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contact@bam.techTéléphone
+33 (0)1 53 24 00 83
The first question our customers ask us before starting a digital project is: “How much does it cost, when will it be delivered and what will I have at the end?”
Whether you are a digital project manager for a large group, CTO of an SME or an entrepreneur, this is a question you will certainly ask yourself before starting to develop your application. This question is completely legitimate, and it is undoubtedly the one we ask ourselves every time we plan an investment, whatever it may be. You can answer it by listing mThe first question our customers ask us before starting a digital project is: “How much does it cost, when will it be delivered and what will I have at the end?”
Whether you are a digital project manager for a large group, CTO of an SME or an entrepreneur, this is a question you will certainly ask yourself before embarking on the development of your application. This question is completely legitimate, and it is undoubtedly the one we ask ourselves every time we plan an investment, whatever it may be. This can be answered by listing the costs associated with a mobile application in a non-exhaustive way:
The first three costs will have a decisive impact on your budget. Here are 4 tips, inspired by the Lean methodology, that will allow you to optimize these costs and maximize your return on investment, regardless of the team you work with.
According to a study by Standish Group conducted on more than 50,000 projects, 52% face numerous challenges and 19% fail completely. And the first failure factor mentioned by managers is The absence of user data. Indeed, the most frequent mistake made by development teams is that of locking themselves up for months to develop the first version of their product without showing it to their potential users. When they finally show it, they realize that the product does not meet market expectations.
Start small, with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product), allows you to avoid this pitfall, and to save a lot of time and money. The first thing you want to know when developing an application is whether it addresses a problem that potential users are experiencing. The goal of an MVP is to put a first version of your product into production very quickly to allow you to learn from the feedback of your users and thus improve it. The MVP is not a “minimal application”, nor is it the application with all the functionalities but half developed. It must have THE functionality, which does not respond perfectly to the problem, but allows you to learn what the market needs. This is what will allow confirm or disprove your hypotheses.
A mobile project is a complex project: innumerable technological but also business or operational factors can have an impact on developments. In order to maximize the speed of developments, it is necessary to ensure, early in the project, that the working framework allows developers to minimize friction throughout the production process, from the expression of the need until the functionality is put into production:
At BAM, to remove dependencies outside the development team, which are the first source of slowdown in a mobile project, we perform a “technical challenge”. This two-day mission takes place before the start of developments and aims to push a functionality defined by the business to production. The aim is to uncover all the obstacles a developer may encounter in producing a feature. In this way, the team can take the necessary actions to remove these dependencies before the start of development and ensure a frictionless production process, at maximum speed!
The mobile market is very fragmented, with an infinite diversity of smartphones and tablets with different resolutions and screen sizes, and different operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) Developing an application for these various devices requires time, in particular to test that the application is displayed correctly regardless of the type of screens. Developing it natively requires knowledge of languages specific to each platform (Java for Android, Swift or Objective-C for iOS) as well as the development of two different code bases to be developed and maintained by two teams with different skills.
Develop your mobile application with multiplatform technologies, like React Native or Flutter, makes it possible to obtain a single code base at the origin of applications deployed on iOS and Android. Having a single code base allows you to reduce the costs of developing and maintaining your application since it no longer requires tracking bugs on a large code base or two different teams for each platform. Moreover, the JavaScript skills required for cross-platform development are significantly more abundant on the market than the skills in Java or Objective-C. Gartner already predicted in 2013 that 50% of mobile applications would be hybrid in 2016.
Many businesses choose to reduce their development costs by hiring offshore development teams because their quotes appear to be significantly cheaper. The hourly rate for low-cost offshore development can be divided by ten compared to a development team in the United States or Europe. However, these teams often compensate with volume, by taking on several projects at the same time, which usually leads to missed deadlines. The savings achieved will therefore quickly be offset by a higher cost to maintain and develop an application of unreliable quality. The cost of updating the application to current development standards and maintaining it and evolving it later will have a decisive impact on your budget.
In addition, make sure that the development team you work with offers you Visibility necessary and sufficient to manage your project. Some teams ask for specifications at the start of the project and only show the product during one or two demonstrations over the entire project, which can last several months. However, the feedback from your users, your new ideas and the evolution of your business environment will lead you to regularly make new decisions. The specifications will necessarily be impacted. Working collaboratively with your development team by allowing you to evolve the product as the development progresses allows you to avoid going back and forth at the end of the project that is costly in time and resources, and sometimes even in money, because they are counted as “out of scope”. A good standard is visualize the progress of the product daily by validating the functionalities developed every day.
By starting with a simple product, your MVP, with a team that you manage and that gives you visibility, you will limit your bill while reducing the chances of failing in your market. These four tips will ensure you get a functional and scalable application with a reduced time-to-market, which will ultimately be beneficial for your budget!
Do you have a development project? Come and talk to us about it!
non-exhaustively the costs associated with a mobile application:
The first three costs will have a decisive impact on your budget. Here are 4 tips, inspired by the Lean methodology, that will allow you to optimize these costs and maximize your return on investment, regardless of the team you work with.
According to a study by Standish Group conducted on more than 50,000 projects, 52% face numerous challenges and 19% fail completely. And the first failure factor mentioned by managers is The absence of user data. Indeed, the most frequent mistake made by development teams is that of locking themselves up for months to develop the first version of their product without showing it to their potential users. When they finally show it, they realize that the product does not meet market expectations.
Start small, with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product), allows you to avoid this pitfall, and to save a lot of time and money. The first thing you want to know when developing an application is whether it addresses a problem that potential users are experiencing. The goal of an MVP is to put a first version of your product into production very quickly to allow you to learn from the feedback of your users and thus improve it. The MVP is not a “minimal application”, nor is it the application with all the functionalities but half developed. It must have THE functionality, which does not respond perfectly to the problem, but allows you to learn what the market needs. This is what will allow confirm or disprove your hypotheses.
A mobile project is a complex project: innumerable technological but also business or operational factors can have an impact on developments. In order to maximize the speed of developments, it is necessary to ensure, early in the project, that the working framework allows developers to minimize friction throughout the production process, from the expression of the need until the functionality is put into production:
At BAM, to remove dependencies outside the development team, which are the first source of slowdown in a mobile project, we perform a “technical challenge”. This two-day mission takes place before the start of developments and aims to push a functionality defined by the business to production. The aim is to uncover all the obstacles a developer may encounter in producing a feature. In this way, the team can take the necessary actions to remove these dependencies before the start of development and ensure a frictionless production process, at maximum speed!
The mobile market is very fragmented, with an infinite diversity of smartphones and tablets with different resolutions and screen sizes, and different operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) Developing an application for these various devices requires time, in particular to test that the application is displayed correctly regardless of the type of screens. Developing it natively requires knowledge of languages specific to each platform (Java for Android, Swift or Objective-C for iOS) as well as the development of two different code bases to be developed and maintained by two teams with different skills.
Develop your mobile application with multiplatform technologies, like React Native or Ionic, makes it possible to obtain a single code base at the origin of applications deployed on iOS and Android. Having a single code base allows you to reduce the costs of developing and maintaining your application since it no longer requires tracking bugs on a large code base or two different teams for each platform. Moreover, the JavaScript skills required for cross-platform development are significantly more abundant on the market than the skills in Java or Objective-C. Gartner already predicted in 2013 that 50% of mobile applications would be hybrid in 2016.
Many businesses choose to reduce their development costs by hiring offshore development teams because their quotes appear to be significantly cheaper. The hourly rate for low-cost offshore development can be divided by ten compared to a development team in the United States or Europe. However, these teams often compensate with volume, by taking on several projects at the same time, which usually leads to missed deadlines. The savings achieved will therefore quickly be offset by a higher cost to maintain and develop an application of unreliable quality. The cost of updating the application to current development standards and maintaining it and evolving it later will have a decisive impact on your budget.
In addition, make sure that the development team you work with offers you Visibility necessary and sufficient to manage your project. Some teams ask for specifications at the start of the project and only show the product during one or two demonstrations over the entire project, which can last several months. However, the feedback from your users, your new ideas and the evolution of your business environment will lead you to regularly make new decisions. The specifications will necessarily be impacted. Working collaboratively with your development team by allowing you to evolve the product as the development progresses allows you to avoid going back and forth at the end of the project that is costly in time and resources, and sometimes even in money, because they are counted as “out of scope”. A good standard is visualize the progress of the product daily by validating the functionalities developed every day.
By starting with a simple product, your MVP, with a team that you manage and that gives you visibility, you will limit your bill while reducing the chances of failing in your market. These four tips will ensure you get a functional and scalable application with a reduced time-to-market, which will ultimately be beneficial for your budget!
Do you have a development project? Come and talk to us about it!
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