Custom Software Dev Must-Haves for the Development Phase

You must develop a mobile app — a custom one. Custom mobile apps provide businesses with personalized features that exactly fit their needs.

What are the first things you must consider before starting the development stage?

We've got you covered — check out the rest of the post for 7 must-haves while developing a mobile app with a dedicated team.

People Spend More Time on Mobile Apps

When it comes to digital transformation, custom mobile development is an essential aspect of fully embracing corporate digitalization.

Most of your clients, employees, and partners already prefer using their mobile phones for solving personal or professional problems. Mobile apps can function as the main or complimentary channel for solving everyday problems.   

It’s no surprise that the following to stats are popping up across news sites:

• Total app downloads are projected to reach 235,261.9 million this year
• 88% of time spent on mobile phones is spent on apps

Source: eMarketer

The Importance of Usability in Mobile Apps

Developing a smart digital solution for your company is an excellent investment. Encouraging people to use it properly is even greater. The rate of usability usually reveals how successful or unsuccessful the digital transformation in your company really is. 

In a context like this, a strong mobile experience can significantly generate the rate of usability you need. The simple fact an app can help employees can communicate easier and address tasks on the go may encourage them to embrace digitalization easier.  

Why Do Bespoke Apps Encourage Adoption?

The more complex your company’s digital transformation needs are, the harder it will be for you to cover all the specific requests with an off-the-shelf solution.

In the digital transformation world, bespoke development became one of the required components to make adoption happen in a good and healthy way. Why?

Benefits of Bespoke Mobile App Development

Mostly because a custom mobile app means:

• Help meeting the specific needs of users
• Flexibility and the possibility to scale
• Only necessary features included — no overwhelming or redundant systems
• Full ownership of the technology for your team
• Help staying one step ahead of the competition

In-house Development vs. External Dev Teams for Custom App Development Projects?

That’s the kind of question every digital transformation project starts with. 

Custom development can be costly from many perspectives when you choose to do it in-house. You’ll have to spend resources like time, humans, effort, knowledge, etc. 

Source: Roweb

That’s why the companies' owners choose to hire external teams for bespoke development. 

Services covered by a external teams include: 

• high-level management
• project management
• task management
• activities and processes supervision
• project stages and workflow development
• team architecture
• logistic management
• recruiting/selecting/integrating professionals in the project team

A well built-out in-house app development team may also be able to accomplish these services. External agencies, however, will have expert-level expertise from day one and can scale up or down as needed.

7 Must-Haves for Developing a Mobile App with a Dedicated Team

Listing out absolutely everything you need to start a successful custom mobile development project could take all day. We've pared down the list to include the top 7 must-haves for mobile development with a dedicated team:

1. Reliable development teammates
2. Clear concept and goals
3. Security requirements
4. User-friendly features list
5. Business-minded features list
6. Medium- to long-term bespoke development timeline
7. Understanding of app development trends

Remember: a dedicated team will be necessary to your budget, timeline, and success of your app. Make sure to select a type of team to handle the dev process.

1. A Reliable Development Team 

Choosing the right provider is almost never easy. There's more to a successful mobile app development team than its readiness to develop projects.

You need a team that's interested in understanding your business’ specific needs. Reliable professionals with a vast breadth of experience are going to be the types of businesses you reach out to.

What Should You Look for in a Mobile App Development Company?

• Wide expertise
• Specific expertise about your industry
• No language and cultural barriers (e.g. fluent English knowledge across teams)
• Full transparency on cost predictability and budget control
• Long-lasting partnerships with other clients
• 5-star ratings on platforms like Clutch and The Manifest
• Agile approach to ensure fast development
• Available to provide complete and experienced teams (You'll need: developers, project managers, business analysts, Scrum masters, UX specialists, product owners, designers, QA specialists)
• Strong points of contact and project managers that understand development 

With these tools and resources in hand, a development team is a strong candidate for success in building a bespoke mobile application for your company.

2. Clear Concept and Goals 

Just like with other types of software development, having a clear concept and goals set forth from the start of your project is key to bespoke development success.

What makes the difference? Doing digital transformation with a clear purpose in mind will help you take the right approach the first time. This will reduce development time, eliminate scope creep, and make your overall project more efficient.

Your lack of experience in such transformations may seem overwhelming. So, counting on your dev team for ideas may be the best thing to do.

Check out your app development partner and see if they offer tech and business consultancy sessions to make this process smooth. 

3. Security Measures and Plans

There were record numbers of data breaches in 2021. Companies don't think it can happen to them, but without a plan, it certainly can.

Here are just a few harmful affects of security problems with a mobile app:

• Losing data
• Compromising internal information
• Lost of control over your systems and apps.

Early in the process, ask your dev team what they can guarantee (and cannot) security. 

4. User-First App Features List

Investing time in visualising user needs during the early stages of the bespoke development process will certainly pay dividends down the line.

This will require some background research — potentially user interviews or surveys. This type of investment is also worth the cost if you're hoping to solve a problem that you aren't personally experiencing yourself.

5. Business-Minded App Features List

Now that you have a list of features that are meant to address user needs, you should also think of a list of features and modules that are directly useful for your business.

Building a mobile app with your business needs in mind is a must-have. Not sure what features could cover your business needs? Think back to your goals. 

If you were hoping to monetize your app, for instance, it's time to think of what that might functionally look like. What features will earn your business money.

Brainstorming internally, talking with your development team, and running a competitor analysis on features of similar apps are all great ideas to start drafting your list. 

6. Plans for Long- and Medium-Term Bespoke Development

A plan for long-term and medium-term development will help your app development company understand exactly what you expect.

Your company’s objectives may change over time, but ending up with the scalable app you need is a must. Given this, your solution must be able to respond quickly to changes within your company and technological updates within the industry.

Discuss with your dev team the level of scalability your solution can provide and how fast changes can be implemented.

7. Firm Knowledge of Mobile App Development Trends

One of your main goals should be setting your app up for long-term success. To do this, you need to cultivate an understanding of the mobile app space in a long-term capacity.

Simply put: learning mobile app development trends will help you maintain your app for years to come.

2023 Mobile App Trends Examples

Take a look at some trends announced for 2023:

• Voice Search becoming more of a necessary feature over time
• AI-Powered Interactions are both expected and needed by users
• Cross-Platform app development will become more popular for covering the complete journey of every user
• Extended Reality (XR) is becoming more popular — regardless of B2B vs. B2C spaces
• More on-demand apps will be developed to better respond to users’ specific needs
• Matching cloud computing with mobile app development is already an adopted trend in 2022 but will become even greater in 2023. 

Custom Mobile App Development is Key to Digital Transformation

Mobile apps will continue to be top of mind for users, and the app market only grows as years pass.

Companies should invest in custom development for coverage on their specific business needs. Plus, they'll be easier to scale long-term. Bespoke development is closely intertwined with healthy digital transformation. 

To save resources. companies usually opt for working with external app development companies. 

Outsourcing software development usually means developing projects with external teams based on one of the following 3 models: a dedicated team, a staff augmentation, or project-based services. 

While selecting an external provider to develop your project, you must consider several criteria: the provider’s expertise, security guarantees, available consultancy services, trends, and your company’s specific needs. 

With this, you should be able to connect with the right mobile app development team to take on your custom project.