A Mobile App Development Checklist

Many people who build apps are extremely anxious to “get started,” without really understanding what it means to get started. In particular, those who have the design and development skills to build an app without help often forgo the processes of researching competition, understanding what’s going to make their app different, and sketching the key screens of their app, and instead start building it right away. The result is a misinformed app that is doomed to fail before it even hits the App Store.

Most people associate “development” only with designing or programming. But the entire development process—at least when building apps intelligently—includes your efforts to outline your app assumptions, your initial wireframes, and the validation of those ideas and assets with your customers. Of course, there’s more to your app than what you’ve done up to this point, and even more than the actual programming that is soon to start. Although those in the software industry divide the various parts of the development process differently, here’s how I outline the process:

Strategy

• Initial research
  
• Development of the assumptions about your app
  
• Customer outreach, validation, and initial wireframes

Design and development

Design:

• Colors
  
• Typography
  
• Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)
  
• User experience
  
• App name, icon, and screens (including splash screen)

Development:

• Technical architecture
  
• Programming
  
• Integration with external data sources
  
• Optimization/performance tuning

Quality assurance

• Testing your app and interacting with beta testers
  
• Building an app onto a device using Xcode

Launch

• Submitting your app to the App Store
  
• Preparing for the availability of your app in the App Store