Once your project is planned and wireframes are created, you can proceed to the direct development phase. However, this stage involves several essential steps that must be completed.

In this article, we will cover:

  • the stages of development
  • how we form a team
  • how we provide updates and gather feedback

Development Stages

1. Pre-development: Planning and Preparation

The "pre-development" stage is crucial to the success of any new product and its timely completion. This stage involves forming the development team, creating a work plan, developing the product architecture, and formalizing requirements.

Forming Development Team

After the planning and visualization phase, we have agreed-upon requirements, estimates, and a wireframe. With a thorough understanding of the project and its specifics, we start assembling the development team.

First, a project manager is assigned and briefed on the project's objectives, specifics, and client needs. Based on this information, the project manager selects other team members with relevant experience, including developers, testers, designers, and DevOps specialists. The analyst who planned and visualized the project with the client in the previous stage also joins the team, transitioning into their role.

Development Plan

Once the development team is in place, a development plan is created. The entire team participates in drafting this plan, considering the logical order of tasks, potential risks, and client priorities.

The work plan is presented as a Gantt chart, which schedules tasks along the vertical axis and project timelines along the horizontal axis. Key dates, including intermediate releases, demo dates, and the final release, are marked on the chart.

The client has ongoing access to the work plan to monitor the team's adherence to deadlines.

For information on what to do if project deadlines are missed, check out this article.

Architecture Development

Another critical part of the "pre-development" stage is developing the product architecture. The architecture affects system stability, ease of maintenance, future updates, and scalability as the number of users grows.

Addressing these factors during the architecture creation is crucial, as it is more cost-effective to redesign the architecture upfront than to fix bugs and scalability issues later. For more on how poor architecture can impact the project budget, read here.

We use a "secure architecture" approach" to ensure the best project architecture. Developers detail the application's functionality, select technologies, and plan for scalability. This proposed architecture is then reviewed by experienced developers outside the project team, who provide feedback and suggestions. The team updates the architecture based on this feedback before proceeding with development.

Requirements Formalization

While the architecture is being developed, the project manager, analyst, and tester formalize the requirements. They break them down into tasks, describe them in detail, and enter them into Jira, a project management tool that helps optimize the team's workflow.‍

2. Development: Project Management  and Communication

Once the work plan is agreed upon, the architecture is approved, and all tasks are formalized, the development begins. During this phase, the primary point of contact for the client is the project manager, who oversees the entire development process.

The project manager is crucial to the successful implementation of the project. You can learn more about their role here.

Communication with Client

One of the key responsibilities of the project manager is maintaining regular communication with the client. The manager translates client requests into development terms and conveys their vision and goals to the team.

Additionally, the project manager provides regular updates to the client, including weekly reports on completed tasks and plans for the upcoming week. Every 2-4 weeks, a demo is held to gather feedback: a demo version of the product is uploaded to a special server, allowing the client to test new features.

Periodically, a Customer Success (Customer Care) manager, who is not part of the development team, will contact the client to gather feedback on the project. This ensures that everything is proceeding smoothly and addresses any questions, misunderstandings, or concerns.

For more information about the role of a Customer Success manager, check out this article.

Next Step

Once the main development is complete, the team prepares for the next stage – launching the product. This includes server installation, connecting services, reviewing documentation, and more. 

Ready to get started?  Contact us or book a quick call for a free personal consultation.

  • Processes