Any mobile enterprise must have a thorough understanding of the mobile app development lifecycle.

There is no denying that many business models have been significantly impacted by the way customers and employees are using their mobile devices to stay informed. According to certain statistics, the Google Play Store offers more than 3.48 million apps for download, while the Apple App Store offers 2.22 million.

Today, creating a mobile app is not as difficult as it once was thanks to the availability of numerous reliable sources and a large developers community. However, creating a high-quality mobile app necessitates a thorough planning process.

To construct a great mobile application, there are various other processes in between that require your correct attention. These steps range from designing to building to testing to eventually releasing in the market.

To create a high-quality mobile application in 2022, you must adhere to the 7 main phases of the mobile app development lifecycle, which we will outline in this blog.

- Project Ideation and Requirement Analysis
- Research Your Competitors
- Planning
- UX/UI Designing and Prototyping
- Development With Quality Assurance
- Publish App on Google Play Store and App Store
- Maintenace and Post-App Development

Project Ideation and Requirement Analysis

Project conceptualization is the first step in every mobile app development lifecycle. If you work for a company that creates mobile apps, you are aware that whenever a client approaches you with an idea for a mobile app, they also bring their own set of requirements, which usually include objectives, long-term goals, an estimated budget, a timeline, and what they hope to get out of the app.

It is crucial to have a clear idea of your project in the minds of your client and the project team if you want to construct a successful mobile application.

Once you have a comprehensive understanding of your client's expectations and vision, it's time to analyze the needs, which happen on three levels: business requirements, end-user requirements, and system requirements. This step needs to be completed properly because it will determine how much manpower and resources will be used.

Research Your Competitors

It is advised to conduct a thorough analysis of your competition before you begin developing a mobile application. For example, if you are developing a mobile application for food delivery, then consider the leaders in this app sector, such as Zomato or Swiggy.

This will assist you in learning the dos and don'ts of mobile apps, which will help you avoid wasting your time, money, and effort on the project. Additionally, you can assess the present demand for your project and focus your efforts on attracting a potential audience.

Planning

"A goal without a plan is just a wish,"

Even though we have all heard this saying countless times, it still rings true now just as it did back then.

Project planning and estimating are crucial in boosting project success rates because they offer insightful information. Every time a project is being developed, there are a number of risks that go along with it that employers are typically apprehensive to face, such as forgetting to include a crucial feature, changing requirements and rebuilding modules, failing to deliver the project on time, having an unmanageable budget, and having a hazy structure.

This does not imply that project estimation and planning result in a precise figure. No, this simply means that it provides developers with the time and room they need for a project to be completed with added flexibility and less risk.

What is involved in project planning?

- Assessing features
- Resource evaluation
- Project Timeline

The team decides on the optimum plan by accurately assessing all three variables and taking into account other variables such as limiting risks, communicating clear information on costs, benefits, and release, eliminating uncertainty, and credibility.

UX/UI Designing and Prototyping

From a business standpoint, designing and prototyping are crucial because they provide you a sense of how the app will appear to end-users and how well their experience will be as they use it. The likelihood that your app will have a greater retention rate if your user finds no defects in the interface and its features of it. Let's know the steps that go into designing and prototyping your app. But first, let's define what UI and UX are:

- User interface, or UI, describes how your app appears to users.
- User Experience, or UX, describes how your app functions.

End-User Journey Roadmap

Your project team creates a user roadmap outlining the journey of users' experience as they use your app. It is crucial to design from the perspective of creating wireframes and user interfaces.

- Wireframes (UX)
- Wireframes

An app's framework is its wireframes. They give you the visual layout of your app, which outlines the hierarchy, and relationships between the various components that combined will make up your final product. These wireframes are used by designers to produce an interactive prototype that can be clicked on to get a feel for the finished product in real-time.

Design (UI) and Prototype

Any app's user interface (UI) is its visual language, and it plays a significant role in keeping people interested in it. The user interface (UI) of an app consists of a style guide, motion designs, and a video demonstrating your program's final appearance with all of its transitions and navigations.

What we're trying to imply is that even though your concept is revolutionary and hasn't even been attempted on the market yet, you still need an engaging user interface and useful user experience to make your app a success. Be sure your design team gives each stage of the process the attention it deserves.

Development With Quality Assurance

The code-writing process now in underway by the developers. The entire project is separated into several modules at this stage, and your app is developed in a series of phases called as sprints or scrums. The subsequent steps for each step are as follows:

Refinement

The backlog is continually updated, sorted, and cleared thanks to this ongoing process. A backlog is a prioritized list of items that are known to be necessary for the development of an app. It is preferable to continue the scheduled refinement meeting in order to maintain things in alignment.

Planning

The sprint planning meeting lasts no longer than two hours and the owner attends it. The goal of the meeting is to select the tasks that will be included in the following sprint and confirm that all items on the discussion list align with the acceptance criteria.

Coding

Developers begin building code in this phase and putting the Sprint-approved features into practice. QA engineers begin writing the automated tests concurrently. If the developers begin using code reviews, it will be advantageous because it will make the written code for your app clear and transparent, allowing them and other developers to work on it without difficulty.

Testing (Quality Assurance)

Quality Assurance, also known as QA, is a technique used to stop mistakes from being made in a developed application so that they do not cause issues for the final user. Every stage of developing a mobile app includes QA, whether it is writing automated tests during the coding phase, running automated tests to ensure that new functionality work with existing features, or carrying out UI tests, virtual device tests, or manual tests. It ensures that your finished product satisfies all user, system, and business requirements.

Publish App on the Google Play Store and App Store

It's time to publish your app on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store once the first version has undergone proper testing and is ready. However, there are some guidelines you need to follow before publishing your app to either of these stores, which you can find in each official store's instructions. Additionally, there are other components you must upload in order to publish your app on these marketplaces which are as follows:

Google Play

When you publish your app on the Google Play store, you must also make available any infographics, videos, government-mandated assets such as privacy policy, demographic, geographic, or pricing as well as the deployment configuration that is optionally advised.

Apple Store

The first step is to complete the basic information about your app on the product page, including the name, icon, important features, and any other legally required assets like the privacy statement. Then upload your app using the Xcode which might further go into testing. Then choose a specific app version, such as the first, second, and so on. Next, upload the app screenshots captured with the various devices. Upload that screenshot as well if your software supports dark mode. These screenshots will clearly illustrate how your app's user interface looks. Finally, publish your application. Following that, an Apple employee will determine if your app complies with the App Store's guidelines. The entire procedure could require 1-2 days.

Maintenance and Post-App Development

This completes the cycle of app development. During this stage, the development team continues to track the app's performance and stats on the relevant app stores using analytical tools like Google Analytics and Crashlytics. The post-development phase necessitates further product development in response to shifting consumer expectations and user feedback to stay ahead of the competition.

Wrapping-Up

All the stages of the lifecycle of developing a mobile app have been covered.

We hope this blog was helpful and that you now have a clear idea of the steps involved in developing a mobile app, releasing it, and maintaining it after publication.

Feel free to inquire in the comments area if you still have any questions. Your comments will be answered with pleasure, of course!