Four Steps to Build a Custom Application

Stage 1: Collecting Requirements for a New Project

This is the initial stage and it requires a thorough analysis of the current situation on the market and understanding what you expect from a new product.

We think that it’s good to divide this stage into several components:

  • Business requirements. You should think of the overall strategy of the business and the role of a new software product here. We recommend defining some key peculiarities that will let the app stand out among the competitors. For example, you may offer the fastest delivery service in your location.
  • Stakeholders’ requirements. It can be an interview or a chat with the people that have a clear vision of where the company is now, where it’s going and how it can grow with the help of a new application. You should be ready to end up with controversial requirements that you will need to aggregate into a single vision.
  • Product requirements. Here we mean everything that is related to the software itself: functional (how it will behave) and non-functional (safety, quality, and efficiency) specs.
  • Regulatory norms. You should always check if you meet the norms of local and global quality standards and metrics like FDA, ISO, etc.

Stage 2: Specs and Planning

If you don’t have a business analyst in your office, it will be hard to deal with this stage. However, your software development vendor will probably offer you an option when a new project is backed up with e BA.

Here are three things that a BA deals with:

  • Use case
  • Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) documentation
  • User stories

If a BA doesn’t have a technical background, there should be a project manager or CTO to prepare all the documentation the right way. They will think of the requirements, specs, possible obstacles and the ways to overcome them.

Stage 3: Designing, Development, and Testing

When you have collected all the requirements, it’s time to visualize them. It can be a wireframe that will provide you with a full understanding of the app functionality. It may lack some beauty of a mockup but you can click and test how it behaves. And you can offer some updates if required.

If you are happy with the design and the functionality of the app, it’s time to build it. Developers will pick up the best-suiting methodology like Agile, Waterfall, DevOps, etc. The next steps will be the choice of architecture and technology stacks. Testing should be integrated into the process of development from the very beginning.

Stage 4: Deployment, Iteration, and Monitoring

The happiest time for app deployment is Friday at 5 pm. Of course, we’re joking and we do not recommend you to ever do this. Even if you have a perfect app, you cannot predict whether you will have any problems right after the deployment.

Here are the ways you can deploy a new app:

  • Dummy or Recreate. You terminate the old version and replace it with the new one.
  • Incremental. A new version is slowly replacing the old one.
  • Shadow. The old version will exist until the moment when there’s zero traffic.

The next steps will be collecting information about the productivity and efficiency of the app and its upgrades in the future.

Summary

You can expand this list of stages if needed. Here at OporaSolutions, we give only a brief description of what we are doing at each stage as there’s a lot of information to add. And we’ll do this on request.  If you’re looking for a reliable vendor to build a custom software product, drop us a message and we’ll get back to you right away.

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Estimated reading time: about 3 min.