Great Products Consulting

Category: Software Development

  • What is Technical Debt?

    What is Technical Debt?

    As your developers are building your online platform or mobile app, you might acquire something called “technical debt”. There’s a chance that you’ll never be told about it – and you won’t even know what it is, so I wanted to write this article to make you aware of its existence.

    What is technical debt?

    There is no single way to build a platform or app. Like writing an article, people will approach it in different way, and as a result, the final output will achieve the same result but actually look different.

    The choices made during development – either by accident or deliberately – create technical debt. Technical debt is the amount of re-work that you may have to do to your product in the future to get the functionality that you want.

    Why does it happen?

    There are lots of different reasons why technical debt gets created. Here are two that you’re most likely to come across:

    1. Initial decisions related to the overall technical approach
    2. Incomplete or changing requirements

    Both of these can create technical debt that has a great impact on your future plans.

    1. Initial decisions related to the overall technical approach

    Usually, you’ll make a deliberate choice about how you will develop your platform or app.  The overall approach taken can create technical debt.

    For example, one way to build an online platform is to use an existing platform as the basis for your new product. Wordpress is a common approach. Alternatively, you can have a completely customised solution. They may both give you the functionality that you want, but there are pros and cons for each. For mobile apps, the decision is often between using a hybrid platform or building from scratch as a native app.

    This technical decision is often based around money. You want to spend the least amount of money possible to get you to market, so that you can start making money. There are other factors too, but most will boil down to the initial costs and development time.

    2. Incomplete or changing requirements

    Developers can only make technical decisions about what they know right now. If you don’t have a complete picture of what you want, or if you add or change something down the track, then there’s a risk of creating technical debt.

    The developers will craft a technical solutions based on the requirements that you give them. If you’re thorough in defining what you want your product to do, and all of the nuances around it, the developer now has more information to work with.

    Imagine you tell a builder that want a single-storey, two bedroom house – and then halfway through you decide you actually want a 2-storey house. All of a sudden, the builder has to change the way in which the house is built. Some of what has been built may stay the same, but there’s a chance that some stuff may have to be ripped out and re-built.

    What does it mean for you?

    Some technical debt cannot be avoided. You don’t know what you don’t know. That becomes part of the cost of doing business.

    Another part of technical should be a conscious and informed choice that you make. You may choose to go with one option because it gets you to market sooner. This reflects the uncertainty associated with building new products.

    The final part is something that you can avoid. Be clear about what you want. Especially with an agile development methodology, developers focus on what’s immediately ahead of them. It gives you some flexibility to change your mind. However, it creates technical debt. The best case though is for a developer to be aware of what you want from the very beginning. Any re-work is a cost to your business, and it’s money that you could spend elsewhere.

    With your new awareness of technical debt and how it is created, you should now be able to start a conversation with your developer that allows you to make informed and deliberate choices about your future platform or app.

     

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  • What can you do to reduce the cost of building an online platform or mobile app?

    What can you do to reduce the cost of building an online platform or mobile app?

    In my last article, I looked at some of the major things that can affect the cost of building an online platform or mobile app. This article is going to look at some of the ways you can reduce your initial costs, without severely compromising your idea and the quality of the final product.

    The most effective way to reduce costs is to look at the following:

    1. Build less
    2. Reduce complexity
    3. Build for fewer devices

    1. Build Less

    It might sound obvious, but it’s a very difficult thing to do. How do you do decide what to cut out and what to keep? Often everything will seem important, and you’ll have to make some though choices. The reality is – research has shown that 80% of functionality for custom-built applications isn’t used, so as it turns out, there might be some features and functions that you don’t need for your launch.

    There’s an important thing to note here. Building less doesn’t mean that you never build the rest of the things that you want. What it does mean is you pick the things that your potential customers and users really want. Once they start paying you, you can afford to build more. Building less has other advantages around minimising the riskiness of your project.

    2. Reduce Complexity

    This one is probably a difficult if you don’t have any technical knowledge. How are you going to know if something is complex or not? Where building less is about the number of features and functions, reducing complexity is about what goes into each feature and function. It includes taking out steps in a process, and minimising the choices and scenarios that are possible. Generally, it’s about getting the platform or app to do less in the way of processing and calculating.  By reducing complexity, there are fewer places where things can go wrong.  When things go wrong, you have to pay more money to fix them.

    3. Build for fewer devices

    As I mentioned in my previous article, the more devices you build for, the more it costs. While responsive design deals with some of the differences in screen sizes, there will be cases where there just might not be enough space on a mobile phone screen. This means that you may have to adjust your design for mobile devices, and that means more designing, more coding, and more testing. With tablets and phones, and even laptops, your developers will also have to consider interactions with a mouse versus a touch screen.

    Why should you look to keep your costs low?

    No one wants to spend more money than they need to. However, people often go to a developer with a laundry list of things to do, and then get surprised by the amount they’re quoted.

    You might find that to reduce your costs, you may only need to do some of the things above.  By spending less money upfront, you can use the extra dollars in valuable updates after your product has launched.

    The more compelling reason for reducing your costs is actually around the uncertainty of making the money back. The more money you spend, the more you have to sell to make your money back, and to ultimately become profitable.

    Even if your most pessimistic business plans show you making money, it’s worth going through this exercise to see where you can cut the fat.  This can only mean more money in your pocket, so what have you go to lose?

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  • How much does it cost to build an online platform or mobile app?

    How much does it cost to build an online platform or mobile app?

    Cost is a big factor with any investment, and software development is no different. So, how much does it cost to build an online platform or mobile app?

    The answer – it depends. You might be able to get away with $10,000 or it might cost you $200,000+.

    Yes, an infuriating and vague response, but unfortunately, very true.

    Think along the lines of “how long is a piece string?” Software development projects can be small or they can be big. This, of course, affects the cost.

    Factors that can affect cost

    There are many things that can affect the cost of software development. Here are some main ones:

    1. What features and functionality you want (and how complicated it is)
    2. Who will build it
    3. How it will be built
    4. What devices need to be supported

    Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

    1. What features and functionality you want (and how complicated it is)

    There is a direct correlation between how much you want to build and the cost. An app with 50 functions is going to cost more than an app with 10. It just takes longer to build more, than to build less.

    The next part of this relates to how complicated the functionality is. We might both define a product with 10 functions, but they may differ in complexity. Mine might have lots of different rules, require lots of information to be captured and stored, and need lots of calculations to be completed. Yours may just be displaying different types of content that has been loaded into the system. Mine will probably cost more to build.

    2. Who will build it

    It’s no secret that going offshore will get you a lower daily rate than staying onshore. You’re probably looking at a difference of $50-$75 per hour. This can add up over a large project. However, the quality may not be there.

    There is also a difference between using a freelancer versus an agency. Agencies have a lot more overheads to cover, which makes them more expensive, but they usually have better coverage of the end-to-end process, because they have staff to address all of the skill sets needed to build software.

    Another element is the experience of the developer. As expected, if you use someone with lots of experience, it’s going to cost a lot more than if you have an inexperienced one. The balancing act between cost and experience is a tough one. Depending on your budget, it may be worth the risk to give someone less experienced a chance. However, if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on the project, then you’ll need someone more experienced.

    3. How it will be built

    If you’re building a mobile app, then the question of native vs hybrid will often be raised. Native apps are built individually for each phone operating system (e.g. iOS vs Android), and in the language of those operating systems. On the other hand, a hybrid app will be built once, and then converted into apps for different operating systems. The former is much more expensive because you have to build the app multiple times, but it allows you to have a product that is made specifically for that operating system. Hybrid apps work well too – and are often a good starting point – but you have to compromise because you’re building a “one-size-fits-all” product.

    On the web side, there are lots of ways to build a platform. You can use existing platforms like Wordpress to build very functional and experience-rich applications. Or you can build from scratch. This approach can have varying costs too depending on what you want.  If you can leverage an existing platform, it’s probably going to be cheaper than building from scratch. However, down the line, you might have to replace it with something else that allows you to do all the things that you might want to do.

    4.What devices need to be supported

    The number of devices that you want to run your product on will also affect the cost. If you’re only looking at a platform that someone will use on a laptop or desktop, that’s a different proposition to having it work on all device types. Just dealing with multiple screen types adds lots of overheads. Think about the different sizes of mobile screens and you’ll start getting an idea of the effort involved. Even if your product is built to be responsive, you still have to test it on all of these devices to make sure it works as expected. If you want to support touch screens, then there’s even more stuff to design, build and test. A lot more work has to go into making your product work on multiple devices, than making it work on one.

    How much will your project cost?

    Hopefully, you’ve now got a better feel of some of the major things that affect the cost of a software project. There isn’t a standard number that someone can give you.  If you want to know how much you need to budget for, then you really need to talk to a few developers about your specific idea. They should be able to give you can indication of the cost. You also need to find out how different parts of your idea will affect the cost, and where you might be able to simplify things or reduce what you build. This might affect the viability of your idea.

    At the end of the day, you need to know what it’s going to cost to make your idea a reality. This also includes all of the other costs that you’ll incur to launch your product. To give yourself the best chance at success, make sure your budget can cover it all.

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  • Do you really need a mobile app?

    Do you really need a mobile app?

    Mobile apps are the ‘in’ thing. About 119,000 new apps were added to the Apple App store last year. However, the question I always want to answer is – do you really need a mobile app to make your idea a reality?

    Why would you make it an app?

    Apps are very powerful things. You can do so much with one. Just look at your own phone and you can do anything from take and edit a photo, create videos, pay someone from your bank account, buy something at a store, listen to music – even make a phone call!

    If your target user is on the go and the problem that you’re solving for them involves activities away from a desk, then an app works. Also, if you need to use some the standard features on a smartphone – like the camera, someone’s contacts, GPS location, a microphone – all these things make a mobile app worthwhile. Being mobile has opened up lots of opportunities to take things on the road, but it’s not the only way for people to do things.

    When it doesn’t make sense to build a mobile app

    In many cases, people have an idea that they want to deliver on a mobile app when one isn’t required. Sometimes, it may be that there is already an existing tool that can solve the problem, but a person just assumes an app will fix it. Other times, it’s just a matter of understanding the technology and what it’s good for.

    If the problem to be solved involves a person sitting at a desk, then a web-based platform may be more appropriate. Displaying things on a computer or laptop screen has lots of advantages. The size of the screen fits more stuff – this makes it easier to do more complex tasks. If there is a lot of content to display – tables, text, images, video – then it’s easier to do this on a big screen. Ever tried to work on a spreadsheet from a mobile phone?! If your idea involves anything like that, then skip the mobile app!

    Why you want to avoid building a mobile app

    The main challenge with mobile apps is they can get expensive to build, run and maintain. Without getting into the different ways of building a mobile app, the costs come from having to develop and test for different phone operating systems (mainly iOS and Android) and screen sizes. Also, you have to update your app with each operating system update. This all adds up over time.

    The other issue is that people expect a lot from apps – but they don’t want to pay for it. When was the last time you paid more than $2.99 for an app?! If I look at the apps in my own phone – minus a couple of games – I’ve paid for about two of them. Sometimes the economics of mobile apps means you have to sell a lot of them to cover your costs and make money, which doesn’t make it an attractive opportunity.

    If mobile access is key, then there are other options other than a mobile app which you can explore. There are “mobile web apps” or “mobile websites” (<ahref=”https: www.qantas.com”=”” target=”blank”>qantas.com is a good example).  These websites are designed specifically for mobile devices, but require an Internet connection.  If you open the website on a laptop or computer, you’ll see a different screen versus opening it on a phone.  It will look more like a mobile app, and in some cases, there may be different functionality.  There are also “progressive web apps” that can be downloaded from a website onto your phone.  They can be used off-line, but more importantly, then can provide a seamless mobile app experience without having to be developed as a traditional app. So, before you go out and ask a developer to build you a mobile app, ask yourself – do you really need one?</ahref=”https:>

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    My idea to launch checklist is your plain-English guide to getting there.
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  • Why should you build a prototype?

    Why should you build a prototype?

    Prototyping is a common approach for developing a mock or sample product to help test concepts before building out the real thing. It’s used in all different industries and can come in all shapes and forms.

    In this article, I’ll look at what a prototype looks like for online platforms and apps, and how it can help you build a better product.

    What is a prototype?

    A prototype is anything that represents your future product to a user. Traditionally, in manufacturing, this might have been a sample of a piece of clothing or something cobbled together to show how the product might work.

    Today, when it comes to platforms and apps, the approach is the same. You want to build something that represents your future product without actually building the whole thingdf.

    As software isn’t a physical product that you can create a sample of, the most popular way to prototype is to create something called a clickable prototype.

    What is a clickable prototype?

    A clickable prototype is a collection of medium or high-fidelity wireframes that represent what a customer might need to do to complete a task. These wireframes are put into a computer, where you add some ‘buttons’ and ‘links’ that allow people to navigate through your prototype.

    There are prototyping applications you can use, such as InVision, Balsamiq, and Acrobat XD, that provide a set of tools to help you build and get feedback on your prototype. You can also use something like PowerPoint or Keynote. Even some hand drawn pictures can work as well.  The video below gives you an example of what a prototype looks like.

    The main idea is that people have something to see and ‘hold’ in order to better understand what you want to do.

    So, when do you do all of this?!

    There are two main areas where you can use prototypes:

    1. Validate an idea
    2. Test your design

    1. Validate an idea

    If you find your idea is hard to explain to potential customers and users, then a prototype is a one way to illustrate what your platform or app will do. By building a prototype, you can get feedback on your idea, and get input into what you need to include in your product. You might find some features are more important than others, which might change the way you prioritise your app’s development.

    2. Test your design

    Prototypes are also good at testing your product’s user experience. The prototype represents how your users will navigate through your system. You want to find out which parts are easy to use, and which aren’t. By getting people to play with your prototype, you can identify how well the solution addresses their problems based on its usability.

    Why would you prototype?

    If used correctly, prototyping will give you a more informed idea of what you should be building, so that you can get people to use it. Prototyping will also allow you to build a better product, so that the people using it will keep using it.

    Ultimately, both of these things reduce the risk of you spending money unnecessarily. If you can’t build the prototype yourself, it will cost you some money. However, spending a small amount of money to discover you’re building the wrong thing is way better than spending months, and a lot more money building something that isn’t what you need.

    Are you ready to turn your good idea into a great product?
    My idea to launch checklist is your plain-English guide to getting there.
    It’s available now for only $24.
  • What are acceptance criteria?

    What are acceptance criteria?

    Acceptance criteria define what the system needs to be able to do in order to be considered ‘complete’ from a software development point of view. In essence, they’re a set of tests that you conduct to confirm that your platform or app does what you want it to.

    In this article, I’ll look at what they look like and how you use them.

    What are acceptance criteria?

    For each requirement that you have for your platform or app, you should also have one or more acceptance criteria. These criteria describe how your system is expected to work – both in terms of a “normal” scenario, but also when a user does something that they shouldn’t have.

    A commonly used structure for framing your acceptance criteria is as follows:

    <b>Given</b> [a particular scenario]

    <b>When</b> [the following steps are completed]

    <b>Then</b> [the expected outcome happens]

    This handy approach ensures that you fill in each part for a complete statement of acceptance.

    Examples of acceptance criteria

    Let’s say you’re building a marketplace to connect freelancers with potential customers. For the search function, you might have the following acceptance criteria:

    Given I am looking for a developer in Australia,
    When I enter “developer” in the keyword search field, select “Australia” from the drop down field, and click the search button,
    Then the search results screen displays with a list of developers from Australia, their rating, and their indicative hourly rate; with the results sorted by rating.

    To go even further, your acceptance criteria may also include the following:

    Given that I have searched for Australian developers,
    When I click on the header of the hourly rate column,
    Then the search results are sorted by hourly rate from lowest to highest.

    You’ll want to write acceptance criteria for each feature. This will ensure that you’ve covered all parts of the process. However, you may not cover every single scenario that occurs – simply because your acceptance criteria would go on forever!

    How do you use them?

    So now that you know what acceptance criteria are, how should you use them? Most obviously, you’re using acceptance criteria to test what your developers have done. You’re making sure that your platform or app works the way that you expect.

    By having your acceptance criteria written out, you now have a systematic way to test – and retest your platform or app. This also allows you and your developers to know what you did if something goes wrong. If you just went into your system, started playing around, it would be very difficult to recreate the problem.  With written criteria, you can repeat the test to see if the same thing goes wrong again.

    Thinking about your acceptance criteria is also a useful tool to help you define what you want your product to do. If you start thinking about what your acceptance criteria might be when you write your requirements, it actually helps your mind work through the things that the product needs to do. This will give you a more complete set of requirements.

    Acceptance criteria are an important part of the software and product development process. Along with giving you some help in writing your requirements and a systematic approach to testing, acceptance criteria also give you and your developers a benchmark for what you expect your system to be able to do. So, take the time to write out your acceptance criteria as they’re a critical component for building your platform or app.

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  • What does CRUD mean?

    What does CRUD mean?

    When you have an idea for a platform or app, you might start paying closer attention to ones you use today, or new ones that do similar things to what you want to do. What you might notice is that there are some common things that you do in each of them. If you’ve added something, viewed a list of things; maybe even updated or deleted something, then you’ve performed a CRUD operation. In this article, I’ll explain what they are and why you need to know about them.

    What does CRUD stand for?

    CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete. These words refer to some very common things that you do on a daily basis. You add (or create) a post for Facebook. Then you view (or read) other people’s posts. Maybe you edit (or update) an image in Canva, or delete one that you don’t like. If you start thinking about your interactions with different platforms and apps, you’ll find these are functions that are common to them all.

    Seems simple enough, how do you use them?

    Understanding what CRUD means is most important in the defining what you want your product to do. It relates to what the users in your platform or app should be able to do. As you think about the different processes that your users will go through to achieve their goals or solve their problems, you should also think about what CRUD operations they should be able to do.

    It might seem simple to say – “oh yeah, they should be able to do all of those things”, but sometimes, it doesn’t end up that way. Maybe some users should be able to do all four things, but other users should only be able to view. What happens if you update a master list? How should the updates be distributed to users? What are the implications down the track if a person can delete something? Is it a permanent deletion where it is gone from the system altogether? Or maybe it’s just a case of “hiding’ it from the user to make it appear like it’s been deleted.

    All of a sudden, you now have to start digging deeper into what you want your platform or app to do. For every feature and function, you should be thinking about what your users will be doing, but also what you want them to be able to do. Take some time to ponder all of this, as you’ll find it opens up a lot of complexity in your system that you might not have been aware of before.

    What if you don’t do this?

    The problem is that CRUD operations seem so obvious to people, that they either don’t even think about them.  Alternatively, they subconsciously assume that their developers will build them anyways – because they’re a part of every system they’ve ever used.

    The thing is – developers can only estimate and build based on what’s specifically stated. It’s hard for someone to anticipate everything that’s not written down. If there’s something specific in the way you want your platform or app to work that’s not obvious to someone, then your developer either won’t build it, or they’ll build it in a way that you didn’t want. Who can blame them though? They’re not mind readers, and they’re running a business too – so the only way for someone to deliver to expectations is to have a clear definition of what needs to be built.

    Imagine that you have a five features in your platform or app, and you only define your product with the create and update functions, but not the read and delete ones. All of a sudden, you’ve only covered 50% of what you need. Fast forward a few months, and your developers will be asking for more money!

    So, when you’re looking to turn your idea into a product, consider your CRUD operations. Even though they sound simple, they have a big impact on your development project both in terms of the features that are developed and the overall cost.

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  • Agile – The buzzword for software development

    Agile – The buzzword for software development

    Everywhere you turn these days, people are touting the virtues of agile. Large corporations are adopting it in droves, and you won’t find a IT-related job spec that doesn’t ask for it. But what does agile really mean, and should you really care?

    When you want to get a website platform or mobile app built, your developers are most likely going to tell you that they use “agile”, as if it should be this massive selling point for you.

    It is and it isn’t. In this article, I’ll explain why and also explain what it means to you.

    What is agile?

    Agile is a software development methodology. It’s mainly an approach that developers use to build websites, apps and other complex technology systems. There are different types of agile too. You might hear words like Kanban or scrum. These are different ways that people implement agile.

    What does agile involve?

    Agile is about people working together collaboratively – all at the same time – to define, design, build and test software. In true agile, this means you, developers, designers and testers are working together on a daily basis to get your platform or app built.

    The idea is to build quickly and deliver often.  It’s meant to reducing your immediate upfront costs, so that you can get your product into the hands of real users as soon as possible. This allows you to get feedback on your product; which in turn, helps you to decide what features to add next.

    Sound good? What’s the catch?

    1. Only the development team is involved

    Generally, when developers and agencies talk about agile, they’re only talking about their team – not you. This means that you don’t end up being involved in the day-to-day, and as a result, you sometimes only end up seeing something at the end of each delivery – after it has been built. As a result, you lose the collaboration and synergies that come from working with someone on a daily basis.

    2. The potential for rework

    Unless you’re involved in the day-to-day development of your platform or app, or you receive a wireframe for each screen in it, there’s a good bet you’ll end up having to pay for some rework.

    This is because you won’t get a document that gives you a complete view of how your product will work. You’ll probably see bits and pieces as the project progresses, but you won’t get a whole end-to-end view until the project is done. This means that things might need to be re-visited, and re-worked as your project progresses.

    Also, when your developers don’t have a full view on what comes next, and they’re building under short timeframes and tight budgets, you can end up with something called “technical debt”. This means that the system has been designed to deliver what you want today, but it may not be the best way to do it, and it may leave you with a bunch of rework to do down the track.

    3. Inaccurate estimates

    The idea of agile is that you want to be flexible, and spend your time doing rather than documenting stuff. That’s not to say that there’s no documenting. It’s about being smart about it. You don’t spend writing a massive document with everything that you want the product to do, and there isn’t a massive document showing you how the developers have designed your product.

    Instead, you start with something high level and expand it as the project progresses. However, without these documents, it’s very difficult to get an accurate estimate for how much it will cost to build your whole platform or app.

    Developers and agencies get around this by having a bit of a discovery period.  Here, they try to understand as much about your business and your product as possible. This (hopefully) gives them an opportunity to give you a more accurate estimate. However, there will still be a lot of detail missing at this stage, so you should expect them to ask for more money down the track.

    Where does that leave you?

    All of the above gets in the way of developers being truly agile. However, the alternative approaches for development, such as waterfall, have their disadvantages too.

    I believe agile truly works best when you’re not paying by the hour for your developers, and when you’re working hand-in-hand with them to ensure that your vision is transferred to them.

    The overall message is to be informed and be prepared. You want to be able to understand how the methodology works and how your developer plans to use it. This will help you to know what to ask for, and to get the confirmation you need that they are building the product you envisage.

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