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Lean Mobile App Development

By : van Drongelen, Krishnaswamy, Adam Dennis

Lean Mobile App Development

By: van Drongelen, Krishnaswamy, Adam Dennis

Overview of this book

Lean is the ultimate methodology for creating a startup that succeeds. Sounds great from a theoretical point of view, but what does that mean for you as an a technical co-founder or mobile developer? By applying the Lean Start-up methodology to your mobile App development, it will become so much easier to build apps that take Google Play or the App Store by storm. This book shows you how to bring together smarter business processes with technical know-how. It makes no sense to develop a brilliant app for six months or longer only to find out later that nobody is interested in it. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first. Validate your hypotheses early and often. Discover effective product development strategies that let you put Facebook's famous axiom "move fast and break things" into practice. A great app without visibility and marketing clout is nothing, so use this book to market your app, making use of effective metrics that help you track and iterate all aspects of project performance.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Yes, There Is an App for That

Yes, There Is an App for That

The app ecosystem

An introduction to the Lean Startup methodology

Getting your users hooked on your app

Summary

Lean Startup Primer

Lean Startup Primer

The Business Model Canvas

Example BMC - mobile marketplace app

Lean Canvas

Agile development and customer development

The MVP

Summary

Challenges in Applying Lean to Building Mobile Apps

Challenges in Applying Lean to Building Mobile Apps

Higher design bar

Apple's App Store submission cycles

Inability to dynamically load libraries

Cross-platform releases

Getting users to download an app

Summary

An Agile Workflow in a Nutshell

An Agile Workflow in a Nutshell

An Agile workflow

Epic, Stories, and Tasks

Tools that you can use

Summary

A Pragmatic Approach

A Pragmatic Approach

Timeboxed programming

How do you get started with nothing?

How to keep things well structured

Are there any shortcuts?

Mash-up

Summary

MVP is Always More Minimal Than You Think

MVP is Always More Minimal Than You Think

What is MVP?

How to define your MVP

Fail fast – validate everything

10 essential UX testing methods

Iterate and evolve - from viable to lovable

Summary

Minimal Viable Product Case Studies

Minimal Viable Product Case Studies

Fun with Charades - Initial vision

Cloud Solutions for App Experiments

Cloud Solutions for App Experiments

Do you need to create a backend yourself?

The story of Parse

Canvapp - an Android MVP app using Firebase

Sign up for Firebase

Firebase dashboard

Summary

Native, Hybrid, or Cross-Platform

Native, Hybrid, or Cross-Platform

Who is your audience?

What are your technical requirements?

Native versus hybrid - the strengths and weaknesses

The ugly truth - a little hybrid doesn't hurt when you have clear goals

Making the final decision - factors to consider

Leveraging cross-platform development tools

How to choose the right tool

Summary

There Is an API for That!

There Is an API for That!

Succeed or fail fast

Available APIs

Summary

Onboarding and Registration

Onboarding and Registration

What is user onboarding all about?

Pirate metrics (AARRR)

Show us what you have got

Continuous onboarding - complete the user profile later

Tell a story - an example onboarding app

Implementation

Summary

Do Things That Do Not Scale

Do Things That Do Not Scale

What we mean by "things that do not scale"

How to acquire early adopters and establish a small-scale laboratory

How to transition from an unscalable MVP to scalable code

Summary

Play Store and App Store Hacks

Play Store and App Store Hacks

What is an experiment?

How do users find apps in the first place?

Summary

A/B Testing Your App

A/B Testing Your App

Why do statistics matter?

About actionable metrics

Conversions and pirate metrics

Get to know your audience

Split testing can help us to improve our apps

Summary

Growing Traction and Improving Retention

Growing Traction and Improving Retention

Traction

Notifications

Handling an incoming notification

Sending a notification

Summary

Scaling Strategies

Scaling Strategies

Make it scalable but do not scale it right away

Auto-scaling

Summary

Monetization and Pricing Strategy

Monetization and Pricing Strategy

Monetization strategies

Pricing strategy

See how in-app purchases can be implemented

Applying a pricing strategy to your store listing

Summary

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment = Continuous Integration and Delivery

Repository and Git workflow

Automated tests

An example of a continuous workflow for an Android app

Building variants

The Gradle way

productFlavors

sourceSets

buildTypes

signingConfigs

Using TeamCity as build agent

Automated deploy and delivery

Self hosted

HockeyApp or Fabric beta

Fastlane, alpha/beta Play Store, and iTunes beta

Summary

Building an Unfair Advantage

Building an Unfair Advantage

Introduction - it's not just about your app

Protecting your work with IP laws

The network effect and platforms

Making use of vertical markets

Good customer support

Summary

The Flyng Case Study

The Flyng Case Study

That sounds awesome, but what is Flyng?

The team

The MVP

Summary

Appendix

Appendix

Reading list and references

Customer Reviews

5 star

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4 star

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3 star

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2 star

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1 star

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HockeyApp or Fabric beta

There are many SaaS solutions available to distribute and to notify your users of new ad hoc releases. One of them is HockeyApp. You can use a (cURL) script to upload your signed APK or IPA file to HockeyApp. HockeyApp can also notify your users of the new build, and each version can contain release notes, for example, by adding a build step running this command:

    curl -F "status=2" -F "notify=0" -F "ipa=@//TeamCity/buildAgent/work/<work folder>/app/build/outputs/apk/app-release.apk" -H "X-HockeyAppToken:<your hockey app token>" https://rink.hockeyapp.net/api/2/apps/<app id>/app_versions/upload

Using HockeyApp, the landscape will look like this:

HockeyApp is a paid service, and it diminishes the provisioning profile hassle for the distribution of your iOS app. Fabric Beta is another service...

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