Today, almost every business has a growing need to leverage technology. However, this challenge can often lead to quick decisions and implementation traps. In other words, there is a high risk of failure when building a custom software solution. We’re here to help you avoid these pitfalls and start developing your own applications for your company. With the right considerations, you can create an effective application that meets the unique needs of your business. Keep reading for 10 things you should consider before developing a custom app.
Don’t build just for yourself
When developing a custom web application, you have to take into account the needs of all stakeholders. The two most important stakeholders are your customers and your employees. Custom applications are created to solve problems, improve operations, and streamline functions. Therefore, you are building an application for your own team, stakeholders, and customers. Custom applications aren’t for just for fun and enjoyment. You are creating a tool to help your team solve problems, increase efficiency, and make their jobs easier. If you build a custom application for yourself, you might forget about the needs of your stakeholders and customers. Moreover, you might become too focused on your own needs. When this happens, you end up with an application that is too specific and not useful to anyone else. Another issue you might face is that your custom application is too specific to solve just one problem. If this is the case, you might end up building a custom application that solves one specific problem, but not many other related problems.
Demand and understand why you need an app
Custom applications are a great way to solve business problems. However, they aren’t created to meet the needs of the general public. Custom applications are created specifically to solve business problems. Therefore, the solution has to address specific needs, customers’ frustrations, and be useful to your team. Custom applications are often created for solving problems that are specific to your business. Therefore, you have to demand it from the start. You have to ask why you need an app, what kind of problems your business has, and what your solution should look like. A custom application might help your team save time and improve efficiency. Or, it might help your customers complete specific tasks faster, easier, and safer. Therefore, you don’t want an app that helps all customers. Instead, your app should help specific customers and solve specific problems.
Define your goals before development begins
Custom software development is a process of creating software. Therefore, you have to define your goals and expectations when starting the development process. It is beneficial to start with a business goal and define your expectations. For example, you may want to increase team efficiency by building a custom application that speeds up specific processes. You have to define your goals, define the specific needs of your team members, and define the specific problems your application should solve. Another way to start with a business goal is to find existing pain points in your business. After doing this, you can define pain points your custom application should solve.
Plan your development process
Developing custom software involves a lot of work. Therefore, you have to plan your work cycle. In order to finish developing your custom application, you have to develop, test, and deliver the code. Therefore, you have to create a detailed development plan and follow it correctly. First, you have to plan your development process. What are the stages you want to go through? Which dependencies do you want to use? Next, you have to create a detailed development plan. What tools and technologies do you want to use? Which technologies do you want to implement? During development, you have to follow your plan. You have to implement your chosen technologies and dependencies. Moreover, you have to test your software thoroughly and make sure it works as expected.
Always test your code
Custom software development is a high-risk business. Therefore, you have to take every opportunity to test your code. If you develop a custom application, you have to test the code thoroughly. Moreover, you have to test your application on multiple environments, such as development, test, production, and cloud environments. First, you have to create different environments for your application. For each environment, you have to implement the code, dependencies, and configurations correctly. Next, you have to make sure your application runs correctly on each environment. If you find issues in your application, they have to be in the code.
Document your work and be transparent with users
Custom software development is a high-risk business. Therefore, you have to take every opportunity to test your code thoroughly. While developing, you have to document your work. It makes sense to write code comments or simply document your work. Moreover, you have to document your work and its architecture. Code comments are great places to document your work. Moreover, they are useful for future team members. When documenting your work with code comments, you can easily explain your code, architecture, and dependencies. When building a custom application, you have to be transparent with your users. After development, you have to release your application to your team and customers. It is important to release your app with a build process. You want your users to be able to deploy your code and make changes. Moreover, you want your users to be able to rollback their changes if something goes wrong.
Conclusion
Today, almost every company needs to leverage technology. However, this challenge often leads to quick decisions and implementation traps. In other words, there is a high risk of failure when building a custom software solution. We’re here to help you avoid these pitfalls and start developing your own applications for your company. With the right considerations, you can create an effective application that meets the unique needs of your business. If you build a custom application for yourself, you might forget about the needs of your stakeholders and customers. Moreover, you might become too focused on your own needs. When this happens, you end up with an application that is too specific and not useful to anyone else. A custom application is not for just for fun and enjoyment. Custom applications are created to solve problems, improve operations, and streamline functions. Therefore, you are building an application for your own team, stakeholders, and customers.