As a Nashville software development company and team of experts when it comes to all things software services, we thoroughly understand why it’s so important to stay on top of long-term application maintenance. Mobile app development is full of exciting projects and opportunities, but success ends as soon as app maintenance does. You can’t simply launch your latest project and discard it for the next. If you’re wanting to cultivate an application that continues to meet the needs of your clients and remains competitive within its market, you must continue to nurture it. If you don’t know where to begin, there’s no need to fret. We’ll go into detail about some of our top practices when it comes to maintaining applications for the long haul.
Assemble Your Maintenance Team
Collaboration goes a long way in the software services field, and mobile app development is no different. The first thing you can do to ensure the longevity of your application is establishing a dedicated team for updates and maintenance. Your team should be composed of knowledgeable individuals at your software development company; namely, it should have experienced professionals with unrivaled understanding of the application in question, its codebase, and common maintenance tasks.
This team should work to establish clear processes regarding their various tasks. When it comes to maintenance assignments, they should create a streamlined process for maintenance time, bug tracking tools, and task prioritization. By establishing a team and allowing them to organize their workflows, software development companies have a better handle on long-term application maintenance.
Communicate Often and Effectively
Mobile app development involves a team of individuals invested in the success of the application. Accordingly, you should maintain clear channels of communication between these teammates. Whether they be developers or stakeholders, everyone needs to stay in the loop about the application’s status.
This translates to using project management tools for progress tracking, regularly scheduled meetings and status updates, and integrated systems for resolving user issues and feedback. Maintaining these channels will keep your communication current, and it will be easier for everyone to stay on the same page. Keeping these measures in place for effective communication can help your application remain well-maintained and responsive to its users’ needs.
Support Your App with Software Services
Long-term application maintenance can be supported by more than just your team. You can leverage additional software services to monitor and maintain your application around the clock. Consider using hosting, data backup, and recovery services for minimal downtime. You should also implement a customer support system for direct resolution of any user queries. These software services will help your app run smoothly for its users, offer a seamless experience, and ensure the app remains reliable.
Test Frequently
It’s not enough to finish an application and set it free for users to try out. Honestly, a well-crafted application will never be completed. There are always updates to make and bugs to fix, and you’ll never know where to focus your team’s efforts unless you regularly test the app.
Frequent testing is essential for an optimized user experience. If you’re introducing new and exciting features to your app, you need to test it to be sure these features aren’t disrupting the interface in any way. Unintentional bugs and issues are inevitable, but you have complete control over how you handle them. Staying on top of your manual and automated testing will help you get ahead of any issues and resolve them quickly.
The best combination for frequent testing in the mobile app development world includes a combination of manual and automated tests. Your teammates can take charge over the manual tests, and you can utilize tools such as Selenium for automated testing. Using this combo will help your app’s longevity, and your software development company can avoid any major user issues with its quick resolution times.
Create Resolution Processes
When you do run into unexpected problems, you should at least have an expected solution in place. Lacking a plan of action for addressing your app’s issues will leave your team scrambling when it’s crunch time. A good plan of attack is to include a system for prioritizing and tracking bugs, a clear plan and timeline for resolution, and a layout for best contacts and communication channels for each type of issue. Delegation will help teammates work together more effectively, making it easier to break down each issue and get it resolved in no time.
Continue Monitoring Performance
Our last word of advice? Never stop monitoring. Even if your application doesn’t have many issues, you don’t want it to stagnate, either. Utilizing performance monitoring tools will give your mobile app development team valuable insights on app performance, user interaction, and potential bugs. All of this information can be used for either improving your application or for future projects.
The Work (and Application) Is Never Done
When it comes to mobile app development, the work is never truly complete. You can always enhance the app in some way, optimize the app further, and implement new tools to help you gain valuable app insights. Whether it’s for your current project or a future endeavor, our 245TECH team is here to help you achieve your software development goals. Call us today at (865) 465-4040 to get the conversation started.
