The average app development time through traditional development methods is anywhere between three and nine months. You have to factor in writing your brief, research, design planning, making wireframes, development, deployment and then continual improvement.
Speed is not always about paying the most money or picking the most expensive developers, so much is about making smart business decisions, minimising mistakes and involving the right people at the right time.
Here is our guide to some of the ways you can ensure your app is completed in the fastest time possible.
Get The Process Right
Rushing to finishing is not always the answer to producing something faster, that can just lead to errors that will add to the length of time it will all take. Often it is about taking a step back, putting together a plan and avoiding errors that will just make things worse. Look at these examples of putting a little thought into how you work.
Planning Saves Time
Start by having a proper list of requirements and then a strong wireframe. This will mean you develop only what's needed and you’ll avoid lots of reworking that will cost time and money. Don’t over-design the wireframes, they can be low fidelity wireframes, they just need to stretch out the core functionality and UI.
Use Agile And Focus On Short Sprints
By using the agile methodology you’ll have your teams working together (internal and external) to achieve the goals faster. By focusing on short sprints you keep the energy high and spot problems early, which is critical when you are doing ap development for startups.
Automate, Automate, Automate
One time killer is spending hours on repetitive tasks. This is where automation can be great for fast app development. Find systems that can do these things for you. Testing is a perfect example, if you could introduce automated testing then you’ll save a chunk of time on your development.
Android vs iOS - Pick One
One simple way to get your app to market faster is to focus on producing for just one platform initially. Whilst it doesn’t half the development time it will reduce it by a significant amount. Even if your customer base is spread over both platforms, still focus on the one initially, get it to market and then quickly move to the second platform.
For the bigger exposure, then selecting Android as the initial platform would be a good answer as it has a higher level of download but always check this against your likely audience.
Focus On The MVP
Too often a business tries to include every idea they have into the first release of their app, which is a big mistake. It will not only slow down how quickly you can release your app, but it leaves far more room for mistakes to happen.
Focus on producing a Minimum Viable Product at the start. Clearly lay out the minimum requirements needed to attract users and give them functionality that makes the app viable. You can add more and more functions once you have that first release out but just focus initially on the things that matter most to the user.
One related action is to get a release date written down very early. Once this is written down, it is easier to get everyone focused on finishing the release on time. It helps people make tough decisions on what should be in an MVP because sometimes compromise is the only way to hit deadlines and forces people to focus.
Pick A No-Code Platform
Hands down the biggest tip for fast app development is going down the route of no-code app development and selecting a no-code platform. There are many reasons selecting these platforms will speed up your app development.
- The platforms come with templates that will give your team a jump-start and have best practices built-in from the start
- Many basic functions are built into the platforms to save you time on development, for example, logins or registration functionality
- You can afford to employ more people to work on it (as no-code developers come much cheaper than traditional ones) meaning you can get the job done faster
- Automation, particularly things like testing, are built into these products
- Non-developers can access the tools and build user stories that they know are realistic, so less time is wasted asking for functionality or features that cannot be made
- Most of these platforms come with the infrastructure built-in or as an add-on. This avoids you spending time organising this and ensuring the app you build is properly hosted on the infrastructure you select.
Get No-Code Experts
If you are going to maximise the benefit of these no-code platforms, you should pick a team of no-code experts. It is of course possible to build much of the app yourself with these platforms but that will slow down development.
Find yourself experts in the platform you have chosen to build your app on and also look for people that have experience in your app. If you are making an eCommerce app, use someone that has built them before on your platform of choice.
Think carefully about making a project manager one of the experts you put into your team. You might be tempted to manage things yourself and maybe you have the experience to do this, but if you are unsure, select an expert that will choose the right people for each job, how to get the best out of the platform and manage everyone so tasks are aligned.
Ultimately, any no-code app development is only as good as the people that work on it. However good the platforms, you need good people and the more you can afford to invest on that side, the faster your app will get developed.
In the beginning, we said that the average time to development was three to nine months, but if you choose the no-code option and follow the options we have suggested above, we certainly believe you can more than half that time. So the answer to the question ‘How quickly can you build a mobile app’, the answer can be four to eight weeks!
