Launching an application is a complex adventure, and no operating procedure will make the risks disappear. However, by following the following principles, it is possible to avoid 90% of the mistakes made when developing mobile applications.

1) Define clear successes and stick to them

An application is a way to fulfill an objective. It is this objective that should dictate the functionalities to be developed and their order of priority.

Example: If the objective of V1 of the application is to test the suitability of the offer to the market or to obtain initial user feedback, spending several days developing a system of “promo codes” misses the objective.

Successful development means knowing how to prioritize in order to accelerate.

2) Put into production as quickly as possible

An application must be able to be put on the stores in five weeks of development.

It is not a question of aiming for 100,000 users, who would certainly be disappointed by this first minimum version of the product. It's about being in “real life” to collect the first user feedback and test your product in real conditions.

Example: The “Gallery Access” feature has been tested several times without problems. Once put into production, it crashes on a user: he has more than 800 photos in his gallery, a case that was not anticipated.

Being quickly in “real conditions” makes it possible to quickly detect and resolve unforeseen events of this type.

3) Responding to an end user problem

Your hypothesis is that your idea solves a problem encountered by a user, you still have to verify it. And for this there is only one solution: confront the application as quickly as possible with users to get their feedback before investing too much time and money.

Wagering money on a feature that a user didn't ask for is like playing money at the casino. Tomer Sharon explains it very well in this video (5:20).

4) Reach as many users as possible

Multiplatform technologies make it possible to develop an application compatible with iOS and Android. This brings the advantage:

• To have only one code to develop, so to save time and money
• To make the application evolve more quickly
• To recruit only one developer for both versions
• To recruit this developer from among those who master Javascript, the most widely used language
• To always have the iOS and Android applications at the same stage of development in order not to lose any users

5) Develop agile code

Launching the V1 of an application is already preparing for V2, V3 or even further (see point no. 2). You still need to be able to add new features without spending half the time fixing what breaks when you integrate them.

Developing maintainable code requires time to be devoted to it (code review, unit and functional tests, refactoring?). But to reduce the budget of a project, it is better to reduce the number of functionalities rather than to develop at full speed an application that will be unusable 6 months later.