POSTS

John Rampton once said “A cardinal rule in budgeting and saving is to pay yourself first. Once your paycheck hits your account, wisdom has it that you should move some amount to savings even before you pay the bills”. That’s a healthy advice of those who want work on budgeting. But, when it comes it comes to creating a Budget For Your Mobile App Development Project, things start to become a bit complicated. Wondering why? Well, if we consider the fact that an app is an intangible product and you have to calculate the cost of its development; I would say, you don’t really get a simple calculation and an exact number. What you get is an estimated figure which you need to provide to your Finance department or clients. 

“What is the Mobile App Development Cost?” is one of the first questions of a client asks. And if you are a start-up or relatively new Mobile App Development Company, you are sure to be stuck on how your create your Budget For Your Mobile App Development Project to provide the clients with an answer. Your app development cost is influenced by the idea of the app, its scope, its features, the resources required, the time required, etc. There are various factors which influence the determining of the final cost of the development of a Mobile App including – The app features, app platform, the development approach, the infrastructure, etc.

While it is possible to give an estimate cost based on the cost going on about in the market, it is necessary that you create your own budget based on the Mobile App Development Cost. The reason is that it enables you to keep a control over your project. You’ll have an estimate of how much each of your step within the development process is going to cost you. Also, there are some human and elements involved for which you need to draw out a budget. For example you need to add in the salary of your programmers, developers, etc. Another reason is that your budget includes risk assessment and allocation of budget for the purpose. This helps you to prepare for all ‘what if...’ which may happen during the app development.

Now that we are thorough with what is the need of creating a Budget For Your Mobile App Development Project, how will it help you in the development process, which factors will be influencing it; let’s get down to what all elements you need to consider for it. Below are a few guidelines on what to focus on when create your budget for your project. 

Understanding The Project:

This is the pre-development stage, where you need to know your project – its idea scope and purpose. Here you discover what your client / company requires of the app, accordingly you research and come up with what features the app should include, how will its performance be. Thus, you can define the requirements of your project.

Meeting The Timeline:

You need to understand the timeline of your project. Accordingly, based upon your previous experiences, you can then decide the number of your developers, or programmers, or designers, or other personnel who you will require to assign this project. The experience and skill of your personnel, their numbers, as well as the timeline within which the project is to be completed will also need to be considered while outlining your budget.

Pricing At All Development Stages:

As mentioned earlier you need to consider the various stages of the development process and start putting out a budget for every stage. Thus, you need to quote price for the research required for the project, the cost of designers, the cost of developers, the cost of testers. Also there is to be the budget for App development, addition of features, publishing, deployment, integration, quality control and testing, and maintenance.

Features And Design Of The App:

Every added feature, function of the app is going to cost more. You need to determine the cost of each feature and add it in. Also, the UI design of the app is also an important factor. The clients may request for some recent UI design trends. Remember that the designers are going to cost you more, and also every extra UI element is cost separately. Thus, you need to price the features and the design of the app accordingly.

Integrations:

The Mobile App you are developing may require third party integrations. While some of the integrations are free of cost, some may come with a price. Already set themes and plugins used for integration will cost less, if there is a need of specific features you need to add in here, accordingly add that cost too.

Quality Assurance:

It is important that you give quality assurance to your clients, along with great features and design. Thus, Quality control and testing becomes an integral aspect of app development. You require testers who will continuously test your app for any bug-fixing, etc. A separate budget should be put out for that.

Support and Maintenance:

The launch of App may be initially Alpha launch and Beta launch and then final launch. After the launch, there may be some maintenance, upgradation, improvements etc. required. The budget should include cost for that too.

Project Risk Assessment:

While your development costs are the core, risk assessment is the padding for your budget. It is a cap which covers various ‘What ifs’ such as requirement of change in the code due to special circumstances, or even your designer falling sick, etc. The basic concept is that you cannot plan for each and everything, and you keep ready some of your budget to compensate overcome any special circumstances which may occur, or if anything goes wrong and costs you more.

These were our guidelines on how you can create a Budget For Your Mobile App Development Project, which have been deduced based upon our experience at Techasoft as a Mobile App Development Company having catered to a number of clients with our expertise. We are glad to share with you, after all as they say, Sharing is growing.