Best practices for mobile application development

Best Practices for Mobile Application Development Application development process is undergoing revolutionary changes with increased focus on security, cross-device compatibility, innovative tools development and usability.

Mobile devices have downplayed the personal computers due to their portability, compactness, easy-to-use touch interface, quick access to information, social networking capabilities and many more. This has caused mushrooming of mobile applications for myriad of personal services of individuals. Mobile application development has attained amazing levels of maturity that it has soaring prospects in the enterprise arena as well.

The general best practices of application development life cycle include: Phase-by-phase release This is breaking the development into short deliverable and releasing the product features in phases. This iterative approach greatly helps to shape the product and features according to the market requirements. It aims at an initial release of the basic prototype version and improving upon it in subsequent releases. As a result of early incorporation of user feedback, the development becomes more streamlined.

Clear definition of requirements & design A thorough study of requirements and customer expectations and a detailed planning of the design aspects like product architecture, selection of framework, programming languages, hardware specification, user interface, database design, establishing business constraints etc. need to be clearly defined and documented. .

Coding guidelines The development of code according to the standards and guidelines is the central part of developing successful products. Apart from having a full-fledged understanding of the requirements and design, the developer needs to adopt the best coding practices like good code organization with separate layers for interface, business logic, and data to ensure security and re-usability, meaningful declaration of variables, classes and database elements, clear commenting at the appropriate places, and other object oriented concepts.

A well-coded program developed with a ‘make it right the first time approach saves a lot of testing efforts. Who can ensure the quality of a product better than its maker?

Peer Review A review of code by the member of development team not only helps in identifying the errors in the software, but also offers learning opportunities for the developer as well as the reviewer. The positive feedback of a peer review improves the performance of products.

Parallel Testing The testing process needs to go hand in hand with the development process. A full life cycle testing has tremendous impact on the product performance and project time and cost. The testing performed at the early stages of development identifies any overlooked business rules. The testing of a small unit of the program as and when it is developed eliminates the repetition of the same errors in the development of subsequent units thereby reducing recoding and retesting efforts.

User Analytics The web analytics is helpful in gaining awareness of the user response to the application and determining the priorities and usefulness of the features. The usage statistics also provides direction for the developer to plan the list of features to be included in the subsequent releases. It also helps to enhance the user experience of the product.

When it comes to mobile applications, the development process is successful when it involves an organized approach with the following milestones: Understanding the target users: Knowing the business goals and the target users of the application is the first step in its development life cycle. It is essential to clearly define the requirements and functional features of the application.

Exploring the app store: A preliminary research in the app store to identify the availability of similar apps in the market is extremely important before investing time and resources. It alarms about duplication so that the app can be redesigned with additional features and modified scope.

Expert & End User feedback: Obtaining the suggestions of experts in the domain will add value to the product. It provides answers to any domain-specific technical questions related to the application.

The feedback also provides vital inputs for performing feasibility analysis and including advanced features. Receiving the opinion of potential users helps in prioritizing the features and presenting the product in a user friendly manner.

Feasibility analysis: This involves visualizing the concept to be developed and anticipating the effects and possibilities about its performance. It validates the concept against the current market scenario, the existing technology options and discovers the feasibility of developing the product with the expected functionality. It brings clarity to determine technology to be used and any initial training to be given to the developers. The feasibility report stands as a reference to decide the course of development with details like number of releases, targeted platforms, etc.

Storyboarding and documenting the specifications: The documentation of all aspects of development including development methodology, business requirements, targeted devices and platforms, functional features, choice of technology framework and other software specifications like programming language, database etc., the number of releases planned, estimated time and cost for the releases.

For multi-platform applications, it is important to decide which aspects can be common and which aspects need to be different. All these details need to be clearly documented.

User interface design: The design of the UI has to be intuitive and visually appealing. At the same time, it needs to be user friendly with clear layout, smooth navigation’s, flexible screen performance, reasonable loading speed and less power consumption. An optimal use of images is necessary for quick loading of the app. A right balance needs to be achieved with the number of images so that the interface is attractive as well as fast-loading and limited use of battery. The use of vector graphics will help in achieving this.

The interactive features like wizards, notifications, gestures, the contextual features like GPS, gyroscope and useful features like auto filling of form fields etc will enhance the usability of the application.

Programming: This most important part of development needs skill and responsibility. The knowledge of the latest technology and the domain knowledge of the app are equally important in programming. The developer needs to understand the development specifications thoroughly and needs to follow the general coding guidelines. For the development of mobile apps, there are many specific considerations including security features like user authentication, data encryption, back up and roll back of data etc, usability features, compatibility across multiple devices, browsers and screen sizes, efficient use of native and cross-platform tools, and better management of code and API. The development typically begins with prototyping of miniature version of product with basic features for the initial release. The feedback from beta testing needs to form the basis for the next release.

Testing: Additional emphasis and planning are needed for testing mobile applications as they involve more testing activities than the traditional apps. Security testing should include testing of back up mechanism and security features like remote kill for the case of stolen mobile devices. The compatibility testing will need to be extensive covering all combination of devices, OS versions, browsers and screen specifications. The usability testing needs to be more elaborate to validate all interface aspects of user experience against ease of use in terms of clarity, navigation and search and performance aspects like app’s behavior during network connection loss, energy efficiency, and loading time etc.

A mission well-planned is half done. Hence a systematic approach and the adherence to best practices can make enormous difference in the success of a mobile application.

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