Understanding Mobile App Development Lifecycles for Enterprises

When digital transformation became the new normal for competitive business strategies, enterprise mobile apps became the face of this transformation. However, enterprise app development involves a well-articulated process spanned over several stages. Building apps for enterprises involves a more meticulous process involving several layers of planning and course corrections.
 
This blog lets us explore every stage in the enterprise app development lifecycle.

What Is the Mobile App Development Lifecycle?

The entire process involving stages like ideation, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance is referred to as the mobile app development lifecycle. Regarding enterprise apps, this lifecycle and its constituent stages are tailored to align with business goals. For instance, the development lifecycle must ensure seamless integration with the enterprise's legacy systems or prioritize specific functionalities that the enterprise users need.

The particular stages in the mobile app development lifecycle include the following.

1. Ideation and Requirement Analysis
2. Planning and Strategic Alignment
3. UI/UX Design
4. Core Development
5. Testing and Quality Assurance (QA)
6. Deployment
7. Maintenance and Updates

Ideation and Requirement Analysis

Every successful app clearly defines a problem and the way it wants to solve it, and this is what is done at the ideation stage. In this ideation phase, you need to identify the key problem it needs to solve, the features and functionalities required to solve it, and the target audience who requires this solution. Based upon this ideation, you need to figure out detailed requirements for the app project.

The ideation, requirement gathering, and corresponding analysis involve the below-mentioned activities:

• Stakeholders within the organization hold discussions to identify the problems and pain points they need to solve and the functionalities required to align with the business processes and workflows. They also set clear expectations for the app project.
• A thorough competitor analysis is also carried out to examine similar existing solutions in the market and identify where the present app can excel over them.  
• When ideating the app and its functionalities, the stakeholders also ensure that the app aligns with organizational goals and priorities.
• Based on the above discussion and analysis, they created a comprehensive requirements document for the app project.
• Based on the identified features and UI/UX requirements, they build basic wireframes or mockups for the app.

Planning and Strategic Alignment

When ideation is complete and clear project requirements are identified, the next obvious step is to create a detailed project roadmap. This roadmap guarantees that the project is defined by its scope, time limits, resources, and financial budget.

Key activities that are undertaken under this step include the following.

• A proper resource allocation plan is created, specifying skilled team members and the required tools and technologies for the project.
• Based upon the availability of skilled resources, budget, and scope technology stack is selected that involves choosing the right operating system platform, programming languages, frameworks, and APIs.
• A financial budget is estimated based on the resource needs and chosen technology stack. The budget considers the core development cost, the cost of third-party integrations, and the cost of deployment and maintenance.
• Based upon the complexities, features, and development challenges, an elaborate timeline and intermittent milestones and respective deliverables are created.

UI/UX Design

Design holds an app's useful features and functionalities together within an aesthetically appealing and seamlessly interactive visual frame. If the design goes wrong, users cannot engage with the users easily, resulting in slower user adoption and non-realization of business goals.

Key activities that make the UI/UX design process include the following.

• A user persona is created to understand the typical end-users who will use the app.
• We create low-fidelity sketches of the app screens, which we call wireframes. These rough app screen sketches showcase the user journey within the app and offer different possibilities.
• The basic wireframes are then shaped into more dynamic prototypes that allow interactions and get closer to the final look and feel of the app.
• The design is presented to the stakeholders, and based upon their feedback, the design is further adjusted or realigned.
• The design prototype is also evaluated and adjusted further to align with the brand elements of the respective enterprise.

Core Development

The core development is more about building the features and functionalities of the app. This stage, apart from coding the app features, also involves making room for integrating legacy systems used by the organization.

The key activities that make this stage include the following.

• The key stage is backend development, which involves server-side configuration, database building, API creation, and third-party API integration.
• The app's front end is built to create a dynamic and interactive user interface and user experience.
• Integrations are created to connect third-party tools, cloud services, and IoT devices.
• Data security and compliance requirements, as per different regulations, are also taken care of at this stage.

Testing and Quality Assurance (QA)

Rigorous testing is required to ensure that the app performs seamlessly all the time. Testing involves bug detection and debugging, code optimization, and testing the app under different loads and constraints.

Some of the key testing types done for enterprise app projects include the following.

• One key stage of QA testing is functional testing. It is primarily carried out to ensure the expected performance of all app features.
• The second most important aspect of QA testing is performance testing. It is carried out to ensure that the app maintains consistent performance regardless of traffic and server request load.
• Security testing helps protect an app against security threats and vulnerabilities through measures like data encryption and multi-factor authentication.
• The last but not least important aspect of QA testing is user acceptance testing. The objective of this testing is to collect feedback concerning usability issues that need to be addressed.

Deployment

The app is deployed through the distribution platforms after successful testing and rectification of the faultlines. Generally, enterprise apps are distributed internally for business stakeholders and employees.

The deployment stage of the enterprise app development involves the following.

• A production environment is created for app deployment.
• Some enterprise apps that are also consumer-facing are also published on Google Play or the Apple App Store.
• Apps also need to be rolled out internally before being released in the open market. For such internal rollouts, we leverage mobile device management (MDM) systems.
• For enterprise users Training detailed user manual documents are created to ensure seamless adoption.

Maintenance and Updates

Following the app deployment, it is important to maintain the app continuously. This requires safeguarding data security against evolving threats, mitigating pain points based on user feedback, and adding new features based on user feedback and competitive trends.

Key activities that are frequently carried out during maintenance are as follows.

• App performance and usage metrics data are monitored regularly to identify performance bottlenecks and user pain points.
• Bugs and errors are identified and fixed to address performance glitches that users report.
• Based on user feedback and competitive trends, new features are introduced, or old functionalities are enhanced.
• Security patches and new security features are rolled out to address evolving security threats and vulnerabilities.

Conclusion
While all the above-mentioned stages in the enterprise app development lifecycle are standardized, seasoned professional experts can follow them to perfection. To beat expectations regarding unique user experience, unmatched performance, and business conversion, you need excellence beyond these all-too-known lifecycle steps.

Build enterprise apps to transform business operations with IndianAppDevelopers. As a top enterprise app development company, we deliver tailored solutions with legacy system integration, robust security, and scalability to meet business goals.