If you think back even as recently as a decade ago, software release schedules looked very differently when compared to today. Not only were most apps designed to be “Swiss Army Knives” of sorts, doing as many different things as humanly possible in an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience, they also launched “ready for prime time” – more or less. Teams would spend years developing, testing and polishing a product before releasing it to the masses. At that point they may offer an upgrade or two down the road, but all major new features or changes would be saved for the next “major” release – something that they could then charge customers for once again.
Rest assured, those days are over.
In the modern era, apps are never really “finished” in the traditional sense. Instead, they are released – and development continues long after that point. The key to taking advantage of this new trend involves understanding the expectations of your audience, particularly when it comes to custom software.
Re-Thinking the Software Release Schedule
Also commonly referred to as MVP for short, “minimum viable product” is the idea that a new app is developed with just enough features to satisfy early adopters, at which point it is then released and development continues in earnest for the foreseeable future.
What this means is that instead of releasing something that is more or less 100% ready to go, you might reach that 50% threshold – at which point you’re dealing with a version that is “good enough” to satisfy initial requirements, at which point it makes its debut into the world. Based on feedback from the app’s initial users, along with insight into the changing trends and patterns within an industry, development then proceeds in an effort to get that product to truly live up to its initial vision or promise… at some point.
For a lot of users and software developers in particular, this requires a massive shift in the way things have historically been done. Thanks largely to the smartphone revolution, people expect massive changes to roll out to their solutions and for ongoing development to continue – without having to wait for (read: pay for) for the next “major upgrade”.
Think about this within the context of the iOS operating system that all iPhones worldwide run on. The initial release of the new version of iOS happens every year around September and almost never includes all of the features originally touted in Apple’s press conference in early April. It’s stable enough to justify its own existence and get early adopters on board. Major promised features like iCloud messages or Single Sign In for cable providers roll out slowly, when they’re ready, over the course of the next few months, via incremental updates.
People aren’t just fine with it – they’ve come to expect it and they’ve come to embrace it.
It also brings with it a wide range of benefits, particularly in terms of custom software. Users don’t have to wait nearly as long to get something, anything, that “gets the job done” – even if that job isn’t “getting done” in the absolute best possible way. Likewise, it gives developers an opportunity to court those initial adopters, providing people with enough value to get them to use it and to demonstrate enough future benefit to retain them.
But the real benefit of this new approach to software development is that it creates something of a feedback loop in the best possible way. Based on ongoing discussions with end users, developers suddenly have enough insight to guide future development in a much more organic way than ever before. The end result may not be immediate as it used to be, but it’s almost always something more specific – and more valuable – than that which would have been possible even ten years ago.
So yes, it’s true that apps are never really finished anymore and they are instead released – but as you can see, this is likely the way things should have been all along.
Contact us today to discuss custom software for your organization!
Image by FreePik.com
