Mobile Development Checklist

Since we build quite a few mobile apps, we’re familiar with the many hoops you must jump through to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible. Here’s my list of things to do and consider about before starting your mobile product development.

Name your product. Think through those annoying things such as bundle identifiers before the project gets started. These little decisions can delay getting things configured in the app stores.

Create your iOS and Google accounts. Developers won’t be able to deploy builds and really be affective without these accounts set up in advance. For example, on iOS you can’t publish a build to a phone until you have a developer account.

Get a DUNS number. As part of setting up your accounts in the app stores, you will need a DUNS number. This is required to register your organization. Visit https://www.dnb.com/duns-number.html for more information.

Have a Mac ready to go. You won’t be able to build an iOS version without it. And you will also need to have Xcode installed.

Get Android Studio. To build that Android application, you will need to have a copy of Android Studio installed.

Have some patience. Be prepared to wait a few days for the app to be reviewed before it goes live in the stores.

Icons! Be prepared to generate lots of images and icons for your application.

Will you version your backend services? Remember, you might want to make many updates to your backend services, but you can’t guarantee users update their installations.

Consider how will you handle updates. If a user is running an old version of your application, do you want to warn them and push them to update?

What metrics do you want to track in your mobile application? It’s difficult to make an update later when you want to start tracking these metrics.