It’s one thing to have an idea for an app, it’s another to know how to communicate it in a way others, especially technical people, will understand. Without specialised knowledge, it can be a very overwhelming experience when you try to approach an individual or team to develop your idea.

You may have a rough idea of how it should work as a whole, but how do you explain all this to a developer?

Anyone developing an app needs a blueprint to work from, and to complete a build requires detailed information.

App development can be a long and expensive process, the more you try and make heads or tails of it, the more it can feel like an endless string of questions and possibilities. For this reason we’ve designed a small package to help answer some of the vital questions you’ll need to address as you try to realise your idea.

We treat this as a stand-alone task irrespective of who you chose to develop your app. This ensures the main effort is in getting the best version of your idea down - rather than attempting to turn it into a worthwhile project for a development team.

For starters this process can act as an impartial service that is focused on fully getting to grips with your idea and from previous experiences, maybe even help you refine it.

After the process you may even abandon the idea having seen the scale of investment or challenges required for implementation; at least you would have done so with minimal investment and no contractual obligations.

Often development agencies will quote an up-front cost for your entire project. However, by spending much less on an App Starter Kit, you can provide detailed blueprints that can save project cost and time. With this you can make an informed decision on whether to continue to development stage or not, if you decide it’s exceeded your expectations in terms of budget and scope.

Try to view this as a layer above everything else that’s designed to equip you with the tools you need before approaching investors, developers, etc.

Once complete it will provide a very structured representation of your idea to anyone you present it to, demonstrating a professional approach and road map to take it forward.

The Spritz App Starter Kit is designed to serve two main needs:

• To give you a base that will leave you well prepared to talk to technical staff and start the development process.
• To help you assess the practical implications of your concept for a small initial investment. This investment can either give you a more realistic idea of how the work can be achieved, or, save you from potentially having to invest in a project that may spiral out of control.

What you get

At the end of the process you should be able to make an informed decision about taking your idea into production, as well as have all the resources you should need to start the development process.

These include:

Complete functional specification

This will describe in detail the functionality of the app in clear terms, providing a complete understanding of your application and the elements required to make it work.

Flow diagrams of major processes

These will show how multi-step processes work, like user sign up, search, purchasing, and other interactions.

Data relationship analysis

This will identify the different components of your app and their relationship to each other in a way that is clear and as efficient as possible. Not only will this provide a clear idea of what the major structure of the information stored in your app will look like, but it can also be used as the basis for construction of its database.

Below is an outline of the process we typically take a client through as part of the App Starter Kit. As each project is unique, not every process will be the same, but this outline should give a good idea of what’s involved.

Ideas & Discussion

We arrange a meeting or a call to discuss the project with you in detail. From this, a list of potential requirements is established

Establishing the MVP

Short for Must, Should, Would and Could have, the MoSCoW method is a way of prioritising the functionality for your app to establish what you need for your minimum viable product (MVP)

Agreeing on the MVP

We come up with and agree on a finalised list of features for the MVP

Data Visualisation

This will help make sense of data and database objects, along with all their essential fields and relationships.

Component Visualisation

Using the feature list and data diagram, we can visualise how each of the app components work.

Functional Spec

Based on what we’ve gathered from the previous steps, we can create a more detailed spec that documents the features and processes we’ve established through the different stages of analysis.

Approval Process

We will check with you through every step of the process to make sure that our findings and spec are still true to your vision.

Delivery

Once you are happy and everything has been signed off, you are now fully equipped with a clear and feasible direction to go forth and make it .. App-en. (Sorry.)