A properly organized mobile app development process is the foundation that determines absolutely everything: the final product quality, its stability, scalability, budget, implementation timeframes, and, of course, value and convenience for end users. At WEZOM, we have been honing our approach to creating mobile software for 25+ years, which today allows us to provide our clients with confidence that their projects will be implemented without unnecessary costs and risks, and, ultimately, will bring the highest ROI. Below, we’ll share our best practices of end-to-end app development.
Step 1 – Discovery & Planning
First, we need to turn a business idea into a hypothesis that can be tested in practice. For this, we create a clear project implementation plan: carify business goals in terms of KPIs that are important for the client's business, segment the audience, build customer journey maps, identify constraints that affect both the development process and the product itself (including compliance, integration, budget, and deadlines), and define release success criteria. In practice, this looks like this:
- Defining goals and audience. We conduct several facilitated workshops with stakeholders to create an impact map and user personas. For each persona, we describe scenarios according to the JTBD methodology and define priority metrics (e.g., onboarding, customer retention, monthly active users, etc.).
- Competitor analysis. Next, we move on to analyzing direct and functional competitors – make a feature matrix and heuristic review, as well as evaluate unit economics (if available), pricing models, technical stack, and user reviews in app stores. This helps us identify 2-3 value features that will be able to provide the mobile application with a USP.
- Feature prioritization. Finally, we combine the ICE and RICE methods to determine the product’s impact on KPIs. Also, if necessary, we can form a plan for the lean MVP implementation – that is, initially take on only those features that reduce time-to-value.
The result of all these actions is an exhaustive product requirements document, a well-structured backlog, and a ready-made plan for the first product release.
Step 2 – Design: Wireframes and Prototypes
The UI/UX design stage at WEZOM implies not only developing high-quality visuals and ensuring compliance with brand identity, but also recreating a predictably top user experience. Therefore, together with building information architecture with low-fi wireframes and mockups, and the subsequent creation of clickable prototypes, we form a design system. Here are the specifics of these processes:
- Building sketching flows and layouts. First, we build the main user flows (e.g., onboarding, search, payment, etc.), taking into account the erroneous actions of end users. Then we share interactive prototypes with the client and conduct quick UX tests on 5-7 early adopters to have time to fix friction points before the start of development.
- Focusing on UX and UI considerations. We always rely on Human Interface Guidelines and Material Design 3, implementing micro-interactions, skeleton loading, and predictive hints. We also take into account the context of using the app with one hand and ensure overall accessibility (for example, according to WCAG 2.2).
- Utilizing advanced tools. Most often, our team uses Figma, FigJam, ProtoPie, Maze, and Zeplin. Thanks to them, we can quickly synchronize design tokens with the code within the style dictionary.
This meticulous approach speeds up feedback cycles and reduces the gap between UX/UI design and coding.
Step 3 – Development Phase
In our company, the development process is iterative and is carried out according to Scrum/Kanban (optionally with the implementation of CI/CD practices), with code review and, if possible, automated testing. To be more precise, it looks like this:
- Backend and frontend development. We implement the mobile frontend using either native technologies like Kotlin/Jetpack Compose or Swift/SwiftUI or Flutter/React Native, which provide cross-platform compatibility. We also build a design system and an offline cache. As for the backend, depending on the client’s requirements, it relies either on microservices or on a modular architecture (Node.js/TypeScript, .NET, Java, etc. come to the rescue here). We can also introduce an API gateway, rate-limiting, retries, as well as tracing, metrics, and logs.
- Implementing integrations. At this stage, we implement custom APIs or choose from existing ones if they meet the project objectives. Our experts also build error handling schemes and define coding and logging standards to simplify the debugging and support process. After that, we integrate payment gateways, CRM, ERP, push services, and other things required for a specific application. In addition, for the stability of server integrations, we can implement queues, retries, circuit breakers, and idempotency of API requests to minimize the number of critical failures.
- Choosing the tech stack. We select the stack for the specific business goals of the client, also taking into account the potential load level, expected time-to-market, and the presence of an in-house support team.
As a result, these mobile application development steps allow us to create a solution that is easy to scale and support. Also, it can boast a minimum number of bugs (especially those that will be much more difficult and expensive to fix at later development stages).
Step 4 – QA & Testing
At WEZOM, Quality Assurance (QA) experts get involved in the work from the discovery phase to create a test strategy and test cases in time. We also optionally implement automated testing to cover cyclic processes, while manual testing is usually aimed at eliminating UX drawbacks. In general, this is how it happens:
- Functional testing. First, we assign a specific test case to each acceptance criterion. We also check happy paths and edge cases, and ultimately, after each increment, run the smoke/regression suite to make sure that the basic functionality has not been affected by the edits.
- Ensuring device compatibility. Our test pool is always aimed at covering current iOS/Android versions and popular user device models. Using emulators, we check the performance and evaluate the app’s behavior in the background mode.
- Security and performance testing. We complete this stage with static/dynamic analysis, while checking the storage of secrets/keys. We also perform backend load tests and rendering profiling.
In our company, all these processes are always focused on target SLOs (e.g., crashes <0.5%, p95 latency, and ANR) so that we can ensure compliance before the product release.
Step 5 – Deployment and Launch
To succeed in deployment, we prepare metadata and screenshots/videos for app store submission. Additionally, we conduct internal and external testing via TestFlight/Play Console. Here are a few more details about this:
- Ensuring compliance with App Store and Google Play guidelines. Ensuring compliance with requirements concerns permissions, privacy, in-app purchases, tracking banners, and descriptions. This way, we minimize the risk of rejections, especially in sensitive categories – for example, in applications for children.
- App Store Optimization (ASO). This is something like SEO, only aimed not at conventional search engines, but at searching in app stores. Here, it’s important to choose the right keywords, perform A/B tests of icons/screens, and ensure rating management. We also often synchronize ASO with traditional marketing to combine organic and paid traffic.
- Launching timing tips. Now, everything is ready for a staged rollout, so the next step is to prepare a roll-back plan.
Ultimately, after setting up on-call and SLO escalation (at least in the first week after uploading the app to app stores), the client can assess the first results (number of downloads, user reviews, etc.).
Step 6 – Post-Launch Support & Updates
After the first product release, we enable observability (for example, via Datadog/Grafana), conduct product analytics, and plan the next increment based on user feedback. In particular, here's what happens:
- Monitoring and analytics. We track app’s crashes, ANRs, error pools, and user behavior in the context of moving through funnels. Additionally, we set up alerts and weekly health reporting to adjust priorities in the roadmap.
- Bug fixing. At this stage, we introduce bug triage, define the deadlines for fixing errors and, if necessary, make hotfix releases. For new functions, we use feature flags. Our team also performs cause-and-effect analysis to prevent recurring incidents.
- Iterative feature additions. Now, everything is ready to plan new features based on the metrics indicated by the client. Then, we validate them via A/B tests.
New features are planned through agile sprints and released either in release trains or in individual iterations.
Timeline and Team Roles
Let’s talk about the project timeline for apps. In general, the discovery and planning stage usually takes 2-4 weeks; UX/UI design takes a little longer, about 3-6 weeks (it’s important to take into account the complexity of user scenarios and the need for detailed prototypes). As for the development process itself, in the case of MVP, it lasts about 8-16 weeks, and, in the case of a full-fledged product, it can drag on for months. Then comes final testing and preparation for release in app stores – all this usually takes us 2-4 weeks.
As for team roles, we always maintain them clearly defined:
- PM controls deadlines, project goals, and communication;
- Business Analyst is responsible for requirements, feature prioritization, and their compliance with business goals;
- UX/UI Designer builds user scenarios and a design system;
- Tech Lead/Architect is responsible for choosing a tech stack and building an app architecture;
- Mobile/Backend Developers implement the app logic and its server part;
- QA defines the testing strategy and monitors product quality and stability;
- DevOps automates the build and deployment procedures via CI/CD;
- ASO/Marketing Expert prepares the product for release and promotion in app stores;
- Support Specialist ensures the processing of the L1/L2/L3 incidents after the product release.
Optionally, we are always ready to expand the development team with more narrowly focused experts if the project specifics require it.
Common Bottlenecks and How to Avoid Them
The first bottleneck in mobile development is considered to be miscommunication – primarily due to the lack of a single context. To avoid this, we record everything through weekly demos, a single decision log, a public backlog with transparent priority criteria, Kanban boards, and SLAs for responses.
Next comes feature creep, which can negatively affect deadlines and the project budget. To avoid this, we evaluate each feature in terms of its impact on KPIs, timelines, and resources needed for its implementation.
Finally, it’s worth noting that in even trivial projects, a business can lose weeks on approvals. We solve this issue through short iterations, interactive prototypes, and preview builds. If approval is still delayed, we follow a pre-agreed default plan so that the team doesn’t stand idle.
How WEZOM Runs the Mobile App Development Lifecycle
We understand perfectly well that the more clearly the mobile app development workflow is defined, the easier it will be to plan the budget and manage the client’s and TA’s expectations. We have brought this vision to perfection: every step is transparent, every result is explainable, and every figure in the estimate is justified. Therefore, by choosing us as a technical partner, you’ll always understand where every minute of your time and every cent of yours is spent, and most importantly, be confident in the high quality of our work.
Conclusion
At WEZOM, we can implement the full cycle of mobile development – from analytics and design to launch, maintenance, and updates. Therefore, if you are looking for a reliable contractor to delegate one or all steps to develop a mobile app, feel free to contact us.
