Agile Mobile App Development Process
Published on 28 Apr 2022 inKey Takeaways:
An agile development approach provides various changes across the entire development life cycle of the mobile application.
Mobile app companies can develop sustainable and robust mobile applications with the highest quality using an agile methodology.
Agile facilitates businesses to fix many project failures, such as cost-related problems or predictability problems, etc.
Agile helps to have regular updates or to fix glitches to provide an unprecedented user experience.
In line with the steady growth of mobile technologies, the demand for mobile application development is increasing exponentially. The strong competition has brought forth a need for a more efficient and trusted approach to app development.
To effectively automate and improve the essential mobile app development processes, software development companies have turned to use the Agile methodology approach.
Before we go any further, let’s explore what the agile approach is all about and discuss why you should use Agile for your mobile app development process.
What is Agile Methodology?
Agile methodology is used in all types of applications, from cultivating desktop apps to mobile apps. This is because these applications require the cooperation of different development teams at every stage of the product’s development cycle, from front-end and back-end to quality assurance.
For your business, the Agile approach helps explain the use case of your application and the challenges that have to be tackled ahead of the development phase.
When it comes to mobile app development, an agile approach to designing focuses particularly on adaptive strategy, customer engagement, risk management, and regular assessment. After which the development team will then develop a finished product perfectly in line with their client’s requirements.
In order to move forward successfully and effectively on tasks; there are different types of Agile methodology frameworks to use, some of which have several things in common but are very diverse.
Agile Methodology Frameworks
There are four different types of agile methodologies, such as:
Scrum – Scrum is one of the most popular approaches used by a lot of companies, It promotes cohesiveness and focuses on quality improvement. Scrum helps the team to effectively communicate and work as a team to tackle challenging issues. (check out this article on how we use Scrum to boost productivity)
Kanban – Kanban is a method that helps teams to facilitate the flow of value through the visualization of workflow and the setting of limits for the work in progress (WIP). With the Kanban Tool, any business efficiency process can be assessed and improved simultaneously.
Extreme Programming (XP) – Extreme Programming is a methodology for the development of software designed to improve the consistency and adaptability to clients’ or customers’ changing needs. It aims to make the iterative, continual releases during the project possible to evaluate and track the progress of the project.
Adaptive Project Framework (APF) – The APF methodology is designed to respond continuously to the unexpected event that could evolve during a project. In approaching projects in the awareness that core parts are continuously evolving, team members may follow a versatile approach and learn during a project by reviewing results.
What these frameworks have in common is that they all focus on the development of lean applications to help create quality software effectively.
These frameworks are therefore performed in sprints, using sprint planning, which helps define what work needs to be achieved and delivered from the get-go. But what are sprints? Let’s go through the first process in the agile methodology.
What are sprints in Agile methodologies?
When developing a mobile app with an agile methodology, large amounts of work is split into several ‘sprints’ or ‘iterations’, with each sprint dedicated to developing different features within your mobile application.
It normally takes 10 days to two weeks to complete a sprint, and after the sprint is completed, the prototype is delivered to the product owner or client. Once approved by the product owner the next sprint can be prepared and initiated.
The following main points are a standard agile sprint roadmap:
Planning: First, a sprint planning meeting is held to identify and prioritise the most relevant sprint elements in the execution of the project where a project manager delegates the task to team members and prioritises tasks on an urgent basis.
Development: Following the completion of the sprint planning where tasks are allocated to each team, the production team will then begin the project work to create the product in line with the approved guidelines.
Testing / QA: A thorough test and documentation of the development results are made prior to the sprint delivery. Here, the quality analysis team initiates the testing of the product before the prototype is delivered to the product owner.
Delivery: The product is transferred to the product owner (client) and then to customers when the prototype has been tested.
Assessment: The reviews and feedback are collected from the customers and the stakeholders for any improvisation and gather information to incorporate into the next sprint.
Besides sprint planning sessions, the team will gather for regular meetings to check and monitor results, resolve issues and focus on keeping the process on track.
Why use the Agile mobile app development process?
The key focus of mobile app developers today is to offer high-quality content to their target audiences. However, this quality ranking is not easy to obtain because multiple obstacles have to be addressed first. This is the part of which agile methodology is implemented.
Here are a few reasons why you should use agile mobile app development:
1. Improved product quality with lower development costs
The agile methodology for mobile app development involves testing during the development stages. This ensures that usability issues will be identified early on in the development process, which will guarantee that you have a higher-quality product once it is ready to launch.
Furthermore, identifying issues early on can help you avoid costly fixes post-launch. This, in turns, will help lower the overall development cost of your mobile application.
To meet the end objective, every developer, designer, tester and quality analyst brings his/her best skills, experience and knowledge which guarantees the best quality of your mobile app. And only the Agile methodology guarantees this since most conventional model frameworks have no such versatility.
2. Flexible and adaptive
Technology is always evolving. This means that if your mobile development process is stringent, your product could become outdated even before it’s launched.
However, new improvements to your developing mobile application can be quickly incorporated without complications using the Agile methodology at different stages.
Development sprints provide you with the opportunity to change the course of your mobile app’s development process when newly innovated features need to be incorporated.
3. Fast return on investment (ROI)
All the above benefits of using Agile methods to develop the mobile app contributes to an increased ROI, whether it is from reduced costs or a higher-quality product.
Moreover, the agile methodology enables you to develop the key features of your mobile app and launch an MVP (minimum viable product) fast, as opposed to the waterfall development methodology, where you have to normally wait for all the features of your app to be developed before it is ready for launch.
4. You’ll get the app your business needs
In an agile methodology, you will have a say throughout the entire development process, ensuring that the development team stays on track and builds the app that your business truly needs.
Whether it is the development of a certain feature or the design of the UI, you will be able to review every single sprint and request changes throughout the development process.
Adopt an Agile mobile app development approach
All in all, it’s no wonder why agile methodology has become highly popular in the field of project management. After all, it provides advantages over conventional app development approaches such as project development amendments, smooth project management and more.
To meet the defined goals and fulfill the client’s standards, a mobile app development company can choose agile for creating mobile applications.
If you are interested in finding out more about the agile mobile app and how it can be used to deliver better outcomes for your mobile app, our Agile methodology experts at Morphosis are here to help. Contact us for a free consultation session today.
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