Cost information for the following is not included. Normally this is because the quantity or ingredient is unknown
1. Feature List
This is a very important thing to take into consideration as the cost of the project would be based on the features you select. Mobile development company will charge you based on man hours which in turn depends on the features that you want to include in-app. You need to be more precise on features, don’t leave anything assumed, document every small thing (which might seems to be obvious) it will definitely be handy on a long run.
2. Define the Scope of Work
The scope of work is something which clearly states what work would be done by the development company. This would sound similar to Feature list but believe me, it is not, Scope of work will define the details like platform i.e. iOS, Android, Windows and their compatible Operating System to which it will support. Furthermore, define very clearly out of scope features so you can be on the same page. There are few things like Server costing, SSL costing, Domain name costing would be considered as out of scope features.
3. Project Development Method
Don’t stress if this gets too technical, I will try to keep it in a layman language as I can. So every app would go through the Software Development Life Cycle also Termed as SDLC. They fall into the following categories:
Waterfall Model (Everything would be developed first, Tested and delivered. So you will get final product at the end of time duration)
Agile Development (You get the small version product at the end of each Sprint where you can review and set priorities as per your need.)
If you are not so sure on the features list or You want to launch the product very rapidly and add the new features rapidly, I would strongly suggest the Agile Development method.
4. Design & Wire frames
Many companies don’t follow the wireframes, I strongly suggest to develop the wireframes, and this is the stage where your involvement would be required most. And this is the stage where you will need to go forth and back number of times, but this is the stage where you would be able to visualize your product and more ideas will pop up into your mind.
Wireframes are followed by designs where you will need to figure out the colour schemes of your product and this is where UI (User Interface) & UX (User Experience) will come into the picture. If you are expecting a high number of users from first weeks of launch I would suggest getting experienced UX designer into the project, as this is the part where the user would leave awesome feedback & worst feedback based on their experience with the app. Keep things as simple as they can be.
5. Testing
This is the part where most people struggle and get most annoyed. Be sure to ask the development company to prepare the test cases and test themselves first. Also if your time availability is critical I would suggest to higher the QA person at your end to make sure your app meets the standard requirements. Otherwise, you would end up getting bad feedback and you would end up annoying your users an app crashes and bad user experience due to lack of testing.
Suggestions?