How Long Does it Take to Develop an App? By Tory Darling, Codal Inc
______________________________________________________ The duration of time that it takes a mobile app development company to create and develop an app varies depending on the type of app. An MVP (minimum viable product) can take about five months to fully complete. Although if you want to develop an app with many features and capabilities, it could take as long as a year, to a year and a half to develop. The process of developing an app includes four distinct stages. The type of mobile app development and design is what determines the length of time each of these parts will take. Discovery and Planning The discovery and planning stage is one that is pretty standard across all types of apps. Some of the steps included in this stage is project introduction, goal definition, design plan creation and sprint planning. Roughly, this stage would last approximately one to two weeks. An application development firm should have this stage’s components set up in a structured that can be quickly implemented. Research and Strategy Unlike the first stage, the research and strategy phase time duration is significantly varied. The components included in this stage is user surveys and interviews, journey and empathy mapping, rapid prototyping, user testing and define design guidelines. The reason the time frame is so varied is all these components can either be briefly or thoroughly completed. For example, a ux design company may find it necessary to pool a larger sample size of users to test, resulting in it taking longer to complete the stage. An average range that this stage would take is four weeks to two months.
Conceptual Design The conceptual design phase is one where the user experience design services utilize their research into the direct development of the app. The four parts of this phase is sitemap creation, low fidelity prototyping, user testing and design documentation creation. The major aspect of this third stage that vary from app to app is the low fidelity prototyping. This stage is all dependent on the type of app and the features wanted in the app, which greatly fluctuates the time frame. The length of time for this stage can range from one month to five months. Detailed Design The final stage of developing an app is the detailed design stage. The three sections of this stage is high fidelity interactive prototyping, user testing and user interface design. This stage is probably the most fluctuating stage in terms of time frame due to the fact that these three parts are highly dependent on the number of features of the app. For example, if there is only five features on the app, the time to prototype, test, and develop a user interface design is relatively short in comparison to a fifty feature app. On average, for an app that is considered an MVP, the time dedicated to this stage can take about a month, whereas an advanced app can take up to six months to complete. Conclusion How long does it take to develop an app? Well, it really depends on the type of app. In general an app with minimal features can take a experienced mobile apps development chicago company four months to complete. On the other end, an app that requires an in depth and heavy workload in all four stages can last an entire year to develop. It is important to have a clear understanding of the type of app you are looking to develop first and then predict your time frame based on the features desired.
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