In this development phase, the features & functionality of the app need to be finalized to facilitate budgeting and resource allocation.

Once all these parameters are determined, the IT team has to adopt a suitable development approach based on strategic business analysis.

3. Design and Prototyping

Releasing a software product in the market without a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) launch can turn out disastrous. You need to understand whether your target market resonates with your iOS and Android applications.

That’s why you need to create wireframes & mockups to represent your app idea and understand user appeal. While building an MVP, you need to focus on UI-UX design.

UX mockups help your target audience to get the feel of what’s to come & help you to get strategic insights into their behavior. The interface rules need to be considered while developing these design mockups.

4. Development

The fourth stage of the mobile app development cycle is when the actual development of your mobile app takes place. Primarily, the user interface is developed with attention given to the app design, color, & fonts used.

While facilitating front-end development, you need to ensure that the app suits well across every mobile device. Once the front-end is developed, the app development team proceeds with back-end development.

It’s the back-end that’s responsible for the seamless performance of the app’s features and functionality. Suitable mobile app development tools need to be used to ensure the app’s user experience and the proper functioning of the back end.

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5. Testing

Modern application development approaches such as DevOps insist on early app testing and quality assurance procedures. It helps to reduce the overall mobile app development cost and ensure the successful development of your app.

Nevertheless, once your app is fully developed, it must go through a comprehensive testing process where the app’s performance is tested. Potential bugs/errors need to be identified and removed to ensure seamless performance.

Various testing methods such as unit testing, usability testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, and performance testing need to be conducted to certify the launch of a quality app.

6. Deployment

When your app has been fully tested, you can set a date to launch it across suitable platforms. Make sure that you launch the app abiding by the app policies for the particular platform. The guidelines for mobile application launch in the Apple app store are extensive and require attention to detail.

The first few days post-launch are critical for understanding the user appeal of your mobile app. It’s a very common practice for app developers to monitor the initial user feedback and make necessary modifications in mobile app architecture & code accordingly.

7. Maintenance and Updates

To stay ahead of the competition & attend to the audience’s ever-changing demands, you need to consistently scale your mobile app. There needs to be a healthy practice of studying your competitor’s apps and establishing strategies to implement trendy and new features.

The last stage of the mobile app development lifecycle is also about fixing occasional bugs and maintaining the app performance levels.

Maintenance of mobile applications requires the expertise of a top-notch mobile app development company who knows how to respond to critical technicalities & resolve them on time. With regular updates and enhancements, performance monitoring, & issue resolution, mobile apps can be scaled as per vision.

Key Success Factors in Mobile App Development Lifecycle

If you want to launch a world-class mobile application, you need to ensure that you adopt top standards that guarantee the same. Since millions of mobile apps are already out on the market & several million are to be launched in the coming years, it’s necessary to be ahead of your competition and release an app with relevant mobile technologies.

Mobile App Development Success factors

Let’s take a look at 4 factors that you need to consider to ensure world-class mobile app development:

1. User-centric Approach

The success of your mobile application depends on the user appeal. It’s as simple as that. If you stay updated on user trends and consistently scale your app to fit their interests, your mobile app will land huge turnovers.

Key market players like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Instagram’s Mark Zuckerberg derive their success from launching and maintaining user-centric applications.

Continuous feedback integration helps to maintain a customer-centric approach and provide relevant services. It’s necessary to study user trends and do competitor app analysis from time to time to dominate the market and attract new customers.

2. Cross-platform Compatibility

Investing in a native app can lend you great monetary returns as you can offer a super-immersive UX feel to your target market. If you have the budget to release multiple apps across app stores, it’s perfectly fine. When you have a set budget & you want to make the best use of it, it’s ideal to go for cross-platform app development.

Doing so, you can launch your app across multiple platforms such as the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It helps in app distribution and accessibility to all public app stores. With hybrid app development frameworks such as React Native & Flutter, you can build phenomenal cross-platform apps.

3. Security and Privacy

Looking from the user perspective, you’ll understand that data privacy is of utmost importance. With several data breaches happening in today’s cyber world, IT companies have to ensure to build mobile applications that are compliant with data privacy policies.

Incorporating the latest cyber security practices & even technologies like Blockchain helps in preventing data theft & app crashing. Developing a secure application instantly forges trust with your customers and enables them to act with freedom. They can be assured of availing of your services & purchasing your products without being scammed or cheated.

4. Scalability

A software product that doesn’t evolve or grow over time ought to collapse. According to the market trends, you have to scale your mobile app. So choose an app development framework that allows you to scale & customize your app with unlimited capabilities.

With advanced technologies such as Blockchain, IoT, Metaverse, AR & VR, and Big Data in the picture, you need to make the best use of them to offer personalized services. You can plan timelines to scale your app consistently & measure performance goals to dominate the competition always.

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Final Thoughts

Now that you have a clear idea of the mobile app development life cycle & the various processes involved in it, you must choose an apt company to build your app. Moon Technolabs is a leading mobile app development company that provides world-class mobile app development services, right from full-fledged app development to strategic consultation services.

Reach out to us to implement effective DevOps mobile application development practices and launch your dream app in style! You can be assured of releasing an app that draws great monetary returns & establishes firm audience attention.

FAQs

There are 7 stages of app development which are primarily app conceptualization, planning & strategy, wireframing and mockups, development, testing, launch, & maintenance. All these stages of development have to be conducted seamlessly to necessitate top-notch mobile app development.

It takes anywhere between 2-6 months to develop a mobile app. The timeline varies based on parameters such as the complexity of app features, scope creep, the experience of the developer and so on.

The lifecycle of an iOS app is the phases involved in its development. With respect to an iOS app, developers have to build apps that are compliant with Apple App Store guidelines. Prolific iOS app developers can essentially save you a lot of time with app development.

We can generalize the phases of app development into 4 phases namely: 1. Requirement Analysis 2. Wireframing & Mockups 3. App Development & Testing 4. Launch & Maintenance
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Jayanti Katariya

Jayanti Katariya is the CEO of Moon Technolabs, a fast-growing IT solutions provider, with 18+ years of experience in the industry. Passionate about developing creative apps from a young age, he pursued an engineering degree to further this interest. Under his leadership, Moon Technolabs has helped numerous brands establish their online presence and he has also launched an invoicing software that assists businesses to streamline their financial operations.

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