Each app development project has its own challenges, but some tend to surface all the time no matter what the project. There are several that can kill the project all together, but there are ways that you can overcome these challenges.
Budget Overruns and Project Delays
One of the biggest challenges that companies face are product delays in getting the product shipped. This problem occurs all the time in complex projects as well as smaller ones. Dependencies, improper capacity planning, poor processes and talent gaps are some of the reasons for delays.
Product delays also cause budget overruns as “time is money.” If you take a long time to release a product, you incur waste and higher costs.
How to Solve the Problem
It’s hard to avoid budget overruns and project delays, but you can reduce budget and time risks in projects.
• Have Iterative Development – You can’t have perfection with the first version of a product. If you aim for this, you’ll never get the product to the market in a timely manner. You need to ship frequently and quickly and you can improve the product based upon the user feedback that you get.
• Use Capacity Planning – If you don’t have the right capacity planning, you get budget overruns and product delays. If you don’t have the right team capacity, then the budget and time estimate won’t be correct. If you create a process which helps you to determine team capacity and then compare this with the project requirements, you can accurately predict velocity.
• Be Flexible – If you can’t adapt to changing needs this impacts budget and time. If you have flexibility in the app development process, you’ll manage the budget and your time and will adapt quickly when requirements change.
Talent Gaps and lack of In-House Experience
You may feel you can use existing QA teams for your mobile projects. This could be true, but you could also have talent gaps. This can be the case if you have employees who aren’t trained to develop apps. There can be as assumption that the in-house team can learn mobile technology quickly to meet the company needs, but this isn’t always possible.
How to Fix the Problem
You can hire talent or you might want to source a specialized app developer partner. If you can’t hire new staff to meet the need then source a specialized partner. Just make sure the vendor can meet the talent gaps you have. You can also look at:
• Integration with the team
• Retention and knowledge transfer
• Experience with similar projects
• Change your management processes
• Look at the overall development process
By looking at these considerations you will be able to account for concerns such as the ability to manage and account for change, ability to deliver product requirements, risk reduction such as personnel, budget and time.
You need to deal with changing properties as this and impact scope, timelines, and can ruin your budget. You can’t have rigid app development as any change or challenge might have serious consequences for the project.
If you’re flexible and adaptable, you’ll be able to deal with changing requirements and priorities. You may face common app development challenges, but they can be overcome or the risk of them occurring in the first place reduced. Issues are a direct result of product development so account for this during the process and you’ll reduce or eliminate risks to your success.
