Once you have an app idea, a lot many thoughts occupy your mind- various questions begin to haunt you. Among those, the second most common question after ‘How much will it cost?’ is ‘How long will it take to develop a mobile app?’ It’s obvious to come across this question, especially when the competition is arising to the extent that a wide array of applications are hitting the app market each day. Many of our clients found it tricky to tackle this question, and so here we are defining how to get an estimate of time span involved.
Firstly, it’s nearly impossible to accurately tell the time period until the initial release is ready to enter the market. Even if you have a clear idea of what your app will do and whom it will entertain, there are various other factors that ungovernable. And thus, can affect the time an app development agency takes for developing the app.
Factors affecting Time Required for Mobile App Development
Platform
The level of efforts and time required for creating a fully-functional app depends on the platform you choose. As per our experience, both the platforms demand a high time investment, but still Android takes a longer time. This is because of the fragmentation issues in building applications for a wider range of devices. Though the Google has been updating and streamlining the Android Software Developers Kit (SDK) with time to deal with varying screen sizes, OS versions, pixel densities, etc., many more improvements are still necessary to beat the iOS platform. Similarly, the app approval time is lesser in Android than in case of iOS platform.
Our dexterous team of iOS and Android app developers is much familiar with the prevalent challenges and ways to beat them.
Complexity
How well the mobile app developers understand your idea also plays a pivotal role in deciding the time range. If your idea is too simple, like just a replica of any existing app or something like aallpaper app, the developers can easily understand and execute the plan. But, if you are developing an application with some new and unique features, you need to spend more time in making your idea clear. And this is must since better the understanding, better will be the output.
We, at Appinventiv, put our best efforts in understanding and exploring the scope of the mobile app idea before working on it.
Features
Again, the features you wish to include in your mobile application also alters the time an app takes to build completely. More the number of features, more time consuming it will be. Again, the kind of feature or functionality you want to add in your application also counts. Some features can be easy to implement while other might take somewhat more efforts and time, depending on the complexity of its functionality.
The complexity of the app idea and functionalities to be included can make the situation risky! It might happen that you invest a hefty amount of money into it, but it does not bring expected outcomes. To overcome the loss of time, efforts and money, we encourage our clients to go for building MVP. A Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is a product designed with limited and imperative features to figure out the scope in the market and gain valuable feedbacks for future product development. If the first version of the app fails, you can enhance your idea with feedbacks gained. And in case it accomplishes the goal, other features can be added into the app through successive releases. This is profitable yet time-consuming.
Targeted Audience
Developing a mobile application for a few simultaneous users like 1000 users involves lesser factors than when compared to those for a larger audience like 50,000 users. As per our knowledge, an application for a wider audience needs additional investment in architecture, infrastructure, performance testing and tuning. All these factors again add on to the time required to build an app.
We believe that a bug-free and fully-functional app is more successful than a crashing app launched sooner in the market. So, we invest our time in performing all the tests and make sure the app follows all the crucial KPIs.
App Development Process
The process you follow has a considerable impact on the time required for development. A good process helps in getting everything from planning to designing, development, and testing on scheduled time. While an inappropriate process can create an imbalance in the whole.
We, at Appinventiv, adopt Agile methodology which enables requirements and solutions to emerge through the combined effort of the development team and the user. It boosts adaptive planning, evolutionary development, prior delivery and continuous improvements. The best thing about this approach is that it is perfect for complex projects where the customer needs changes more often.
Besides this, we prefer development of different modules in parallel instead of handling them one by one. This is done so that more of the outputs can be achieved in lesser time period.
Communication
For better results, it is must that the client and mobile application development agency remain in touch throughout. If the client and development team find it hard to communicate due to time gap or any other issue, the challenges arising during the development phase are likely to be solved at a slower pace. These delays can increase the time an app takes to build.
Our mobility experts are always ready to go an extra mile to maintain communication and speed up the development process.
Wrapping Up
From the aforementioned factors, it will be clear to you that building a high-end mobile app is not a quick and easy task! It takes a lot of time, efforts, money and strategy to create an app that outshines in the app market. If you have any further query regarding app development, feel free to contact us.