What Does Building a Custom App with Lithium Development Look Like?

April 18, 2023

If you spend a little time looking into building a custom app, you’ll start running into all kinds of interesting terms like wireframes, high-fidelity prototype, beta testing, ui/ux, api, server - the list goes on.

Here at Lithium we try to avoid throwing these terms at you (and if we do throw them, hopefully we include an explanation!), and instead focus on building you a solution that works for the way you do business.

So what does building a custom app with Lithium look like? Our process can be broken into 6 high level steps:

1. Company Deep Dive
2. Proposal
3. Design
4. Build
5. Launch
6. Service and Support

Each step can be further broken down, and we’ll spell out the details of each step below.

1. Company Deep Dive

This is where we learn about your company, and it’s typically broken into two parts. The first part will happen after you’ve first reached out to us. We’ll do a 10 minute call to get an idea of what you might be looking for in a custom app, and then based on that try to give you a ballpark starting price. This allows us to learn a little bit about you, and also ensures that we are thinking in the same universe in terms of pricing.

If we haven’t blown you out of the water with our ballpark pricing, we’ll schedule a sit down (either virtually or in person) with you and maybe some key members of your team to really dig into the details.  This is where we’ll learn as much as we can about your company, your existing processes and systems, and what we are hoping to achieve with a custom app. One of my favorite questions to ask when we do this is, “Can you walk me through the complete lifecycle of a job from when you get a call from the potential customer until you send the final invoice?” Even if we aren’t planning to build an app that encompasses every step of the process, having a complete picture allows us to really tailor the custom app to your business.

If possible, it’s super helpful to bring people in who will be interacting with different aspects of your app day to day and get their perspective as well. They will have valuable insights, and bringing them into the process early on will help get their buy-in, which will be absolutely critical when it comes time to launch the app with your company: if you can’t get your team to buy-in, you might as well have no app at all.

Once we’ve gotten to know your company and your operations, we’ll put together a proposal.

2. Proposal

For this step we will take a look at everything we’ve learned and discussed with you in the Deep Dive phase. We’ll then spell out all the features and functionality in easy to understand bullet points.

We’ll break the proposal down by feature so a typical proposal might include the following sections:

• Project Tracking/Base App
• Base Schedule
• Schedule Drag/Drop Functionality
• Timeclock (or Timecard) Timekeeping
• Notifications
• Job Costing Functionality
• Etc

Each section will include details so you can see exactly what is included with each feature. We will also attach a price to each feature.

Once we’ve got the proposal dialed in to where we want it, we’ll send it over to you. From there you can decide if you want to move forward with a custom app, and if you do, which features/functionality you’d like to include in the initial build. You’ll be able to make a decision based on your needs and budget.

We’ll often recommend starting with what you would consider “critical” features,  and then adding on once we are up and running with these. This will help make the up front costs more manageable, and will also ensure you don’t end up paying for features that you don’t actually end up using.

Once you’ve chosen which features you’d like to start with, we’ll send over a contract as well as an invoice for an initial deposit. The deposit amount will depend on the size of the project. After you’ve signed the contract and paid the deposit, we’ll start work on the design.

3. Design

During the design phase, we will essentially draw pictures of the critical pieces of your app. This will usually include the Schedule and what a Job or Project looks like in the app. If there is any other special functionality we’ll draw this up as well: an example might be a special estimate creation or daily report workflow. We typically won’t draw up every single page and detail: things like a users table are probably going to be more or less the same across all apps, and drawing up every single detail will unnecessarily drive up costs.

The next step after drawing up the critical parts of your app will be to meet up again and go over them with you. This is a great time to make sure you are liking the look and feel of the app, and to ensure that any key functions are going to work as they need to for your company. Identifying and making any major changes at this stage is going to be much more efficient than doing it after we’ve launched the app.

Oftentimes as we go through the design with you, we’ll find other need-to-have and nice-to-have features you’d like to see in your app, and we can provide pricing for these items so you can decide if you’d like to include them in the initial build or add them down the road.

After we’ve got the design in a good place, we’ll move into building your custom solution.

4. Build

The build will typically be divided between the back end and the front end (or multiple front ends). We’ll usually start with building out the back end. This will include things like roles/permissions, database structure, emails, etc.

Once we’ve got the back end set up we will build the font end(s). This is the part that you see and interact with when you use the app.

Depending on the scope of the projects, we’ll keep you posted with status updates and screenshots as we build out the app.

When the build is complete, we’ll be ready to go live.

5. Launch

The first part of launching is doing the work on our end to get your app online. Then, we will sit down and walk through the whole app with you in detail. This serves two purposes:

1. Get you trained in on using the app
2. Identify any items we want to change to really get it dialed in to your needs.

After we’ve sat down with you and gone over the app, we’ll implement any changes that need to be made before you can roll the app out with your team. Depending on the scope of the app, we will include 10 to 20 hours of training and modifications after the app launches. No matter how much time we spend in the design phase, there are always going to be items that need to be tweaked or adjusted to really get it dialed in for real world use. Setting aside 10-20 hours to get it dialed in accounts for this!

Once these changes are made, you’ll be able to roll the app out with your team. You may also have some set up work you need to do: this could include setting up employees, cost codes, etc.

Then, we’ll send the final invoice and move into service and support.

6. Service and Support

We don’t just disappear once we’ve got you up and running. We’ll keep your app online, and resolve any issues that come up. We’ll also be available if you want to shoot us an email or give us a call regarding any questions you might have as you use the app. Our service and support  includes 1 hour/month of training, technical support, etc, so you don’t need to worry about us starting the clock every time you need to give us a call!

At this point we might also start talking about adding on additional features and functionality to streamline your app and your operations even further

Building a custom app is a big project. Our process is set up to efficiently build out an awesome working solution tailored to the exact needs of your business. If you’d like to dive into this process yourself so you can start saving time and increasing profits, or if you’d just like to learn a little more about it all, please do not hesitate to get in touch!