Developing an app is an exciting venture, but it’s also fraught with challenges. Among the most significant obstacles are development delays, which can inflate costs, frustrate stakeholders, and risk losing your competitive edge.
A BCG survey revealed that up to 49% of organisations report that nearly one in three of their software projects encounter delays. The delays occur due to several reasons including unclear requirements, unrealistic timelines, inadequate resources, and significant change requests
Yet, with the right strategies, app development delays are preventable, helping your organisation save countless hours and valuable resources. In this guide, we explore the common causes of app development slowdowns and provide actionable solutions to keep your project on track.
Why Delays Happen in App Development
Understanding the root causes is the first step in avoiding delays — this necessitates analysing your workflows, processes, and experiences. Below are the most common reasons why app development projects experience setbacks:
- Ambiguous Requirements – When project goals are unclear, development teams waste time reworking features or clarifying objectives. This confusion often leads to extended timelines.
- Scope Creep – Scope creep occurs when new features or changes are added mid-project without sufficient planning. While flexibility is essential, unchecked adjustments can derail progress.
- Inadequate Resource Allocation – A lack of skilled personnel, tools, or testing environments hampers development speed. Overloaded teams or tight budgets can exacerbate the issue. This is an issue that over 40% of developers face.
- Technical Challenges – Unforeseen complexities like integrating legacy systems, technical debt, or addressing platform compatibility can halt progress, requiring more time and expertise to resolve.
- Poor Communication – Misaligned priorities and unclear updates between teams, stakeholders, and developers lead to misunderstandings and wasted effort. Lack of a central collaboration platform also stifles communication.
Identifying and addressing these challenges upfront is essential to ensure a smoother, faster development process. By proactively tackling these issues, organisations can safeguard their timelines, budgets, and stakeholder confidence.
Related reading:
- The 5 Biggest Challenges Organisations Face With Enterprise Application Development
- Why IT Projects Fail
Strategies to Streamline App Development
During app development, here are crucial strategies you can use to streamline the processes and avoid potential delays:
1. Start with Clear Objectives and Roadmaps
Define every aspect of the app before development begins. Engage stakeholders to establish the app's purpose, audience, core features, and metrics for success. A comprehensive project plan eliminates guesswork and creates a roadmap for the team.
2. Leverage Agile Methodologies
Adopting Agile processes ensures iterative development, constant feedback, risk reduction, and adaptability. Breaking the project into manageable sprints with clear milestones helps tackle challenges early, avoiding bottlenecks down the road.
Related reading: The 3-5-3 Structure of Scrum - what it is, why it works, and why you should be using it
3. Prioritise a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Launching an MVP with essential features enables faster market entry and provides valuable user feedback. Focus on must-have functionalities first, adding advanced features in later iterations. This allows you to focus on the features that deliver the most value and avoid wasting time on less critical aspects .
4. Improve Communication
Streamline collaboration through centralised tools that consolidates all the project’s interactions. For instance, our Stack9 platform allows you to bring all team members together for effective collaboration. Regular check-ins and clear reporting prevent misalignments, keeping all stakeholders informed and on the same page.
Related reading: How to Communicate ROI and IT Value to the Business
5. Invest in Project Management Expertise
Experienced project managers anticipate obstacles, allocate resources effectively, and keep timelines in check. Use project management platforms to assign and track tasks. Also, ensure to assign tasks to members who have the right experience and expertise to execute them to ensure progress and prevent bottlenecks.
6. Integrate Testing Early and Often
Incorporating quality assurance throughout the development cycle prevents costly last-minute fixes. Automated testing tools can accelerate this process, ensuring every feature works seamlessly. Pinpointing and fixing bugs early saves time and prevents potential delays.
7. Control Scope Creep
Establish a change management process to evaluate the impact of new requests. By setting strict criteria for scope changes, you prevent unnecessary delays and cost overruns. Ensure to have a team that reviews change orders and communicate them early to determine if they’re necessary before implementation.
Related reading: Six Strategies to Trim Technical Debt for Better IT Performance.
8. Optimise Resource Allocation
Equip teams with the right skills, tools, and schedules to achieve efficient results. Hiring experienced developers and investing in advanced tools saves time in the long run. Take the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your team members to ensure effective resource allocation and task delegation.
The Cost of Development Delays
Every delay in app development comes with a price, and this impacts your process and bottom line. Some of these costs include:
- Increased Development Costs – Extra app development time means paying for additional labour and resources. Up to 66% of app development projects face cost overruns.
- Lost Market Opportunities – Competitors can launch similar products, capturing your audience and filling the market gap. This leads to lost revenue and high marketing costs in an attempt to grow your market share.
- Eroded Stakeholder Confidence – Repeated setbacks can damage trust in the project’s viability, leading to project failures in some cases. A report by Zipdo showed that 31.1% of software projects get cancelled.
By addressing the root causes of delays, you can minimise these risks and maximise your app’s potential. You can also ensure faster deployment and easy integration into your technology stack.
Streamline App Development with April9
App development delays are not just costly—they're avoidable. Clear planning, robust project management, and effective communication are the pillars of a successful and timely app launch. Remember, every delay risks more than just money—it jeopardises your competitive edge and market position.
But you’re not alone — our custom application development services can help you avoid app development delays and ensure faster time-to-market for your app. This is possible with our composable software platform, Stack9, which leverages low-code configurations to simplify development and configure up to 80% of the application build.
Stack9 also gives you access to pre-built applications for sales, surveys, blog, supply chain, scheduling, timesheets, document management, and eCommerce that you can easily configure to suit your operational needs. Plus, you can easily add or modify each individual component as your business grows.
Contact April9 today and discover how we can streamline your app development process.
