Category: Project Management

Why You Need to Deliver Often and Quickly: The App Submission Process Is Just the Start

When you ship a product, you have just gone through a large benchmark. The release of the product is really just the beginning of the process. You can’t expect the app to have large downloads, perform well and have a lot of usage, without working to improve mistakes. This is a common problem that many make when launching an app.

You can’t just publish and pray that everything is going to go well. This assumes that the launched app is perfect and fully complete. It also ignores the benefits you get from collecting feedback about your app from users. This allows you to roll out new version based upon the feedback and market data. Delivering often and quickly can have benefits for both mature products and unproven ones, but the scenarios will be different.

Concepts Which Are Unproven
When you have a smaller user base for a product that’s unproven on the market, you’ll have a smaller release and you’ll want to launch quickly. There’s a degree of uncertainty with new concepts so you can’t know what the user is going to want right away. By getting it to the market quickly, you can collect data, get user feedback, and look at the assumptions you have made about your product. If you take too long to get your unproven product to market, then you’re using up time and resources based upon assumptions and you may need to change these. Failures will also cost more.

When you release a product you’ll learn from the user base and be able to improve the user experience. You can add new features, fill in gaps in older versions, and make your product better for the user. By focusing on features that the users want or are using the most of in the app for example, you can make the product better and then roll out the new features.

Once you grow the app by looked at the assumptions through approving or disapproving them, have made a more mature app, deliver new features quickly on a regular basis, you will retain, engage, and have a happy user base for your app.

Brands Which Are Mature
When you have a mature brand, there’s already a large user base. Consumers expect a level of quality from any mature product or brand regardless if it’s mobile or not. When the first version of a product goes to market, it has to meet a level of quality that consumers expect. It might not have a lot of features, but it has to be of a high quality, functional, and have real value for the consumer. Users don’t have as much leniency for mature brands when compared to unproven products. New products from an established brand need to please customers from the first release. A viable product is going to be different depending upon the company that’s going to be releasing it.

An MVP needs to be launched quickly, but the first version has to be fleshed out. If you update often, you’re able to add new features and functionality to that product so the user experience is enhanced and more value is added. This adds to retention and user engagement. You need to add value to users when you release new versions and worry less about validating your assumptions to prove your concept.

Spotify has a Decoupled Release Model by creating an environment where the release is easy to do. Their product is complex, but they have changed the architecture which allows for decoupled releases so new features can be pushed out easily without impacting the overall architecture. It’s a ship early and ship often mindset. They have a lightweight process so they can rapidly get new features of their product out fast.

Quick Frequent Releases Make for Better Products
When you deliver quickly and often, you will be able to consistently improve your product, add value to your users, and ensure that your product has longer-term success. It’s important to have a culture and a process that will allow you to do this. You can’t just focus on the initial launch as you’ll have a stagnant product and it will lose its relevancy in the marketplace which is competitive and evolving all the time.

App Developmment Challenges that Impact a Project

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.

Effective Team Management for Top Digital Results

It is common for people to imagine that a web developer’s job involves sitting behind the computer in a dark corner and writing code for endless hours. I have to say that this perception is totally wrong. Web, app and software development involves a huge amount of teamwork based on creative interaction and reliable communication. My job as a manager is to lead the team in the right direction and to ensure that the customer receives the required product within the set timeframe. Let me tell you more about how I have organised the work and how I manage my team to produce excellent results.

Teamwork with Confident Leadership
On my team, I have web designers, web and app developers and software engineers who have the technical skills, talent and experience to produce outstanding digital solutions that match the needs of customers precisely. My primary role is to bring them together and to ensure that everyone puts 100 percent in every project. I hire people who have proven their professional abilities with the creation of actual functional solutions.

Another one of the fundamentals of our successful work is that we are all in one office working together. This makes communication easier and more effective. All team members are more motivated as well. When we start working on a project, everyone who will be involved sits down and the brainstorming session begins. I use proven techniques to make my specialists think out of the box. Every idea and contribution counts. I visualise how the work will be done. By taking all relevant factors into account, I develop a plan and schedule for the project and allocate the tasks.

Productive Communication
As a manager, I know that people are the most important factor for project success. That is why I listen carefully when my experts make suggestions and encourage them to point out potential obstacles. I am with my team every day and keep up to date with everything. We discuss the work that has been completed, how it has been done and what kinds of solutions have been implemented. This enables us to deal with challenges and to make improvements right away. It also gives everyone the sense of belonging and this is a major confidence and motivation booster. Both the work quality and productivity are maintained at equally high levels throughout the whole project.

Smart Problem Solving
My strategy for tackling problems is simple, but has always brought the best result. I sit down together with my team and we work to break the problem into smaller parts until we identify a part that can be resolved directly with the means available to us. Once we have the basis, we move onto the other parts and everything goes into place. When the details are all perfect, the big picture is truly awesome.

Achieving Perfection
I always plan everything meticulously to make sure that it comes out as perfect as I have envisioned it to be. My team of like-minded professionals adheres to this principle as well. We test each component and functionality of every website, app and software product that we develop multiple times to confirm that it is flawless.

With the right skills and motivation and with hard work success is inevitable.

You want to share your plans for a new web project? Contact me or call my office and ask for Philip Philipov.