What Does the Typical Mobile App Development Lifecycle Look Like in UAE?

The mobile app development lifecycle (MADL), in its simplest form, is a structured process for building mobile apps. It involves several phases, from brainstorming the initial idea to releasing and maintaining the final mobile app product to leading app marketplaces like Google Play and App Store. If you too are planning to build and launch a mobile app in UAE, here is the quickest overview to help you navigate the early-stage processes.

Stage-wise Breakdown of mobile app development process 

Here’s a breakdown of the typical stages:

Ideation and Conceptualization

This is where you brainstorm your app idea, identify its target audience, and define its core features.

Planning and Strategy

Here, you create a project roadmap, define timelines and budget, and choose the technology stack for development (programming languages, frameworks, etc.)

In UAE, you’ll have to look at other aspects like regulatory and legal requirements to start an app business – for example, specific trade licenses, permissions to operate businesses in free zone and/or mainland entities, tax certificates etc. 

Design and Prototyping

This stage focuses on designing the app’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). You might create wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes to test and refine the design.

If you’re from a non-design, or maybe a non-tech background, you’ll need help from the best mobile app development company in Dubai to complete the important KPIs of this stage. 

If you exactly know what you want to build, have decide a user journey and thought about the features you want to offer, then a lot of UI/UX designers will be willing to help you for cheap, but that may cost you a lot in the long run when you’ll go and look for dedicated mobile app development services – as someone with a non-tech background. 

Development

This is where the app is actually built by app developers in UAE. The development process often involves working on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first, which is a basic version of the app with core functionalities.

If you’re going all-in with your app development project, have strong market research, solid cash flow to back the development and marketing, and have similar solutions as competitors in the market, then developers will look at your discovery documents, including technology stack, monetization framework and competitor’s analysis. 

Then they’ll start with coding the frontend – this is the client-side of an app that directly interacts with the end-user. After frontend, they program the backend of the mobile app – this is the server-side of the app and directly powers the functionalities of the frontend, facilitate the data exchange and cover the scope of the app. 

After backend, developers integrate necessary APIs to further facilitate the functionalities of the app. These APIs include maps, payment gateways etc. 

Testing and Quality Assurance (QA)

Once done with programming the frontend, backend, database and API setup, the app goes through rigorous testing to identify and fix bugs, ensure smooth performance, and optimize usability. 

Testing can involve internal teams, beta testers, and automated testing tools, but most mobile app developers in Dubai depend 70% on internal teams and internal testing standards – with beta testing on real users only if specified in the contract.

Testing and quality assurance processes assess the mobile app on five fronts: functionality of features, performance, compatibility, security and data privacy. Technically, such teams use terms like unit testing and device testing to assess the apps. 

Bugs once identified are documented and directed towards the developers so they can fix, improve, optimize and error-proof the app. 

Deployment and Launch

Once testing is complete, the app is submitted to app stores (like Apple’s App Store and Google Play) for review and publishing.

But a whole process takes place before the app is ready to launch. Mobile app development companies typically have marketing and launching departments that develop listing descriptions optimized for popular search terms in app stores, design screenshots. 

If part of the contract, they also design and execute launching strategies with social media, landing pages and email marketing. 

Maintenance and Updates

The work on the mobile app doesn’t stop after launch! This stage involves continuous monitoring of app’s functionality, performance, and user engagement, followed by fixing bugs, adding new features based on user feedback, and keeping the app updated with the latest security patches and operating system compatibility.

Marketing 

You’ve launched a great mobile app but what if your target users don’t know it exists? To decrease the developer to market gap, marketing teams create solid app marketing frameworks and often bi-annual strategies to meet user acquisition and revenue targets. They utilize websites and landing pages form top  web developers in Dubai as well social media ads, email marketing, content marketing, outreach and PR and guest posting to get the word out about the app. 

Scaling 

As an app founder, you must be satisfied by how well your app is performing for real users – but as an entrepreneur, especially in the middle east where new apps enter the market literally everyday, you want to enhance the scope of your app, increase your offerings and double your revenue. In that case, most app entrepreneurs plan to scale the architecture and revenue structure for their applications. They look at the monetization, introduce new hybrid money-making strategies, for example free apps offer in-app purchases, and freemium offer subscription for ad-free versions. 

Some apps choose vertical scaling, for example new app features, new interfaces for an additional user segment; while other apps choose horizontal scaling by launching the app version for an additional platform like tablet, or desktop, or a mobile browser, or simply Android or iOS if it wasn’t available previously. Some horizontal and vertical scaling also happens with improving the data capacity of the app so it can handle increased traffic. 

Conclusion

For most mobile applications, The MADL is not always linear, and so, most app development teams now adopt agile methodologies where development and testing happen iteratively throughout the process. This ensures continuous improvement and allows for adjustments based on real-time feedback, reviews and rating from end-users and feature requests they write about on community platforms.