Despite the enthusiasm and all the spirited buzz around developing mobile apps, successful apps are too few in numbers. It requires a lot of sustained efforts, development skills, and competitive understanding. In the ‘no holds barred way, developing mobile apps is not easy to put it.
While some tested and tried best practices and well-established principles are known to us, any mobile app development company with a global footprint agrees on the effectiveness of the Agile development approach. Agile Methodology is known for many salient features that completely transformed app development.
What is Agile Technology?
Agile Technology refers to a development approach that allows splitting the entire project into several concurrently running development cycles. When each part of the app is developed separately, and several parts are built simultaneously, this results in faster development speed. On the other hand, in the agile approach, QA testing also continues alongside each part of the app. This simultaneous and continuous testing ensures achieving better quality for the app.
How Agile Methodology works?
As we all know, Agile development methodology comprises several short development cycles; the project can quickly minimize the risk since without undoing the whole app for changing something, changes can be incorporated at the end of each development cycle.
Each agile development cycle consists of all the development stages, such as
planning, requirement analysis, design, coding and development, QA testing, and documentation.
While any particular development cycle is not enough for the entire app project to take shape, every single iteration in the app project showcases a specific function that can be evaluated and changed after development.
Key advantages of Agile Mobile App Development method
At present most of the leading apps prefer using agile methods for building apps across all niches. When you inquire on how to build a mobile application in 2021 by using agile, understanding the advantages of this method remains most important.
Let’s have a quick look at the principal reasons to embrace the Agile method or the most critical advantages that make this development method popular.
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Fast-paced development
With the Agile model, just because a mobile app project is segregated into different smaller self-competent parts handled as independent sub-projects by separate developer teams without sharing any mutual dependencies, the contribution, responsibility, and focus of each team are fixed to a set of tasks. This ensures better productivity.
On the other hand, concurrent development of multiple app modules consumes far less time than an app project following traditional waterfall methodology. The simultaneous and continuous testing of the app components also brings down the entire testing time to a bare minimum as the app doesn’t need to undergo a lengthy testing phase at the end of the project.
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Lower project risks
Mobile app projects involve significant investment, and any step gone wrong can put the entire app project at risk in terms of additional investment and excess development time. Thanks to an agile approach, these risks can be reduced to a minimum level.
There can also be the possibility of the latest technology updates making changes in an ongoing project obvious. In such cases, the Agile approach of segregating the project into diverse independent modules helps to incorporate changes quickly without disturbing the entire app project.
Thanks to the Agile development approach, you can do away with the risks of starting an app project all over from the start as you can quickly introduce intermediate changes while the app is still undergoing development.
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Optimum coding quality
Unlike the waterfall method of app development, the agile development method does not involve QA testing at the very end of the project. Instead, it allows continuous testing of every app module side by side the development tasks. This ensures a better quality of coding as bugs and coding errors can be detected while modules are still undergoing development.
Any adjustments and changes can be incorporated into the app modules right when they are being developed. This approach, apart from minimizing the role that risks, also ensures higher coding quality.
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Smooth and efficient project management
Smoky, by segregating an app project into different independent modules, the Agile approach helps you manage the app project more efficiently. From allocating Human resources and IT resources to coordinating with other teams handling various tasks, project management becomes easier in more than one way.
Detecting issues with any module becomes easier as all the modules are handled separately and without dependence on one another. Maintaining project logbooks and allocating roles and responsibilities becomes easier thanks to this approach.
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Reduced cost of development
Just because the entire app project is planned meticulously across multiple independent components, ascertaining the cost of development and keeping proper control of the cost becomes much more accessible.
In terms of cost, the agile approach also provides excellent flexibility as you can introduce a new feature or change in any of the app parts anytime during development, or depending upon budget constraints; you can postpone any module.
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Iterative development
Agile, mobile app development methodology allows the app clients great scope to come with their suggestions during the development and introduce changes. When it comes to allowing iterations during development, the agile method offers maximum scope just because incorporating client-suggested changes in any module doesn’t disturb other modules undergoing development.
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Suitable for MVP approach
These days, many app projects embrace the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach only to ensure the app follows development based on user feedback. The idea is to roll out a basic app with elementary features and, based on user feedback introducing value additions through app updates. The approach is popular for keeping initial development costs lower as well.
The agile method with a modular development approach offers better support for incremental development of an app over time. The developers only need to incorporate changes or make value additions through the designated modules.
Conclusion
With such robust advantages, the agile method is quite likely to be embraced by most app projects. No wonder the agile method now plays a key role in most successful app projects.
