6 Tips To Guarantee Successful Development

The perfect application with every functionality, the perfect stack, the perfect user experience…an ISV’s dream environment. We share some tips and tricks that can help make your dreams a reality. The following important tips can help mitigate the risks of your development or modernization project from start to finish.

1. UX First

We know, everything always comes back to UX, but that’s just how important it is. Like we mentioned in our previous blog post, people rely on applications for so many things throughout the day, that everyone has become an expert on UX. They know exactly how they want and need their applications to work. When your team and stakeholders emphasize value for your users, customer experience comes naturally. In a world of never ending applications and competitors focusing on the UX can be a guiding light for your developers.

2. Define Your MVP

No, not your most valuable player, (although that’s also important) we’re talking about your minimum viable product. The line between acceptable and ideal is fine, but figuring it out at the beginning of your project is essential. Expecting perfection on a finite timeline is setting your team up for failure. The goal should be to validate what your consumer’s most needed features are and how to deliver them in a timely matter.

3. Embracing Agile

In relation to the above point about your MVP, agile is crucial. By working in small sprints, your team is able to incorporate stakeholder feedback throughout the entire process. This repetitive process helps teams deliver value faster and more accurately reducing headaches and risks. We’ve discussed this at length in relation to complex apps in our blog here.

4. Utilize a Top-Down Approach

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Focus on your UX first. Start there and then work on your database and your framework. Code is obviously essential to a well functioning application, but given the current development environment, applications have to be visually appealing and user-centric almost as much as they have to be functional.

5. Utilize Low-Code or RAD Solutions

Everything we’ve mentioned above is an insane amount of pressure to code completely from scratch. How can your team focus on your stack, your database, and keep your user experience as up to date as rapidly as every other application on the market? They can’t, at least not if you have them building everything from scratch and want it done on a tight deadline. That’s where a development platform like Servoy comes into place. You can read more about the differences between low-code and RAD and how they’ll impact your productivity here.

6. Get Support

The final way to guarantee success in developing or modernizing your application is to make sure you have support systems in place. Will you be able to deliver your project on budget, on time, AND with all the features your users expect? Systematic support systems (like our Appsurance program) can guarantee the answer to that question is yes.

Many of our clients find us after hitting a multitude of walls and have had several projects fail. Maybe you’ve even been there yourself. While considering some of these tips might help push you ahead in the short run, to see long term success all six need to be utilized. As your team prepares themselves for the next project, whether it’s new app development or modernizing existing applications, consider what tools they’ll need to ensure you and users are getting the product they need.