Web App for your business and the mistakes to avoid.
The decision has been made. Your business struggles with the expanding processes, bureaucratic problems, circulation of documents, and collaboration between all employees. You've scouted the market for out-of-the-box solutions, checked dozens of those - your team spent effort and resources to adapt those solutions to your business - but in the end - generic features and no possibility to tackle your specific needs turned the project into a failure.
The decision has been made. You are creating your own, custom solution, that will take your business to the new level. You are now at a point, through which a lot of other companies have traveled - and it will be wise to avoid the common mistakes. Check out a few of them, most common, that we gathered to let you learn on the mistakes of others.
Lack of proper business analysis.
Too often we have seen that problem. Customers approach us with a variety of different ideas, some better, some worse - but when it comes to web apps that are meant to optimize the business processes in the companies, one of them is the MOST common - Lack of real business analysis. It's tempting to provide the software house with a project specification that is created internally, by the employees and managers of the ordering company. At first glance, such a solution seems logical. In the end, who will have better inside-out knowledge about your organization, than the members themselves?
The challenge however is not in the knowledge itself, but in expertise in selecting the proper path to optimize and digitize. Without an experienced business analyst doing the insight, it's common to over-emphasize particular elements of the upcoming web app. A qualified BA will enter your company, without bias and prejudice, and check which elements of the process stack can be simplified, which need immediate digitalization, which can be merged and which dropped completely. The challenging part of our work is not only to translate your company into a 1/0 language but to turn it into a more efficient organism in the process.
Copying of the existing solutions with no regard for your enterprise
We have been through negotiations with owners of enterprises, for whom the trigger to seek a web app for their business, was the fact that they have seen such a solution somewhere else. Whether it's a company of their friend, a competitor, or any other business that they have witnessed - what matters, is that the customer arrives with a mindset that is often impervious to common sense and suggestions. Do NOT be that kind of a person - nothing breaks the developer's heart more, than spending dozens of hours, coding a solution that in the end is getting abandoned, and even thou it's high-quality stuff - no one at the customer's company uses it. Simply because its origin was based on incorrect assumptions, that a tool that works at company A, will work as good at B.
Once again - just as in the case of the previous mistake that I've described - well-done business analysis, can help nullify the issue. We give our customers reliable and trustworthy BAs - so the protip here is: TRUST THEM!
An app that is not a solution to existing problems.
re w I'm sorry to say that, but: Digitalization of the business processes is not always the way.
In our times, the XXI century, in the age of the ongoing digital revolution, there's often a concept in the air, that turning something into it's digital (more precisely: web-based) version is a solution to all problems.
We know that it's not always the case. Do not assume that just by making a web app, or a mobile app, you will minimize your challenges or even overcome them completely.
Whatever we do, is first considered by the seniors across all of our teams. Not only the BAs, the devs, but also experienced c-suite managers who have gathered experience from all sorts of different industries. We spend a lot of time to get a grasp of your vision, to understand it, and in the end - assess if it's deliverable. If you hear - "No, it's not going to work" - it's because we truly believe that the outcome is not worth the cost.
Overblown, and too complex solutions with unnecessary features.
There is a street word for that...but let's not use that.
A huge temptation appears during the initial development, to continue with adding additional features to a web app that is already in the making, with a scope that has been agreed upon. In essence, adding more functionalities to the solution is not a bad thing, but the problem appears when the customer begins to drift away towards new, "revolutionary" ideas that he wants to have implemented. Too often such practice lowers the core of the web app to a secondary or even tertiary priority.
SCRUM method, that we use, helps to avoid this. By delivering the web app's components in 2 week-long sprints, we can block feature-bloat from happening. We ensure that each sprint, our customer receives visible upgrades to the code, leading to a seamless delivery according to set deadlines.
Omitting research part
It's obvious for us, that the growing competitiveness of the IT services market creates a temptation to employ your service team basing on the lowest price that you can find.
From our perspective, its better to give more for the same price, than to lower the price and at the same time, offer a lower quality of service. We know, basing on our experience in the IT service market, that a thorough, and effective research is a key to a high-quality implementation of the requested features. We base our code on the most recent versions of the complex technologies - to maintain the best class of our solutions, we never mindlessly copy lines that were created for a similar solution in the past. Time goes on, new concepts are spreading in every tech community out there. Research time is essential to have the top-notch code implemented.
Weak user Experience
Last, but not least comes the User Experience. The UX based approach is a well-established practice for many years now in the IT service industry. All web apps that we create are always designed with user interaction in mind. We have witnessed dozens of project implementations that hiccup when the interface for the users - which in the end is supposed to be used daily - is ill-designed.
Even most complex solutions need to be created with the user in mind in the first place. Our design teams are experienced with businesses of all sorts and sizes, and always when it comes to creating new solutions, we base them upon the best practices that we have established over the years.
Summary
There are many mistakes that can kneecap the development of a successful web app. It's impossible to list them all, because of the context and situational circumstances.
Try to hard-code the 6 following most common best-practices in creating web apps:
- Conduct proper business analysis
- Do not copy solutions made for someone else
- Identify true challenges and set goals to overcome those
- Keep it simple
- Spend resources for good research
- Remember about the UX.
Committing to those simple guidelines will ensure that the most common mistakes will not happen, and the whole experience with your upcoming web app will be better than you can imagine.
