• Read more about 8 Things You MUST Know When Budgeting For a Mobile App

Importance of a mobile app

Every company should find value in a digital strategy. Deciding on a mobile strategy for your business requires a number of considerations. First you may need to decide what’s right for you - a mobile application or a responsive website? When a business is determining their mobile strategy, hopefully they are thinking in terms of a mobile application or a responsive website.

Considerations for Your Budget Before you Build your Mobile App

There are many things to consider before you design and build a mobile app. For example, some questions that will need to be determined prior to kicking off your project are which platform do you want an app built on Android, iOS or both? Are you wanting a native or hybrid app? What is your internal timeline, what date would you want your mobile app to go live for users to begin engagement? All of these questions and more need to be considered before your project kick-off. We have outlined some important considerations that you will need to take into account that may affect your overall budget.  

Consideration 1: Define requirements and choose feature set

Every app has different features, some compliment others while other features are not necessarily meant for an MVP product to launch it is still important to decide if you want a simple or robust feature set.

Some of the following are features that you can include in your mobile app that may affect your overall budget :

Consideration 2: Do you need design or development? Both?

Some folks have an internal design team in which case wireframes are built out and given to a development company while other companies may need a full design and development.

The cost of only design or only development or design and development differ because if you are only needing a development service and depending on the feature set your cost could be less than if you were looking for a complete design and development project.

Consideration 3: Which platform does it make more sense to launch on?

Who is the target audience that you are trying to reach? What stage in the product are you in? Do you need an app for Android or iOS or both?  Building one app will be cheaper than building two apps.

Consideration 4: Scope of project or timeline of project

Are you hoping to launch your mobile app in a certain time frame? If so, this may affect the scope of the project. If you are working against a shorter timeframe such as less than 6 months you may have to launch an MVP product in order to meet your timeline. If you do not have a particular time you are hoping to launch by then you will have more time if desired to make your app more robust

Some timelines vary depending on feature set and the timeframe that you are working with - the most features you want the more folks you need on your dev team.

Consideration 5: Minimum Viable Product versus Maximum Viable Product  

Some decide to launch an “minimum viable product” which means that it has just enough features to satisfy the end users because the design feature set would be limited.

Your overall cost would be lower than if you were launching a more polished app which would have more advanced feature set.

Consideration 6: Frontend & Backend Development  

Some may already have backend development complete for example if the company already has a website or a web app typically the backend development can be applied. Building out the backend may not be necessary, it may only require frontend development.

If you need only the front-end versus frontend and backend development that will affect the overall cost of the mobile app development depending if you need one or the other or both. Are you constantly updating your content to the backend? This could also require for your architecture to be more robust which will increase the total cost.

Consideration 7: Hosting and Maintenance Post App Launch

Ongoing maintenance is always a good idea ADVANTAGE OF MAINTENANCE.   This is typically a cost that is built into the contract and agreed upon whenever the client and company agree to the terms and contract.

Consideration 8: Compliance and accessibility

Ensuring what you are building is within the bounds of what is being designed/ developed to make sure that the company is staying compliant with your company's privacy policy.  Incorporating one or more of the compliance could impact your budget depending on the level of complexity.

Timeline to design and build a mobile application

Timeline you can expect for a mobile application is the following, please keep in mind these are rough estimates and vary depending on project scope and needs.

Additional things to consider that may increase mobile app cost:

WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE MOBOMO?

Mobomo knows mobile. We have extensive experience in designing and developing mobile apps, our process prioritizes your target audience increasing user adoption and customer satisfaction to ultimately exceed your goals.

We take the time to carefully understand our clients needs and goals, we created an app calculator compiled of the key components that we often see that effect our clients mobile app budget.

Of course, this is just an estimation, we would love to talk through your mobile app and how we can make it awesome.

• Read more about Tips For Keeping A Project On Budget

As a project manager at a mobile app development company, we talk a lot about the “iron triangle”, or “triple constraint.” Both of these terms directly relate to the scope, cost, and schedule of a project. Think about the scope, cost, and schedule as the three edges, surrounding quality. When one edge lacks the triangle becomes incomplete, resulting in quality drastically suffering. Easy enough, right? One of the easiest ways to break that triangle and for a project’s quality to be negatively impacted is through budget; it is crucial for the project manager to control budget from an internal and external perspective.

Let’s take a look at what that actually means, and how you can effectively manage your project’s budget.

Define & Forecast

This will likely occur during the discovery phase of your project, this is when your project manager discovers what your company (or your client) can afford in terms of budget. This phase goes hand-in-hand with the estimation process. Combining a variety of estimating techniques will help in order to provide the most accurate estimate. First, you must define your project and the deliverables you will provide at the end of the project. When estimating line items, we recommend getting technical expert judgment from someone who has worked on a similar project, comparing and learning from other projects, estimating core costs first (team, equipment, storage, servers, etc.) and then moving up to those more abstract items afterward.

Choose a Program for Budget Management

Thomas Carlyle says that “without tools [man] is nothing” - and in this case, it’s true. As humans, we’re prone to all sorts of errors especially when it comes to number crunching. Choosing the right tool, such as Harvest, Liquid Planner, SmartSheet, Punchtime or even a fancy Excel/Google Sheets with all sorts of formulas will do the trick! We recommend a program such as Harvest or Punchtime to track employee hours and plan for upcoming work.

Update & Review Allocations Regularly

That’s right - review, review and review again. Not even the most meticulous software project managers will be able to accurately forecast hours and keep a team on track throughout a project without a regular review of budget and resource allocations. Say one team member worked an extra 10 hours last week to finish a task.. Whoops. There goes your budget for the month! Without a regular review of schedule, scope and budget, you’ll lose track quickly. If you notice your project is regularly going over-schedule, it might be time to chat with your client and/or project stakeholders about increasing budget.

Manage Scope & Schedule 

There is no better way to blow a budget than by scope creep and consequential schedule changes. Project managers must be vigilant from the beginning of the project, and they should understand the client’s vision and requirements for the project. Project managers should include a process for any changes in scope, if any changes occur the project manager should communicate to the client how any changes will impact the budget. If you monitor scope and the project schedule, you will be more in control of your overall budget.

Communicate to your Project Team

Communication is KEY to any piece of agile project management., communicating allows project managers to set and maintain expectations so that there are no surprises. If you are going to be a bit over budget due to client requests, new features, etc., you must communicate to avoid a surprise when it comes to invoicing. If your team is consistently working over-time, meet with your project team to find out the root of the problem. You’ll be amazed at what can come out of a simple conversation with your project team. By your project team being in the same page in terms of communication, stakeholders of the project will feel they’re in the loop when it comes to budget- and there will be no surprises. 

These are just suggestions that some of our project managers have found to be helpful in terms of keeping a project on budget, feel free to tell us about your agile project management tips!