8 mistakes when developing a mobile application
In this article we want to share our experience with other teams of novice developers. Our team has come a long way and is faced with a lot of wrong decisions, which we will kindly save you. So let's get started:
Do you have a mobile app idea? And, of course, it is simply “brilliant” and will bring you hundreds of millions of dollars. I got such an idea in my head and decided to act. Prior to this, in our company, no one engaged in mobile applications. We developed websites and did not know anything about mobile development and the mobile application market. All our knowledge was limited to the same information - Facebook bought WhatsApp for 18 billion dollars. And based on this, we concluded that mobile development is awesome.
')
We, fortunately, did not encounter this error, but, due to a lot of experience and understanding that this will be a problem for many, I decided to write a little more about the investor.
Find an investor in our time is not a problem. I now speak in all seriousness. There are a lot of people in Moscow who are waiting for the opportunity to spend their money. At the time of launching my “ingenious” application, I had a choice of three investors. I will not dwell on the search in detail, but if I like the article, I will write separately.
“What is the mistake here?” You ask. The mistake is that many perceive the investor as a bag of money and forget that, first of all, the investor is a person. And I'm not talking about humane qualities now. If you take money, then you should understand that they can ask you back, and no investment agreement can save you. In practice, we had two cases in which our investors sent “bearded men” to our clients on large Internet projects. And three cases where investors simply decided to leave the project. Yes, exactly like this, one day an investor woke up and decided that he no longer plays these games and stops paying money, even though the project is in full swing. These are the people there, it needs to be understood!
We planned out all the costs of creating our application, the investor transferred the money to the account and it started ... After receiving the money, the number of errors went up. We, of course, tried to stick to the plan, but the problem was not that, but the fact that the plan was fundamentally wrong. We built it based on the knowledge gained in the development of web projects. After a while, we realized that it was all like building an airplane according to car drawings. If you have no experience, then I do not think that any tips will help you avoid mistakes at this stage. There are no recommendations here, just know that you can immediately put your plan in the furnace, because everything will be fundamentally wrong. Of course, this does not apply to those in the subject.
In our team, as I wrote above, there were no mobile developers. We decided to turn to third-party companies. Design ordered in one company, and ordered not just design, but UI \ UX design. The company has specialized in this. We were convinced to develop the code on Xamarin (for those who are not so, this is a platform for developing mobile applications in C #). And so that you understand, there was a specialist, whose application was in the American TOP. At that moment it seemed to us that we also save. For three versions - IOS, Android and Windows Phone, we agreed to the amount of about 1 million rubles. For everything about everything, as was written in the plan, we laid 3 months. In the meantime, we hired people, specialists in the preparation of an advertising company, ordered video clips, agreed with popular publications. They themselves wrote the server side and even made the documentation to the API. In general, inspired "movement".
It is not a secret for anyone that deadlines are a sore subject in any sphere, especially often this error appears if you forget about error number 3. And add the error number 1, then in general the pipe. Actually, this is what happened to us. A month later, just on my birthday, after numerous requests to show me the code, the programmer sent me a program on IOS. I am joyful, in convulsions I started to connect my IPhone to my computer and upload IPA (application executable file) to my phone. The program has loaded, I click on the cherished icon and ... at that moment I realized that I had made error number 1. The application provided a picture of the main interface. When I called the programmer, I calmed down a bit with his words: “I was working on the Backend, and screwing up the design is nonsense.” Since I couldn't check Backend's performance, I had to take my word for it. Moreover, having looked at the source code, and seeing the cherished daddy there with a large number of files, I decided that everything is in order and in terms of not going to fit in a maximum of a month.
As a result, after three months we found another developer on xamarin, in order to get a little bit working application besides the pictures. And the process went first.
After five months, we received 2 versions of the application on IOS and Android. And the realization of the error number 4 - all do not care! For third-party artists, you are just a bag of money, everyone wants to get a job as soon as possible and get the cherished “crispies”. About the “super-duper” UI \ UX designers, I will not say anything, I think you already understood everything. At the same time, we turned to professionals. The design got us in 100k rubles only for the IOS version. We, like all normal people, looked at the work, read reviews, talked a lot and wrote a detailed TK. But here came another enemy - Error # 6!
Perhaps this is the worst mistake. When everything goes wrong, then the hands of the most active team members fall, there are doubts about the success that the project will live. We delayed the release of the project for 4 months and released a frank g ... oh. At the same time, during this time, they spent about 5 million on salaries, rent and office maintenance, etc. In a word - “burned through”.
And when we went to the investor, he looked like this:
And how we looked, you better not know, but I assure you, it was something. After the meeting, the mood became even worse, but then I realized how good it was that we did not make mistake number 2. I, as the author and project manager, gathered the whole team and rolled a sentimental speech. And he said that the salary will be no more. We can break up or start all over again. All unanimously agreed to the new conditions and decided to continue. So we heroically started all over again!
Using the old knowledge that I once received on the courses CCNP CISCO, I decided to run everything on the model PPDIOO (google if you do not know what it is).
Plus 5 months I have not been idle, I studied the code and architecture of our application. The C # programming language at that time I knew satisfactorily. Considered it to be a child, the product of the cross between C ++ and VB. Actually, it saved. If you know C ++ and understand OOP, mastering C # will not take you long. And after a month of hard work, losing weight by 5 kg, almost without sleep and rest, but still I could give the second version of our “ingenious application”. And ... nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. What did you think? What can I write a normal application for 1 month? Yes, it fell less! Yes, it worked better! But, absolutely nothing has changed. In the meantime ...
Tell me, do you know well the people you work with? Right? So I thought so. The team is important, but in addition to a bright future, every person wants to eat, walk, relax, etc. We have developed, let's say, the situation in the team is not the best. Mistakes 5 and 6 have made their own. Slowly, people began to disperse. But this was not the worst. Someone does not want to just leave. “Well, you never know, in the future, they will succeed, and I left,” they think. We also had such people. They tried to harm us from the inside and told the investor about ... well, how to say, inappropriate spending of funds. Again, once again, I say that we were lucky and we did not make mistake number 2. The investor, having conducted the audit, immediately understood everything. In the end, after 4 months, we were left alone. We already had accumulations at zero, I also rolled out a construction site from a previous successful project, built a house. So my money ran out faster. I had to freeze everything and get into credit in order to provide my wife and child, at least with food.
After the second failure, I did not continue to make my “ingenious” application, I decided to postpone it for later and try first to start a small, more specialized and simple project in order to get the result as soon as possible. Always soberly assess your strength and the strength of your team.
To summarize, here is a short rule for you when developing your first mobile application: do not be mistaken, because know that you are mistaken. It is easy to find an investor, but it is difficult to find an adequate and understanding one if something goes wrong. Forget about planning, a small script of actions on 1-2 sheets will be enough. Careful to third-party performers. You don't know well and understand what you want, and they want one thing - money. Dates will be exactly violated. Prepare yourself for this and prepare your investor so as not to make mistakes # 1 and # 2. Never give up and be attentive to people within the team. Yes, and of course, evaluate soberly what you can do and what you cannot.
I am not able to implement my “ingenious” application now and have come to terms with it. But I do not give up and will definitely return to the project. I give you only a video clip from the first project ... a project for which we lacked strength:
And it was enough for an application called “My Family”, who wants to see, can find in the App Store and Google Play.
Oddly enough, but the application for some reason gaining popularity mainly in Saudi Arabia. There began the main percentage of horse racing, but I will tell about this after the advertising company.
PS: Thank you for reading to the end, I will be glad to your comments.
Mistake number 1 - Fallacy
Do you have a mobile app idea? And, of course, it is simply “brilliant” and will bring you hundreds of millions of dollars. I got such an idea in my head and decided to act. Prior to this, in our company, no one engaged in mobile applications. We developed websites and did not know anything about mobile development and the mobile application market. All our knowledge was limited to the same information - Facebook bought WhatsApp for 18 billion dollars. And based on this, we concluded that mobile development is awesome.
')
Mistake number 2 - Investor
We, fortunately, did not encounter this error, but, due to a lot of experience and understanding that this will be a problem for many, I decided to write a little more about the investor.
Find an investor in our time is not a problem. I now speak in all seriousness. There are a lot of people in Moscow who are waiting for the opportunity to spend their money. At the time of launching my “ingenious” application, I had a choice of three investors. I will not dwell on the search in detail, but if I like the article, I will write separately.
“What is the mistake here?” You ask. The mistake is that many perceive the investor as a bag of money and forget that, first of all, the investor is a person. And I'm not talking about humane qualities now. If you take money, then you should understand that they can ask you back, and no investment agreement can save you. In practice, we had two cases in which our investors sent “bearded men” to our clients on large Internet projects. And three cases where investors simply decided to leave the project. Yes, exactly like this, one day an investor woke up and decided that he no longer plays these games and stops paying money, even though the project is in full swing. These are the people there, it needs to be understood!
Mistake number 3 - Planning
We planned out all the costs of creating our application, the investor transferred the money to the account and it started ... After receiving the money, the number of errors went up. We, of course, tried to stick to the plan, but the problem was not that, but the fact that the plan was fundamentally wrong. We built it based on the knowledge gained in the development of web projects. After a while, we realized that it was all like building an airplane according to car drawings. If you have no experience, then I do not think that any tips will help you avoid mistakes at this stage. There are no recommendations here, just know that you can immediately put your plan in the furnace, because everything will be fundamentally wrong. Of course, this does not apply to those in the subject.
Mistake number 4 - OUTSOURCING or no one cares
In our team, as I wrote above, there were no mobile developers. We decided to turn to third-party companies. Design ordered in one company, and ordered not just design, but UI \ UX design. The company has specialized in this. We were convinced to develop the code on Xamarin (for those who are not so, this is a platform for developing mobile applications in C #). And so that you understand, there was a specialist, whose application was in the American TOP. At that moment it seemed to us that we also save. For three versions - IOS, Android and Windows Phone, we agreed to the amount of about 1 million rubles. For everything about everything, as was written in the plan, we laid 3 months. In the meantime, we hired people, specialists in the preparation of an advertising company, ordered video clips, agreed with popular publications. They themselves wrote the server side and even made the documentation to the API. In general, inspired "movement".
Mistake number 5 - Timing
It is not a secret for anyone that deadlines are a sore subject in any sphere, especially often this error appears if you forget about error number 3. And add the error number 1, then in general the pipe. Actually, this is what happened to us. A month later, just on my birthday, after numerous requests to show me the code, the programmer sent me a program on IOS. I am joyful, in convulsions I started to connect my IPhone to my computer and upload IPA (application executable file) to my phone. The program has loaded, I click on the cherished icon and ... at that moment I realized that I had made error number 1. The application provided a picture of the main interface. When I called the programmer, I calmed down a bit with his words: “I was working on the Backend, and screwing up the design is nonsense.” Since I couldn't check Backend's performance, I had to take my word for it. Moreover, having looked at the source code, and seeing the cherished daddy there with a large number of files, I decided that everything is in order and in terms of not going to fit in a maximum of a month.
As a result, after three months we found another developer on xamarin, in order to get a little bit working application besides the pictures. And the process went first.
After five months, we received 2 versions of the application on IOS and Android. And the realization of the error number 4 - all do not care! For third-party artists, you are just a bag of money, everyone wants to get a job as soon as possible and get the cherished “crispies”. About the “super-duper” UI \ UX designers, I will not say anything, I think you already understood everything. At the same time, we turned to professionals. The design got us in 100k rubles only for the IOS version. We, like all normal people, looked at the work, read reviews, talked a lot and wrote a detailed TK. But here came another enemy - Error # 6!
Mistake number 6 - Distrust
Perhaps this is the worst mistake. When everything goes wrong, then the hands of the most active team members fall, there are doubts about the success that the project will live. We delayed the release of the project for 4 months and released a frank g ... oh. At the same time, during this time, they spent about 5 million on salaries, rent and office maintenance, etc. In a word - “burned through”.
And when we went to the investor, he looked like this:
And how we looked, you better not know, but I assure you, it was something. After the meeting, the mood became even worse, but then I realized how good it was that we did not make mistake number 2. I, as the author and project manager, gathered the whole team and rolled a sentimental speech. And he said that the salary will be no more. We can break up or start all over again. All unanimously agreed to the new conditions and decided to continue. So we heroically started all over again!
Using the old knowledge that I once received on the courses CCNP CISCO, I decided to run everything on the model PPDIOO (google if you do not know what it is).
Plus 5 months I have not been idle, I studied the code and architecture of our application. The C # programming language at that time I knew satisfactorily. Considered it to be a child, the product of the cross between C ++ and VB. Actually, it saved. If you know C ++ and understand OOP, mastering C # will not take you long. And after a month of hard work, losing weight by 5 kg, almost without sleep and rest, but still I could give the second version of our “ingenious application”. And ... nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. What did you think? What can I write a normal application for 1 month? Yes, it fell less! Yes, it worked better! But, absolutely nothing has changed. In the meantime ...
Mistake number 7 - Team or Fire, Water and Copper pipes
Tell me, do you know well the people you work with? Right? So I thought so. The team is important, but in addition to a bright future, every person wants to eat, walk, relax, etc. We have developed, let's say, the situation in the team is not the best. Mistakes 5 and 6 have made their own. Slowly, people began to disperse. But this was not the worst. Someone does not want to just leave. “Well, you never know, in the future, they will succeed, and I left,” they think. We also had such people. They tried to harm us from the inside and told the investor about ... well, how to say, inappropriate spending of funds. Again, once again, I say that we were lucky and we did not make mistake number 2. The investor, having conducted the audit, immediately understood everything. In the end, after 4 months, we were left alone. We already had accumulations at zero, I also rolled out a construction site from a previous successful project, built a house. So my money ran out faster. I had to freeze everything and get into credit in order to provide my wife and child, at least with food.
Mistake number 8 - sober look
After the second failure, I did not continue to make my “ingenious” application, I decided to postpone it for later and try first to start a small, more specialized and simple project in order to get the result as soon as possible. Always soberly assess your strength and the strength of your team.
To summarize, here is a short rule for you when developing your first mobile application: do not be mistaken, because know that you are mistaken. It is easy to find an investor, but it is difficult to find an adequate and understanding one if something goes wrong. Forget about planning, a small script of actions on 1-2 sheets will be enough. Careful to third-party performers. You don't know well and understand what you want, and they want one thing - money. Dates will be exactly violated. Prepare yourself for this and prepare your investor so as not to make mistakes # 1 and # 2. Never give up and be attentive to people within the team. Yes, and of course, evaluate soberly what you can do and what you cannot.
I am not able to implement my “ingenious” application now and have come to terms with it. But I do not give up and will definitely return to the project. I give you only a video clip from the first project ... a project for which we lacked strength:
And it was enough for an application called “My Family”, who wants to see, can find in the App Store and Google Play.
Oddly enough, but the application for some reason gaining popularity mainly in Saudi Arabia. There began the main percentage of horse racing, but I will tell about this after the advertising company.
PS: Thank you for reading to the end, I will be glad to your comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/282031/
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