Developing a mobile application is a business trend, a market inclination, and, overall, a consumer preference in 2022. Today, businesses of all scales and sizes are going for mobile app development. To explain, nearly 50% of small-scale businesses already own a mobile application at present. As a result, the demand for business app development is on a surge as more and more businesses are looking for ways to digitalize their operations.
It is commonly known that every app development project comes with a development lifecycle. This ADLC determines the time an app’s development process will take. Naturally, every business wants to launch its app as early as possible and looks for ways to cut down on the app development stages.
However, every technology expert is aware of the fact that cutting down on an app’s development stages can have devastating effects on the mobile application as well as the business. This blog will provide detailed information on all the downsides of cutting down on an app’s development stages. Let’s start this blog by understanding what exactly the app development lifecycle is.
What Is ADLC?
In lay terms, ADLC is a series of steps and processes that goes into developing a mobile application. Every digital product has its own unique development process, which determines how a product will exactly be developed.
For most digital platforms like websites and mobile applications, the stages of the development phases are market research, planning, UI/UX design, programming, QA testing, product launch, and maintenance. Naturally, each stage has its own time requirement, which contributes to the total time of the development process.
In cases where a business is looking to develop a large-scale or enterprise-level mobile application, the mobile SDLC can take a year or even more from start to end. However, this timeframe is not feasible for many businesses, due to which businesses cut down on the app development phases.
You must be wondering, what is the reason for businesses to shorten the development lifecycle of a mobile app, right? The upcoming section will provide an answer to this question in detail.
Why Do Businesses Cut Down on App Development Steps?
Limited Budget
It is commonly understood that the longer an app takes to be built, the more it will cost. This is because most development agencies and freelance developers charge for their projects on an hourly basis.
In certain countries like USA and Canada, where hourly development rates are as high as USD 150 and USD 100, respectively, the overall cost of building an app can turn out to be impractical for a business.
The easiest solution to this problem is to cut down on the mobile SDLC. This way, businesses can get their mobile application at a much less cost.
Reduced Time-to-market
As we discussed before, every business wants to launch its application in the market as early as possible. However, certain app types include complex features and functionalities and, therefore, have a high time-to-market.
In this case, it is challenging and often impossible for a business to launch the app in less time. As a result, businesses resort to cutting down on the app development cycle. It is worth noting that less time-to-market is the leading reason why businesses want to cut down on their mobile app’s SDLC.
The idea here is to skip steps in the app development process and reduce the overall time an app will take to be developed. This enables businesses to launch their product in less time and gain market success.
Lack of Team
We mentioned before that the app development lifecycle is a process that undergoes numerous stages. Each stage of the development process requires a specialist with a specific set of skills for its optimum completion.
To explain, a business will need to hire a team of business analysts, UI/UX designers, programmers, and QA engineers to build a mobile application efficiently. However, hiring these specialists can be a cost-intensive matter, as the business will have to spend additionally on human resource management, salary, infrastructure, etc.
Therefore, businesses that are unable to afford these costs cannot hire these employees. As a result, businesses are left with no choice but to cut down on the app development steps.
These are a few of the many reasons why businesses cut short on the app development lifecycle. However, everything comes with a cost, and so does cutting short on the mobile SDLC. In the next section of this blog, we will discuss the downside of cutting down the development stages of a mobile app.
Why It Is a Bad Idea to Cut Down on Development Process?
Increased Chances of Market Failure
Every stage of the ADLC is important and has a critical role in the market success of an app. For example, many businesses tend to neglect the importance of the market research and feature planning stage. However, this stage enables a business to find the most relevant and top-notch features for the mobile application.
As a result, skipping stages in the app development process can hinder the whole mobile application and defy the purpose of creating a mobile application. This will, in turn, make your app less likely to be accepted by your target customers and will increase its chances of failure.
Compromised Product Quality
Every stage of the development process has a role in assuring the optimal quality of the mobile application. As a result, cutting down on the app development stages can significantly degrade the quality of the final mobile application.
For example, many businesses skip the different steps of UI/UX design and directly jump to the prototyping phase. However, the other stages of UI/UX design, like sketching and wireframing, are equally important.
Jumping directly to design prototyping makes it challenging to determine and finalize features and element placement and often reduces the overall quality of the final mobile application. This is one of the many examples where reducing the app development phases can negatively impact the overall quality of the app.
Reduced App Performance
Performance is one of the most important factors that determine whether or not a mobile application be successful in the market. The app development stages have a key role in enhancing the performance of the mobile application and can either make or break the application.
For example, businesses often choose the cross-platform approach over the native development approach to cut short the time it takes to develop an app. While this does not directly cut down the app development stages, it is also commonly known that cross-platform apps are low in performance compared to their native counterpart.
To explain, native apps are developed using OS-specific technologies, frameworks, programming languages, design standards, etc., and therefore have a high-end performance, which is a factor often seen missing in cross-platform applications. These native applications also have a higher development time requirement than cross-platform applications, which is why businesses resort to developing cross-platform apps to cut short on the app development time requirement.
Degraded User Experience
User experience is the key to market success. Businesses, as well as developers, are aware of this fact and work towards delivering a top-notch experience to the intended users of the mobile application.
However, when a business or a programmer cuts short on the mobile SDLC, it is challenging to achieve this objective. Skipping any stage in the app development process will have a direct negative impact on the user experience.
To elaborate, when you skip the testing stage of the mobile app development process, you will end up deploying a mobile application with bugs, crashes and errors. As a result, the users will have to use a low-quality app, thus reducing the overall user experience.
Similar concept applies to UI/UX design, where negligence in design research can reduce the app’s functionality and feature relevancy, and degrade the overall user experience.
Reverse Effect on Time-to-market
As we mentioned before, one of the major reasons why businesses skip stages in the mobile SDLC is to reduce their app’s time-to-market. In case you do not know, time-to-market is the time between the initiation and completion of the app development project.
Looking from a business’s point of view, skipping stages in the ADLC is the best way to reduce the app’s time to market and speed up its launch time. However, this isn’t always the case, as many times, skipping stages in the app development process can further increase an app’s time-to-market.
For example, not testing your app’s UI/UX design will create obstacles in the programming stage. In certain cases, the programmer might realize the design bugs amid the programming process. This can be a time-consuming factor, as the development process will go to and fro and will not have any progress, delaying the app’s launch.
Limited App Scalability
Scalability is one of the most crucial factors in mobile applications. Today, most mobile apps are developed to be easily scalable. As a business grows and expands, its requirements change and become more complex. It is through app scalability that businesses are able to maintain their app’s quality with their changing demands.
However, applications that are developed with a shortened mobile SDLC have a low-quality codebase that is difficult to read. This makes it challenging for the programmers to upgrade the application, and therefore, these applications have limited scalability.
As a result, cutting short on an application’s development stages might seem like a good idea initially, but is highly risky for the business as well as the app’s success. In many cases, businesses that have created an unscalable app have to repeat the app development process from scratch to keep up with the changing business requirements.
These were a few of the many drawbacks of cutting down on the app development phases. It is worth noting that the idea of cutting short on the development process is not the only way to build an app in less time. There are ways in which a business can build a high-quality mobile application without skipping the stages in the development process.
In the following section, we will discuss different ways in which a business can get a high-quality and economically viable app in less time.
Tips to Reduce Your App’s Development Time Requirement
Go for MVP Product
Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is an approach to website and mobile app development where a business develops a platform with only the most basic and necessary features.
Going with MVP development means that you will integrate less number of features in your mobile application and, therefore, will develop a simple application. While the initial stages of the app development process, i,e. market research and planning remain the same, other development stages, like UI/UX design, programming, and QA testing, will take significantly less time.
Moreover, MVP development requires less cost investment and will significantly cut down on the development time requirement, owing to the less number of features that need to be developed for the application.
Buy Readymade Solutions
Whitelabel solutions are highly popular in business app development. These are readymade applications that are available with major app development agencies. The agencies create a common code base and make minor changes in the application’s UI design, and deliver it to the businesses.
As a result, the business does not need to invest time and capital in all the stages of the mobile app development process. Therefore, going for Whitelabel solutions enables businesses to cut down on the mobile SDLC without compromising on the app’s quality.
However, it is worth noting that there are high chances of numerous businesses buying the readymade solutions of a single development agency. As a result, it is difficult for businesses to deliver a unique and personalized user experience using Whitelabel solutions.
It is essential to note that not every development agency offers readymade mobile app solutions and the ones that do have limited options. To explain, if XYZ agency is offering a readymade eCommerce app, it is not necessary that the same agency will also offer a taxi booking service app. Moreover, if you want to implement a new business idea, this approach will not be applicable, and you will have to go with custom development.
Go for Cross-platform Approach
Native development and cross-platform development are the two approaches to building a mobile application. Both of these approaches have their own technologies, frameworks, and coding standards.
Businesses commonly go with native app development to build high-quality mobile applications. However, in this approach, a business needs to develop a different application to target the users of different operating systems. Generally speaking, most businesses build an app for Android and iOS. Of course, the developers need to follow the complete development process twice, which increases the app’s time and cost requirement.
One way to overcome this challenge is to go with cross-platform development. Here a business develops a single platform for multiple operating systems. While the quality of cross-platform applications is slightly lower than that of native apps, it is a good alternative for businesses looking to cut down on the development stages and get a cost-efficient app in less time.
Thoroughly Plan UI/UX
Market research is a critical stage in developing a mobile application. Conducting thorough market research enables business developers and UI/UX designers to optimally plan the UI/UX of the platform.
With a thoroughly planned UI/UX design, businesses can efficiently reduce their ADLC. To explain, with a rigid, well-planned, and thoroughly tested UI/UX design, the programmers can easily code the application. This design efficiency will eliminate feature-related challenges in the development process and make programming a swift and hurdle-free process. This, in turn, will reduce the development phases of your mobile application.
Final Thoughts
The app development process is an integral part of the mobile app development project. The process of creating a mobile application can be time and capital consuming, owing to the numerous stages and steps involved in the mobile SDLC.
As a result, every business aspires to reduce the mobile app development stages, even though it can be highly challenging to do so. This is because cutting down on the development steps can have various downsides on the overall app development project.
However, by following the correct measures and appointing the right approaches, you are certain to efficiently cut down on the development process and get a high-end mobile application in less time and cost.
