As the shift to digital accelerates, the demand for new apps has surged. App developers face various challenges in meeting the market’s demands. There are funding constraints, a need to establish quality control systems, and other issues. The most immediate concern for app developers though, is how to work in an efficient and effective way. In this article, we will discuss how you can streamline your app development workflow in order to reduce development costs and speed up turn around times in your quest to build the next great app.
- Start By Building a Code Library
Writing the actual code that will run your app is a vital part of your process, but it is a part of your process that takes up a big chunk of your time. For many app developers, they will be working from scratch, with very limited resources. Finding ways to write code efficiently is, then, very important.
So what you need to do is to catalog any existing code in a library. This will improve your productivity by reducing the amount of time that developers will need to write and test new code. All that will need to be done is to retrieve code from the library and use it where needed in future app development projects. Consequently, your turnaround times will dramatically improve.
- Reduce your Data Storage Infrastructure
This sounds counterintuitive, because you often assume that the bigger your infrastructure, the better off you are. Yet having multiple databases only serves to increase the number of steps that your team has to go through to achieve their goals.
Duplication is a likely result of having multiple databases. Often, teams find that they have databases that they do not need or even use, all the while increasing your security risks. Using a single database to store resources is much wiser from a workflow as well as a security aspect. Students in the best STEAM and STEM programs will be familiar with the importance of optimization. Having more than one database is not the best way to achieve optimization.
- Use Layouts of Pre-Existing Apps
Using templates seems to be an admission of some kind of defeat for many developers. Yet, as the great scientist Isaac Newton noted, in order to see far, you should stand on the shoulders of giants. Take advantage of app templates in order to make a better product and work even faster. Using what came before you and worked well will help with your workflow in ways that are often underestimated.
Layouts will come with source code, which means that you will be able to skip a developmental stage by simply using that source code instead of writing it from scratch. There’s no need to consider things like UI/UX design, because someone else has already worked through those problems for you and come up with a solution you clearly like.
- Test! Test! Test!
Many apps fail because they are not rigorously tested. Developers kind of assume that their apps work well or that a few tests are enough to get an idea of the capabilities of the app. If you can test your app under the most extreme conditions, even if it seems unlikely that they will occur, you will be able to build a robust app that consumers will like.
Running continuous tests is a great way to ensure that problems are dealt with as they arise and you receive almost immediate feedback at each stage of development.