Hello everyone! It’s Tuesday – which means this week’s edition of AppBoard Tuesday (ABT) is all ready. By the way, we apologize for the no-show of our newsletter last week, owing to unavoidable circumstances. Anyway, we are back – and you can look forward to ABTs every Tuesday from now on.
This week, we won’t be talking about any particular app development technique or marketing/promotional methods. Instead, the agenda in today’s edition of ABT is the importance of ‘quality work’ over ‘quick work’. At times, service providers tend to overlook certain apparently minor bugs and other issues in their offerings. Such lackadaisical ‘This Looks Fine’ syndrome often has a nasty way of biting back, pretty soon!
Let’s start off with a general example. Last week, we had missed out on an ABT. We could easily have brought out the edition on Wednesday or Thursday, and just called it a ‘delayed publication’ or something, right? But then, the ‘Tuesday’ in AppBoard Tuesday’ would have been lost, there would no longer be any consistency about our weekly newsletter, and it would have been relegated to ‘just another thing’ we do every week. That was not something we set out to do when ABT was first launched, and it never shall be.
Okay, then – let’s now come back to our professional domain. Every mobile app developer in the world is aware that clients love companies that can complete projects very quickly. Let’s here take a pause though. If a mobile apps company were to deliver applications well before pre-specified deadlines without properly testing them, would that be okay? At first, there would be the ‘This Looks Fine’ feel (maybe even the client would be convinced) – but as cracks start to appear (read: bugs, app crashes, viruses, and the like), negative feedback would start pouring in. And as we all know, in the corporate world, bad word-of-mouth publicity can absolutely ruin a company.
So, how should one fight with this short-term ‘This Looks Fine’ approach? At Teknowledge Software, we have a very stringent set of policies for the purpose. In-house readers are no doubt already aware of the detailed code reviews and unit/cloud testing performed for each of our mobile apps (prior to launch). Multiple revisions in the app framework and UI/UX designs are done and clients are constantly kept in the loop. What ultimately matters is creating and delivering applications that do not give any scope of complaints on the part of buyers. Most of our clients have nice things to say about our after-sales services – but we do not like the sight of user-grievances being registered. A faulty app reeks of unprofessionalism – and that’s not a label any self-respecting app developer would like to get attached with.
Many companies that offer cross-platform mobile application development services tend to rush through the testing phase – simply because deadlines are fast approaching, and the app ‘looks fine’ on devices. Nothing can be a more dangerous ploy, from a purely business perspective. We keep advising our app development team to meticulously test every code/program/wireframe and prototype that they come up with. At times, a minor mistake in the code might not affect its operations at first – but over time, such ‘small’ problems can assume much larger proportions. Remember, it’s never about hiding defects with a piece of tape – you need to repair the problems in their entirety. What ‘looks fine’ to you now might seem absolutely junk a few weeks later. Clients would be enraged, and your market goodwill would take a nosedive. Why take a shortcut, when it can lead to serious complications pretty soon?
This brings us to the issue of maintaining high quality standards while completing app development projects within time. Although we work on multiple Android, Blackberry and iPhone app projects simultaneously, and our portfolio has got applications belonging to diverse genres – meeting deadlines has never been a challenge, and we have never had to compromise on quality for that. Our belief, that detailed tests at every stage of the app development processes actually makes the final round of testing quicker and easier, has been vindicated over time. We may be working on an iPhone app for kids or an Android app for business – a blend of quality-commitment and time-maintenance will always be our hallmark.
Some say, as you gain professional experience you become more confident – which makes it less necessary to check and re-check your work. Makes no sense, in our opinion. We have over 600 apps in our portfolio (and we are sure many companies have even more!) and have been in this business for close to a decade now. If anything, our app testing procedures have become even more rigorous over the years. We recently launched ‘Real Talk’, our 622nd app, – and the tests for it were as systematic and detailed as they were for our very first few apps. With experience, you become wiser – and wisdom definitely does not preach that you can get away with quick and shoddy work.
If you want to be a successful mobile app development expert, stop staying cocooned with the ‘This Looks Fine’ syndrome. Remember, the most plump and red apples can have worms in it – and apps with the very best visual effects and illustrations can have bugs that are slightly tricky to find. Test your apps for all such probable problems…and then, well, test some more. Make sure every line of the inserted code and every feature/control is working properly – in the device(s) on which the app would be downloaded. Have a multiple screening process in place, so that bugs that remain undetected at the first go are found and removed later. Don’t lose your sleep over project timelines – they won’t be affected. What’s more – you will manage to keep your clients satisfied, always. After all, that’s the key objective of any business, right?
There’s an old adage – ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. If you are in the business of making mobile apps, it doesn’t have much significance for you. A developer agency simply cannot afford to wait till their apps – filled with covered-up buggy codes – actually break down, before starting to look for fixes. Make apps that offer complete quality assurance – it’s a policy that works, we can vouch for it!
Good apps can potentially last a lifetime on users’ smartphones – while the bad ones get deleted soon after being downloaded. The sooner you can get out of the escapist ‘This Looks Fine’ feel and make sure that things are ‘actually fine’ – the greater will be your chances of being able to churn out great apps, continuously.
Lo and behold – the discussion on the importance of maintaining high app development quality standards has now brought us to the end of this edition of AppBoard Tuesday. It ‘looks fine’ to us – but once again, we are only too eager to hear from you about more tips and tricks to improve service quality. By the way, we have started working on a couple of new apps – you will get all the inside details on them in later editions of ABT.
Till next time then, have a great week, and yes…stay zapped with apps!
Hussain Fakhruddin
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