How to Manage Mobile App Developers Successfully? A Quick Blueprint

Introduction about Global Mobile Application Market

Do you want to know the global mobile application market, which is expected to be booming in the upcoming year?

According to Astute Analytica resource, recent stats of the Global Mobile Application Market to Worth over US$967.74 Billion By 2033.

As per the Statista research, the global mobile app revenue is expected to reach $673.80 billion by 2027 to US$781.70bn by 2029.

Therefore, the mobile app development market is booming all over the globe. Owing to the exponential growth of mobile devices and smartphone users, the number of mobile apps is also increasing.

According to stats, have an idea to build a brilliant mobile app for your business? It is the right time to unleash that brilliant mobile idea and translate it into a mobile application.

What happens when you have a brilliant app idea, successfully validated, but no expert team on the execution end? A disaster!

A successful mobile app development is a result of user-centric development, well-positioned ideas, and an exceptional mobile app development team.

When we say mobile app developers, we don’t just rely on good hiring. It is equally important to collaborate and manage them to help unlock their potential.  It is essential to identify the right tools and define the processes to pull off the results. so, lots of questions are coming to your mind! such as:

How many developers do I need to hire to develop an app?

How to hire someone to bring my app idea into reality?

What are the tips to manage mobile app developers to release a successful application?

Here’s a detailed mobile app blueprint of the question in your minds of answers. This blueprint assists you to build brilliant mobile apps from the best mobile app development company USA and you can get 100% satisfaction results from their mobile app developers.

What are the Reasons to Hire a Mobile App Developer?

As a business owner, you should know the key reasons to hire a mobile app developer, such as transparency, user-centric design, security, data safety, privacy, and cost-effectiveness. Below detailed 5 key reasons to consider hiring app developers from a mobile application development agency.

#1. Transparency

They bring to the table extensive knowledge and a complete understanding of the technical stack. Your developers would know when to use a particular technology vs the other. They are aware of what it takes to build a strong, secure, and high-performing application.

#2. User-Centric Design

With their vast expertise and experience, they have gained a complete understanding of how users engage with mobile applications. They know what will make the users interact, use, and take actions on the mobile application. This understanding will promote more user friendly, user-centric and usable designs.

#3. Security, Data Safety, and Privacy

Your mobile app experience is ruined by vulnerabilities and attempts at hacking. However, you can avoid that by hiring developers who understand the importance of security and privacy. They will include features and functionality that can increase data safety and privacy. Eventually, you will notice an increase in app usage.

#4. Flexibility

As the developers have the infrastructure and core understanding, they can deliver apps faster and from time to time at a low cost. This helps you build a promising solution that generates more returns with low investment.

#5. Budget-Friendly

Your mobile app developer understands the market  price and your abilities. They will be able to deliver unique solutions at an affordable rate, in sync with your goals and personalized to your users. Moreover, they would ensure that it is deep-rooted to your unique positioning.

What are the Key Considerations Before Hiring Mobile App Developers?

Before hiring app developers, an entrepreneur should know key factors such as developers' expertise and experience, diverse work portfolio, development cost, collaboration and communication, flexibility etc.

Here are 5 key factors in detail to learn how to develop and manage mobile app developers for your business.

#1. The Developer’s Experience

It’s an experienced developer who can see through the idea and build the roadmap immediately.

They would know what would work and what wouldn’t. Immediately upon listening, they can share the exact processes involved, timeline, and budget approximations.

A developer’s experience is a paramount requirement for your recruitment processes. If they are experienced in your niche, they can share the best practices and highlight the trends.

They would know the exact features that you must incorporate while planning the application.

#2. Diverse Portfolio

The portfolio gives a lot of sense to their work and abilities. You will learn all about the past work, their style, and even their understanding of their niche.

A diverse mobile app development portfolio gives you a glimpse into the creativity and ability of the mobile app development team. You will know how they build uniqueness and what makes them the best mobile app development team.

#3 Development Costs

You cannot begin building a mansion without knowing if it is within your means.

 That’s why development costs are crucial when hiring teams. You cannot hire someone who would exceed your budget.

Asking for quotations, seeking breakup and defining your budget would help you find the right mobile app development partner.

Moreover, development costs would give you an idea of who would best fit your requirements.

#4 Flexible and Scalable

You are teaming up with Android app development services or iOS app development services to seek their help in building your application.

Obviously, you need them to be flexible on changes and adaptable to the differences in cultures.

Moreover, when working with a team, you may need more or fewer people to handle your development needs. As a result, you need a more scalable team.

This is an important aspect that you might want to consider while managing recruitment.

#5 Collaboration & Communication

You and the development team must communicate as much and as often as possible.

If your team needs to take up concerns regarding development or they need to reduce the bottlenecks, communication can help.

You must recruit or collaborate developers or development teams that can help enhance the communication and make it seamless and fast.

They should be able to connect with you about the progress, report the milestones and ensure quick calls to remove hassles.

What are the Blueprints or Steps to Manage the Developers Efficiently?

You have seen why and how to recruit a great team of mobile app developers for your business app. Let’s look at the 7 mobile app blueprints or steps to manage mobile app developers efficiently. This will help translate your mobile app ideas into robust solutions.

#1 Creating a Solid Team Structure

Have a question of how to manage an app development team? As a first step to managing a development team, you must define the roles and responsibilities carefully. There should be a defined structure with carefully assigned tasks and jobs for the best outcomes. 

The Team Structure

This is the first step to creating the ideal development team is to create the perfect structure. Let’s discuss the typical members and their roles here.

Product Owner: They own the product and decide the development priorities. They are mostly responsible for creating the milestones, timelines and plans for the app creation process.

Business Analyst: They will analyse the business, define the goals, propose the requirements and decide the app development approach. They will be part of the strategy team creating the estimates, adding the feature requirements and offering inputs to prototype development.

Project Manager: They are responsible for managing the shop-floor activities and handling the app process entirely. They would need to work towards ensuring the app development occurs in the said time and budget.

UI/UX Designer: They are responsible for delivering intuitive and highly usable user interfaces. They will ensure that the application is optimised to deliver unique user experiences. They aim to engage the users with aesthetic and functional applications.

Developer: You might need to hire iOS app developers or Android solution experts for the team for native app development. If you plan cross-platform solutions, you might need framework experts to code, debug and iterate development for quick releases.

QA Engineer: Finally, a QA tester or engineer can help debug, test and resolve the issues to mitigate risks and release functional app solutions.

Cross-functional Collaboration

For the best team structure and management, you must introduce cross-functional collaboration. Effectively, this means people across teams will collaborate to resolve the problems and work towards a single goal.

This would help reduce the silos and empower the teams by closing skill-related gaps. The teams can act on issues faster and release the apps with minimum delays.

#2 Process for Communication and Collaboration

You can't manage the mobile app development teams and handle your core work. It can reduce your productivity, hampering your revenue and income.

So, what could you do to establish seamlessness in managing the teams?

Assign a Project Manager

This is the first step to take towards efficient management. You will learn all about the app’s progress and the issues from the project manager.

The project manager would be the account holder and the face of your company. This single person would handle all the communication and ensure maximum productivity.

When you have a single person manning the project's progress, you can avoid delays. They would take down the notes and understand the issues perfectly. They would know which teams to connect with and how to get it resolved.

You can always connect with the manager once a week or biweekly to get the progress reports and gain visibility.

Identifying the Tools

The second most important part of the management process is defining the tools for communication. This would include real-time, asynchronized and collaboration tools. In case there is an issue that needs to be discussed immediately, real-time messenger tools are effective.

To assign and ensure complete allocation of tasks, you can use project management tools. These tools can also be used for collaboration and asynchronized communication. You must always look for the right tools to prepare your team for seamless processes.

#3 Resource Allocation and Management

When managing a team, you must allocate the budget to specific departments. At the same time, you must also define the allocation process for best resource delegation.

Allocating Resources

Every task requires a specific number of resources. For instance, hiring Android app developers for native app development is crucial for success. You should know how many developers you would need to complete the project.

Similarly, you might need to think through designers, QA testers and other resources for your application development.

The project manager should recruit the right resources, assign them the work and ensure proper delegation.

Managing the Resources

The project manager should be hypervigilant concerning the resources. If you don’t need a few resources for the job, you may need to off-board them. This can add to the cost of the project and can drain your budget.

When you are appointing the manager, make sure they are aware of how to allocate and scale the resources to meet the needs. This way, you can efficiently manage the team and ensure proper development.

At the same time, you must be prepared for changes in the work scope and the need for additional resources. This level of management can help you deliver the project on time.

#4 Risk Management

As a product owner, you need to identify and mitigate the risks surrounding your project. This will help your developers plan the strategy accordingly and deliver a fruitful result.

Assessing your Project

To help your developers, you must document the risks at all levels. This could be a technical risk. You can get it assessed by the development team. They will know if software bugs or compatibility issues can hamper your project.

You can accordingly choose a different approach or strategy for development. Similarly, if there are budget constraints, you can ensure your developer is aware. This would help stay true to your budget and planned costs.

Identifying and Evaluating the Risks

You must assess each risk you have identified in an isolated manner. You can connect with the team members and collaborate with them on how to mitigate these risks.

Assigning each member of the team with risk assessment and tracking can help you resolve them faster. It is equally important to conduct risk monitoring for the best strategies.

As a project owner or manager, you must document all the risks so that teams are well aware of what to monitor.

When you have the right reports and documentation, you can craft effective strategies to mitigate the risks.

#5 Monitoring and Measuring

When you are creating a project, you are responsible for all aspects. It could be the performance, the budget overshoots or issues that go unresolved. Monitoring the project progress, tracking the vital KPIs and checking the reports can help you manage the developers easily.

Tracking Key Performance Indicators

When you start with the app development project, define the purpose and goals for it. You can easily define the efficient development practices, the code quality and other factors. You would know the industry standards for UI and UX development.

Translate these into key performance indicators for the team. Identify the metrics that can help you assess the performance of the project. These indicators should help you track the factors that are crucial to app development success- cost, quality, user satisfaction and timelines.

Ensure you are assessing these parameters with a keen eye for the best results.

Check the Reports

It is equally important to stay at the core of the development. It will help you know just how far along your developers have come in completing the project.

You must define the progress report frequency at the start of the project. You should also define the structure for reporting as it can help you gain insights. For instance, tell your team what they should include in the reports.

It is equally important for the team and you to track and document all issues so that you know how to resolve them. Ask your team to include the indicators for performance in the report as well to help you make the right decisions.

#6 Quality Assurance

What does the customer expect from you? A high-quality and bug-free project that they can use without friction. It seems simple, but without putting your developers to task, you may not be able to attain the quality goals.

Make sure to sit down with the team to determine the quality checks they must conduct. There are two major things you must work out before proceeding with quality testing. 

The Testing Approach

Collaborate with your mobile app development team to understand the best testing approach for the application. You might need to go with a balance of manual and automated testing to resolve the issues.

Manual testing can help indicate the usability, while automated testing will decide the functional abilities. To conduct each test, you must have a qualified testing team that can authenticate the tools and write the test cases.

User Acceptance Test 

You must test for user acceptance. This involves conducting in-house and beta testing before finally launching the application.

Your stakeholders should collaborate with the developers to assess the application for user acceptance. You must work towards improving the app by incorporating feedback. 

#7 Continuous Improvement

Managing a mobile app development team goes a long way. You are not just planning for today but also a long-term strategy.

That’s why you must ensure a way to incorporate continuous improvement into your strategy. This would encourage the developers to learn from feedback and boost the product continuously.

You can also implement faster development cycles with iterative development.

Feedback Loops

You must implement the best feedback loops across the development cycles for the developer. It will help them connect with the users, understand their issues and resolve them. Your developer can augment the app’s performance and upgrade it for better usability as well.

Iterative Development

If you want to establish a rapid application development cycle, you must implement iterative development. This can shorten each sprint and ensure bug-free commits.

What are the Best Tools to Manage App Developers?

You need diverse tools to induce productivity and manage the app developers. Here are the top five must-have tools for your repository, including Slack, GitHub, Jira, Zoom, and Time Doctor. Look at these 5 Tools to Manage App Developers while you hire app developers from an agency or outsource.

#1 Slack

You cannot think beyond this application if you want to implement transparency and real-time communication. It helps share files, connect over issues and resolve bottlenecks immediately

#2 GitHub

You should use GitHub to collaborate over coding and handle version control. It is the perfect repository for all your coding files. There is no better way to document your application development than with this tool.

#3 Jira

This is the tool that helps with project management, issue tracking and task allocation. You can simply create, assign, delegate and track the tasks within the team. You will have better control over the project progress with this tool.

#4 Zoom

You can connect via video call to discuss the project's progress, highlights and issues. Zoom is a great video conferencing tool that allows you to record the conversation. Moreover, it is easy and accessible.

#5 Time Doctor

This time management tool can help you for efficient work outcomes. You will learn the exact hours spent on a project with this tool.

Conclusion

It does take a successful team to build your mobile app ideas. However, if you don’t allocate the resources properly or manage the team’s requirements, you may not gain the desired outcomes.

To manage the team, you must define the structure, allocate the work properly and house the suitable tools. It is equally important to assign a single point of contact and work towards constant improvement.

As an expert mobile app development company USA, ManekTech works with entrepreneurs to meet their unique goals. We collaborate with businesses to define the best strategy and roadmap to mobile app development success. Our expertise, collaborative abilities and transparency allow you to stay productive and work on your core business.

Frequently Asked Questions about Managing Mobile App Developers

Q 1. How much does it cost to hire a mobile app developer?

Ans: The cost to hire a mobile app developer is significantly based on the app developer's location, their experience and expertise, app development requirements and complexity, etc.

But here are showcase location-based mobile app developers' prices:

Furthermore, based on the research, most of them hire app developers from India. Hence, the estimated cost of an app developer starts from approximately $25 to $250+ per hour or more.

Q 2. How to find an app developer for my business?

Ans: There are various ways to find app developers for your project, such as trusted sources, professional networks, social media, tech events, etc Here are the following:

1. Trusted Sources 

- Clutch, DesignRush, and GoodFirms, etc., for an app development agency

- Upwork, Toptal for Freelancer, etc.

2. Professional networks

- LinkedIn

- GitHub

- Stack Overflow

3. Social Media Groups and Community

- Explore Facebook and Reddit communities and groups

4. Events, Industry Connection & Referrals:

- Explore from friends, colleagues

- Connection with business partners

- Tech Events

Q 3. Why should I hire mobile app developers for my business?

Ans: You should hire mobile app developers because they play a vital role in your business growth. Here are the benefits of hiring a mobile app developer:

• Providing Access to Professional Expertise
• Streamline Development Process
• Enhance User Experience
• Improve Customer Engagement
• Faster Time to Delivery
• Adopt Latest Technology
• Cost-Effectiveness and ROI

Q 4. Which app developers are best for me ? Freelance or In house?

Ans: Both are good but it depends upon your project's specific needs and object, timeline, budget, locations, etc.

Freelancers:

They are independent developers and offer cost-effectiveness services to clients  based on project by projects or dedicated hire hourly or fixed cost or contract-based. They deliver your project with clear requirements and shorter timelines.

In-House Developer:

An in-house team of developers consists of employees with a long-term commitment to the company. They provide direct control, collaborate with different departments to build solutions, fast communications and use agile and respond quickly to difficult conditions. They are the best choice for long term, complex projects and offer support and maintenance after the project delivery.