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The agile development process is designed for transparency with a focus on user needs and satisfaction. When it comes to writing meaningful user stories for use in agile development the idea is to maintain transparency and to open useful discussion about user needs and satisfaction. How is that accomplished? Through coherent user stories. Here's how to write them:

Establish the User, the Action and the Goal

Succinct stories are the goal. A story should fit on a post-it or an index card and should be supplemented with discussion. Each story has the user as the main actor. Within the story the user interacts with a product in the hope of achieving a goal.

You should start a user story with a title that explains who the actor is, what action the actor takes and what the actor hopes to achieve.

For example: A user wants to retrieve information from a database using their smartphone.

Tell the Story

In a few short lines tell what occurred when the actor tried to reach their goal. Be certain to detail the criteria using a given, when, then format.

For example: The user has a database app on their Samsung Galaxy s7 Edge. When the user opens the database to retrieve data, they receive an error message.

Share User Stories

Each member of the team might have a slightly different story. For instance, users with IoS operating systems might not have the same experience. Discussing the differences in stories helps the development team arrive at a solution so that at the end of the process every user story has the best ending.

To learn more about telling meaningful user stories within an agile development process, please contact us

When it comes to mobile app development, one important decision you will have to make is whether to make your app paid or free. Both options have their respective advantages and disadvantages, and your decision should be based on a number of factors. Here is some information that will help you decide whether to charge for your app.

Competition

One factor you should consider is the competition that your mobile app will face. Since there are more free apps, your mobile app will encounter more competition if you make it free. If you want your mobile app to be able to thrive in spite of this competition, the mobile app should be unique. A unique mobile app will stand out in a sea of free apps.

You won't have to worry much about competition from the paid mobile apps because most app stores have separate categories for paid and free apps.

Expectations

If your mobile app isn't polished, you may want to make it free for now until you can make improvements. Users tend to have lower expectations when it comes to free mobile apps. Therefore, even if the mobile app isn't perfect, your users won't be disappointed. Of course, if the mobile app is incredibly buggy and unpolished, the fact that it was free won't stop users from uninstalling in.

If you're in the business of making money from apps, you need to follow a sound strategy when it comes to pricing your apps. If you want more information about how you should price your apps, contact us.

Perhaps the first and most obvious reason that Agile methodology is seen as the winner in the Waterfall Vs. Agile debate by its proponents is that Agile's origins stem from the shortcomings of the former. Rather than using a more traditional sequential design process, Agile breaks things down into incremental modules and allows for testing and collaborative brainstorming as each individual module is developed, rather than one big team effort at the end of the development cycle.

This process encourages team unity and allows for customer feedback throughout the process. In itself this can be viewed as quite an advantage because solutions can be made to design flaws and customer complaints before the product is deemed final. This can result in significant cost savings because there is much less of a need to backtrack or the worst case scenario, which is to start all over.

Agile also allows for updates and features to be added to stay current with emerging industry trends. Sometimes with the Waterfall approach, before a product is actually released to the target audience it is outdated and a catastrophic fail because it doesn't allow for updates during design. Because product evolution is built into the Agile environment, vital changes can be made on the fly, implemented appropriately, tested, and successfully added to the final product before its release.

Another advantage lies in the fact that defects can be discovered early on and solutions can be implemented during the development process, making for far less disappointing surprises at the end stage of a product developed with the Waterfall methodology.

Detractors of Agile complain that the focus of it is on principles rather than relying on a high quality process. In the end, it really becomes a choice of collaboration versus an undying belief that your process is better than everyone else's. Only you can decide which is right for your organization.

"Contensive" is an information technology company that specializes in developing easy solutions to complex problems. Please contact us today for more information on any of our services including web development, mobile applications, online integration, and responsive design.

Developing a SaaS application involves hundreds of hours of coding to get it functioning just right. But you could be neglecting some important areas that might make a bigger difference than just the quality of your code. From marketing to customer onboarding, here are a few tips on how to make sure your software as a service development ultimately reaches and satisfies its target customers.

Your Code Doesn't Need to be Perfect

Try to get the product out the door even if it still has warts. Software almost always ends up taking longer than what you had planned. The minimum viable product methodology emphasizes getting your SaaS offering in front of potential customers even if it's not 100% polished. A popular mantra for SaaS startups is "if you're not ashamed of it, then you're launching too late".

Get Customers for Your SaaS

• Try to get some press for your startup right off the bat. It can help to craft a one-page summary of each of your key features for emphasis either in your press releases or through your social media posts.
• Split test your sign-up form and optimize for conversions. You will want to test different colors, layouts, button text as well as the length of the page.
• Offer a free trial or some other low cost method for users to get familiar with your product before committing to the full subscription price.

Reduce Churn Among Your Subscribers

Customer churn, when subscribers of your SaaS drop out before the rebill, is the bane of SaaS developers. A higher than expected churn rate can impact your profit as well as also pointing to some possible problems with your SaaS offering. Focusing on improving customer service (including onboarding new customers onto your app) can help plug that leak. You may also want to remove the customer's ability to self-serve cancel their account. By making them contact customer support to cancel their account, you'll also have a chance to give them an exit interview on what went wrong and hopefully gain a few tips to improve your app.

Get in touch with us today if you'd like help developing your SaaS or need a technical consultation about your software development needs.