How The APP Solutions works: cooperation models & development phases

So you want to hire a development team to build your mobile or web app? The main thing to consider is that the development team’s approach has a significant impact on the final result. Thus, before hiring an IT team for app development, you should learn more about the methodology they use for project development. At The App Solutions, we use the Agile methodology for developing software, since it has proved to be effective in delivering projects of different types. 

To learn more about the essential steps of project development at The App Solutions, read the article to the end. 

After you get in touch with us via the contact form of the app cost calculator, we start the  initiation phase. 

• Firstly, our business development manager contacts you via phone or email to clarify more details about your project to create the project brief, receive a ready-made design, and a detailed description of your business idea. At this stage, we sign an NDA with you so you can be assured your business idea is protected. 

We understand that working with someone located in another country may present issues of trust. That is why, in some cases, we suggest an alternative project iniciation process to our clients to have a workshop in our office in Kyiv, Ukraine, and find out more about each other.  Such a workshop is a great option for shaping your business idea or to receive technical insights on how to implement your project in the best way. At the end of the workshop, you will receive meeting notes with a project vision, a list of tech solutions, tips on marketing strategy, and other information depending on your business needs.   

• Secondly, based on the project details you clarified in brief, our business analyst, project manager, and technical lead make an overall, rough estimation for your project.

If you agree with this estimation, we clarify other project details and prepare a function decomposition with all the features and modules to integrate, estimate all the scope, and send you a preliminary estimate. 

• Thirdly, after you agree on the preliminary estimate cost, we send you a  commercial offer, which includes an additional NDA and estimation cost of the inception phase cost. 

Why do we estimate the Inception phase separately from the project estimate total? The main reasons are:

• The inception phase is an additional service we provide for our clients. It includes the development of technical documentation and other documents related to your project  
• The inception phase requires significant effort from us and might take from two weeks to two months 

What are we going to do during the inception phase?  

Inception phase 

During the inception phase, our team, including a project manager, business analyst, and solution architect, schedule a kick-off meeting to introduce you to our team. During this stage, our business analyst and Solution Architect will: 

• Identify your business processes and project value
• Validate all the SDKs, APIs, and third-party integrations 
• Create technical documentation for your project
• Visualize server architecture 
• Describe the working logic of how the project server, back-end, and front-end 

To write project technical documentation in the best way, we break project features into smaller parts, i.e., user stories or use cases, depending on your project requirements. If you need a team to create a design for your project, our business analyst will build project mock-ups with use cases while the designer will create an interactive mobile app prototype. 

[An example of an interactive mobile app prototype made by us. Try this mobile app prototype on the link]

Since we have more detailed information about your project, including features, use cases, technological solutions, and the project roadmap, we make the final estimate and send it to you. 

When inception phase deliverables and the final project estimate are agreed with you, we send you an additional agreement to sign, which includes:

• Project iterations (we implement one user story per each iteration) 
• Team composition required to deliver your project
• Number of man-hours necessary to fulfill your project

The scope of the project may vary depending on your project requirements, i.e., whether we are going to create a project MVP or implement additional features to a ready-made project.

If you want to know more about the inception (discovery) phase read our article.

Now it is time to start the development stage.     

Development-Testing-Bug fixing-Production 

Instead of developing a massive part of the project and conducting comprehensive testing, we develop a small part of your project functionality during one iteration (from 1 to 2 weeks). Then, our team performs testing, bug-fixing, and shows you the result during a demo call. Our next step is uploading a small part of the project to the production environment. 

During the development stage, our team creates: 

• Definition of ready, stated by your project manager and a business analyst in the task for a developer 
• Definition of done, created by the quality assurance engineer, to ensure that the user story works properly and bug-free
• Acceptance criteria, i.e., how one or another function should work to be accepted by you

Iteration by iteration, we ensure that all the code is bug-free and operates appropriately. 

Product release

When all user stories are ready, we conduct the final project demo during a Skype call to show you the results of our work. 

If you are satisfied with the results, i.e., accepted the project, we provide you with all the accesses, databases, and other project-related data. 

Project monitoring 

After the final project demo, we provide support during the first two weeks to fix the project if anything is not working correctly. We also offer our clients additional service packages for project support. Such a package includes the team members required, the duration of the support, and the response time. 

Here is a review from one of our clients, Allen Day, Science Advocate at Google.

How The App Solutions ensures the project visibility

To achieve the most predictable results of delivering web and mobile apps, The App Solutions takes the following actions:   

Instant communication. From initiation to the final project demo, we connect with you to show you the result of each iteration and receive feedback on whether the project meets your expectations. 

Transparent process. All our team members use Jira, a project management software for tracking time spent for each iteration or task to complete. 

Clear project scope. We pay extra attention to the project scope, functional decomposition, and development of user stories to deliver your software within time and budget. 

The APP Solutions models of co-operations

All our clients have their own needs. Therefore, to cooperate with us in the most effective way, we offer the following models:

Time and material for projects that take from 1 week to implement.  As for project management, APP Solutions is responsible for project delivery and quality. Thus, you can focus on your product and making it desirable for the market. We do the rest.

A dedicated team for a project which takes from 2 months. For this model, you can use your own project manager. If the PM is from the APP Solutions’ side, we are responsible for project delivery. Together with the client, we mutually agree on the workload and project requirements for a specified amount of time. 

Extended team/Outstaff suits you if your project takes from 6 months to develop.  Outstaffing is a perfect option when you have a team of developers and would like to add more members.