App-Scoop

Imagine writing a book without a rough storyline or any plot in mind; can you? I suppose not. A book without a story is as pointless as a mobile app that doesn’t solve a purpose! Hence, most developers define the value and purpose of a mobile app on a document they call the mobile app requirements document. This document have specific details on what the app is all about and how will it be presented to the user. The document contains a timeline – that has dates and milestones – and the budget. Now, let’s take a quick look at the checklist summary while creating a mobile apps requirement document. 

​Checklist Summary for Mobile Apps Requirement Document

• Rough idea of an app in layman language and an explanation of how to use it
• Platforms that the app will work on such as, Android, iOS, etc. and whether it should be a native or an hybrid app
• Will the app be outsourced or will it be made internally
• Specific timeline (along with milestones and the release date) and budget
• User Interface of the app – mandatory buttons and its placement and branding and design guidelines that it needs to follow
• Will the app be integrated with social media and in-app purchase and will it contain geo-location services and push notifications
• Will the app only work online or will it have an offline feature
• Features that need to be included in the app
• Detailed research on the target segment and the competitors that the app will face – and then defining a feature that will make your app stand out
• Medium of communication to plan the project and create a team member list and their individual duties for creating the app

Once, you’ve made a checklist for the app, the next step is to delve into in detail.

3 Important Points to Create a Detail Mobile App Requirements Document
Remember, a detailed mobile app plan will be easier to bring to fruition and will cost less time, money and effort.
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Mobile App Objective and Vision Statement
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It is mandatory to define a mobile app objective – without which the product will be lost in the market. For the first phase of the app, it is recommended to focus on a single problem that your target audience requires. Solving a core problem will give the product a concise vision and establish precise success matrix.
The vision statement gives a clear direction towards the goal of the app. It generally defines who the target audience is, how it will solve their core problem and how is it going to be different from its competitors.
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Technical Specifications

Another important step is to define the technical specifications. They include:

• Platform to be used – Windows, iOS or Android or all.
• Will the app be hybrid or native – A hybrid application is developed in a way that it works on both, an Android and an iOS product whereas, a native app is built only for one specific platform. Hence, it is essential to research on which Operating System (OS) meets the success criteria of the product goal.
• Current services, database and servers to be used need to be established to develop the product.
• Maintenance needs; these will need to be planned so that the time and cost of the app can be planned accordingly. Also, take into account the types of bugs that you might face while creating the app or after creating it.
• A list of dependencies that the product team needs to meet the objective of the app:

• What hardware will the app run on?
• Does it have service/API documentation?
• Does the app have an account, platform or profile credentials?
• Does your app rely on a third party software?
• Do you need to create any flowcharts or documents for the product?

​Prioritizing Features

Most clients want developers to include all the features possible in a mobile app to enhance it. But developers know best when to stop. Remember, the more the features in your app, the more heavier it is, increases the chances of bugs, system crashes would be a common occurrence and it will be more complex for users to understand. Hence, it is extremely important to focus on one core feature – and use that to market your app and make it look distinct from your competitors.
In order to prioritize features, there is a simple method that can be used – it is called as the MoSCoW  method. M stands for ‘Must’, S stands for ‘Should, C stands for ‘Could’ and W stands for ‘Won’t’ – the features can be put under each category to help and decide the final features that should be incorporated in the mobile app.

To Conclude…
While making a mobile app requirements document, it needs to be as detailed as possible but a plan that is simple to understand. Try to exclude all points that take the focus off the main points that need to be covered. Creating flowcharts, timelines, cost sheet, etc. to understand the process and different milestones in the project.
Also, while making this document, check with the developer and other team members about the feasibility of the plan and keep it as realistic as possible. Remember to take into account technical glitches, bugs and other hurdles that you might face while creating the product and keep a buffer.
If you need any assistance or guidance to create a mobile app requirements document, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app development team vancouver on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html
 

In this digital age, companies and businesses small and large are on the path to digitization. Imagine dealing with a company that doesn’t have its own website or its own social networking pages. Today, a company’s digital presence is extremely crucial to attract clients and new business. So, how does it help them? Let’s take an example of a clothing brand.

Initially a company’s presence relied on instinct, experience or basic market search to promote their clothing brand. But today, it is all about offering the best discounts and good quality clothes at the customer’s doorstep. Not only that, they also provide a return policy that ensures that the customer feels safe to purchase their clothes online. In today’s digital presence, a customer can even upload his/her picture on the app/website and virtual understand the fit or an image of how they would look in that clothing. ​

The value of a company is determined by activities such as value monetization and value communication. This type of company behavior is called digital transformation. It covers the following aspects of business:

• Customer: How do you leverage customer relations and redefine the path to purchase while giving emphasis to their buying experience?

 

• Competition: What steps do you take to give your company the competitive advantage?

 

• Data: Why should a company focus more on data and practice real time data driven decision making?

 

• Innovation: How do you keep innovating in the ever changing world of digital transformation?

 

• Value: How does digitization create new businesses?

But the question is “What if you are a novice and you don’t know where to start?” Let’s take a look at the 6 easy steps that you can follow to begin your digital transformation journey.
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Step 1: Identify the New Business Processes and Transformation Objectives
Ideally, digital transformation means changing the existing business model – this could be changing the entire business operation or just something small like optimizing customer feedback mechanism. It needs the company to take calculated risks by analyzing the markets and company data to check the scope for optimization for the following reasons:

• To improve end-user experience to improve loyalty, productivity, revenues and retention
• To reduce costs for business processes and integrate supply chain partners
• To reduce complexity, solve issues before they occur and gain visibility
• To optimize infrastructure and operations
• To derive insights from analytics to make wise decisions and gain a competitive advantage

​Step 2: Identify the Key Technologies in the Market
There is no need to get overwhelmed with modern technologies or trying to implement everything in your current business process. Technology is just a way to manifest your ideas. To get a better understanding, let’s take a look at the ‘Wheel of Disruption’. It is a ‘Golden Triangle’ that is encircled with emerging technologies such as mobile, social and real time.

​Take Notes: The next wave of digitization includes intelligent automation; for example, human machine collaboration, Internet of Things and cybersecurity – out of which cyber security is important because if the devices are not secured from the start then the system creates delays and it is difficult for the IT to implement appropriate security controls.

​Step 3: Executive Buy-In Should be a Priority
Now that you have your digital strategy and solutions structured, the next step is to incorporate this inside the company and obtain executive buy-in. 

According to these statistics, there has been a 62% increase in board support for digital transformation from 2016 to 2018. This is a sign that the company’s strategies to digital transform are working. To achieve this kind of paradigm of information the company needs to take risks and create a dynamic environment where new ideas and thoughts are considered even if they come from a low rank employee.

Step 4: Finalize a Talent Pool and Define a Roadmap
The fourth step is to create a talent pool that helps the company to define a roadmap to successfully navigate through the digital transformation process. A talent pool can either be gathered in-house or by outsourcing it. The benefit of outsourcing it will be that there will less costs incurred to train and recruit new employees.
Once a talent pool is finalized, it is time to define a roadmap to implement digital transformation. Remember, this roadmap should be planned in phases. Always test on a small scale to ensure the transformation works for the company’s benefit. Risk mitigating milestones should be defined at the end of each phase, where approvals are taken from the top management of the company, vendors, etc.

Step 5: Determine Key Performance Indicators for Your Future Journey
Key Perform Indicators (KPI) demonstrate the effectiveness of the plan and help you understand the path forward for the future. The company will need to set smart goals, a clear achievable figure and a timeline. The team will hence, be able to keep focus on the end goal. Strategies need to always be updated based on the market insights and results.
As we all know that the future can be predicted only by looking at the present. Hence, it is of utmost importance to clearly communicate the work plan to the workforce and help them implement it in their practical day to day lives. To drive the company into the future and to understand the digital transformation that will take place, the workforce needs to have the below information:

• Transparency
• Clear structure and plan
• Adequate training

Step 6: Begin Your Digital Transformation
The sixth step is – Execution. After doing the due-diligence and planning for a digital transformation for your company, it is time to execute it. There will be some digital platforms that will need to be managed as per the market conditions – some elements will need to be changed while the other elements need to co-exist and be integrated into the new platform. Remember, keep your eyes on the prize and set your company/business up for future prosperity and growth.
If you wish to digitally transform your company, feel free to contact the App Scoop mobile app developers or mobile app development team – https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html – to show your company/business the way forward. 

Java has been in the Android App market for years and is one of the most reputed platforms. But as time has passed by it has been difficult for Java to sustain its position in the market – it is used by millions of app developers and is one of the most used platforms after C and C++. But in 2017, Kotlin was announced as an official language for Android application development. Let’s understand more about these programs.        

What is Java?
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Java is a programming language that has vast open-source tools and libraries to help developers. It is used by most large enterprises because of its flexibility and interoperability – and also because of it its simplicity, robustness and influential approach. Two of the major reasons why Android mobile apps are still being written in Java are because of its architectural OOP paradigm and the massiveness of the code.
Did you know?
Google’s Android operating system uses Java API packages.

​What is Kotlin?
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A general purpose language, Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and JavaScript. The goal of discovering this program was to increase its productivity and the coding experience in a way that’s practical and effective. 

The advantages of using Kotlin, includes the following:

• Enables mixed-language projects
• Improved syntax
• Concise expressions and abstractions
• Reduces excessive boilerplate code

Java vs Kotlin
Java is a widely used programming language but it has its own drawbacks and hence, there is need for a more advanced program like Kotlin. Let’s take a look at how Kotlin can solve these issues:

​Write Less Code
Java requires you to write a lengthy code which means that there is a greater chance of a bug or error to occur, whereas, Kotlin is simple and uses developer friendly coding structures and rules that are not complicated to understand.
Let’s take a look at an example of the “Hello World” program in Java and Kotlin, respectively.

The code in Kotlin makes it easier for developers and helps them save time and cost.

Optimizing the Android Code  
Technically speaking Java was discovered much before Android apps were discovered. On the other hand, Kotlin was discovered so that Android app development goes smoother, faster and is more effective.

Interoperability
A developer can write codes in Kotlin which works flawlessly with the existing Java code. The core purpose of Kotlin is interoperability – by emitting the Bytecode, it allows two languages to work together in the same project.

Checked Exception Feature    
When the complier forces the caller of a function to re-throw an exception or catch one it is known as checked exceptions. This feature is not compatible with Java and cause empty checked blocks. The developers then need to weed out these empty checked boxes from the code to identify a non-existent exception. On the other hand, Kotlin removes these empty checked boxes entirely. It minimizes wordiness and improves the type-safety.

Pros and Cons of Kotlin

Pros:

• Fewer lines of code
• Easier to read and modify code which results in reduced project timelines
• Less surface area for bugs to hide and hence, locating bugs is easier for developers
• Less system failures and crashes
• Easy to learn – can easily switch from Java to Kotlin

Cons:

• Small and new community – hence, limited learning resources
• Kotlin developers are more difficult to find than Java
• Compilation might get slower compared to Java

Pros and Cons of Java

Pros:

• Can run it in a browser or virtual machine, easier to execute
• Modern tools help assemble large projects precisely
• Wide community support
• Flexibility to switch from Java to Kotlin

Cons:

• Longer code
• Takes longer to locate bugs and empty checked boxes

 
Final Thoughts
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We can’t really compare both the languages because they both have an influence on each other. Quite a few Android developers have switched to Kotlin to enjoy the benefits it offers, but there are many Java developers who still prefer to code in a language that they are trained in. The main motive of Kotlin was to be able to become a multi-platform program to give it an innovative outlook.
Kotlin 1.3 has been released with improvements such as mobile scalability – it supports invaluable benefit of code reuse, saving both, time and effort, for more challenging tasks. More and more enterprises are switching to Kotlin, some of which are Pinterest, Twitter, Netflix, Uber, AirBnB, etc.
Kotlin is in all, a more stable and appropriate development option for an Android. It is lightweight and is far less verbose. Some developers believe that Kotlin will take over Java in Android app development, whereas a few believe that they will co-exist without weighing each other out.

If you are considering to take that big step and train your developers on Kotlin or if you are simply considering if the switch from Java to Kotlin is a wise option, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app developers or App Development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html

The beauty of the digital age is making the world smaller and making everything available with just a few clicks of the button. Big or small tasks are being completed with the use of Apps or websites. It is believed on an average, people spend at least 4 hours on their phone, daily.
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Source: https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/are-you-on-your-phone-too-much-average-person-spends-this-many-hours-on-it-every-day.html

An app makes it easier for companies to connect with and drum up additional interaction and business from customers. Most businesses have developed or are in the process of developing user friendly apps to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. Consumers today are more demanding due to the digitally changing nature of the market and for any business to survive, they need to address these demands.
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What are Push Notifications?
A small message, which is sent to a user, when they are not on the application is a push notification. This notification can be sent anytime and anywhere as long as the user has given the app permission to send the same.
After an app is initially downloaded, a user will receive a number of prompt messages to accept and give permission. These permissions vary as they depend on the app and its purpose and most businesses implement user-centric notifications to ensure the customer journey is strategically customized.

​Why are User-Centric Push Notifications Important?
Competition is getting more and more aggressive in the mobile world and companies can no longer be complacent about the number of app users they have. Now it is important to integrate and become a part of the user’s daily routine.
User-centric push notifications are the foundation of any great marketing strategy. They are a great way for brands to successfully reach out to its users and create meaningful interactions which increase user engagement and retention. It helps a brand rise above the din and build a strategic and personalized relationship with the user. 

 

• User Segments

Not every notification being sent is relevant to every user. Segmenting the audience gives the company the chance to ensure the information being received is valuable to the user.The users can get segregated into separate segments based on:

• Behavioural patterns.
• Locations
• Interests
• Level of user involvement

This makes things easier for the company and developer while organizing notification campaigns. Thus, making it possible to convey the right message to the right target audience and making the campaign more successful.
Source: https://www.mobiroller.com/en/blog/the-benefits-of-push-notifications-in-business-apps/
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• Test Rigorously

The best way to make something better is to keep testing it. This is critical to ensure the message being sent to the customers is effective as a small change can make a huge difference in the strategy. However in order to test and benefit from the results, the testing messaging needs to be done with speed and determination.
The A/B test method has proved effective where two versions of one message is sent to a small sample segment of users and the message which generates more traffic and revenue would be the strategy to follow. Simply offering a discount or announcing a sale isn’t always enough and it’s not necessary that the users would act as predicted. Hence testing everything before sending it out to users is also important.
The A/B test is a crucial part of the user-centric push notification strategy and it is important to develop ideas on what kind of content would be needed to improve on the notifications to increase user involvement. 

Winding Up
Everyday, users get useless notifications from multiple apps to a point where it can get annoying, which leads people to delete the app. Hence it is important to design notifications which are useful and relevant to the users as they are tools which can be used to communicate directly with the users and promote engagement.
Source: http://babich.biz/how-to-create-mobile-notifications-that-users-actually-want/
Mobile is all about making every message count and user-centric push notifications can add real value to the users’ lives and are imperative to improving the brands outreach and revenue. A misguidedly developed push notification strategy may cause the app more harm than good giving way for competition to monopolize the market.
If you would like to discuss creating a user-centric push notification strategy for your company, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app Development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html

How Does DevOps Work?
In a DevOps model, the development and operations teams are no longer separate or “siloed”. These teams merge and form a single team where the developers are involved right from inception to testing and deployment.
In some instances, quality assurance and security teams are also integrated with development and operations where by archaic manual processes get automated and fast. The technology and tools used help companies evolve applications in a quicker and more reliable manner. All in all DevOps helps to increase a team’s velocity in launching as well as modifying products.
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How Should You Implement DevOps?

Understanding the business value of DevOps has been simple, but developers are now focusing on how best to implement it. This is said to be slightly more complicated as the number and types of problem domains differ greatly from one problem domain to the next. The types of processes and tools that developers and operations professionals can apply differ a great deal as well.
Source: https://techbeacon.com/devops/7-steps-choosing-right-devops-tools
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In today’s volatile market, DevOps practices are more important than ever, in part because of the growth of the Internet of Things, leading to an increase in pressure to deliver apps faster. It is the age of rapid releases and cultivating a DevOps strategy is in the best interest of businesses.
In Canada alone, people spend about $2500 a year on apps. The demand for mobile app development has grown more than five times and organizations need to evolve in order to have the capacity to deliver them.
Source: https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/11/28/canada-annual-mobile-app-spend-2018-study/

The DevOps teams need to be developed over time, much like agile practices are integrated into the company teams. A successfully integrated team has a common desire to improve, integrate and develop operations, processes and systems.

DevOps Best Practices

DevOps is gaining attention and businesses worldwide are adopting and implementing this ideology for successful ventures. In order to consider this, a company would need to keep in mind that the core to a successful integration is having automated testing and deployment, while still maintain continuous feedback for improvement. 

Let us look at the following 7 step guide for successful implementation of DevOps:

1. Understand Your Infrastructure and Start Small: Trying to make drastic changes in the organization at once would be a recipe for disaster. A company has its own culture and it cannot be changed overnight. Hence experts have recommended to cautiously start with a small project or team that would benefit from the DevOps practices.
This will help the company analyse the benefits and lay the foundation for the future DevOps efforts. The company can also evaluate what is causing problems in their development or deployment processes and based on this can recommend necessary solutions.
An early win can also help build team confidence and set an example for others to follow. The project allows management to ensure it processes adopted are meaningful and beneficial to the business.

2. Focus on Culture and Invest in Tools: As mentioned earlier, DevOps is about a cultural change and simply investing in automation will not give sufficient benefits or desired results. The trust and collaboration built between development and operations teams are the tools needed to achieve the goal.
Technology alone cannot solve problems. Tools are imperative for DevOps to be successful but they will not do any good alone unless there is a tremendous cultural change. Business objectives, communication and, above all, trust need to be emphasized before investing in technical solutions.
In order to encourage communication, a company must have necessary tools to allow everyone to see in real time how the project is progressing. The tools being used by teams must also be able to deploy and integrate together as together they are supportive and helpful in making DevOps a success.

3. Deploy Automation Technology: The level of automation chosen largely determines the nature of the development environment as well as production needs. The right tooling can go a long way in ensuring the latest codes are production ready and deployable.
Source: https://www.comakeit.com/blog/practical-implementation-of-devops-step-by-step/

In DevOps, any technology that helps automate processes is always helpful. Automation tools not only simplify the process of configuring, monitoring and maintaining infrastructure, they also help deploy applications faster. This also helps reduce the problems at the deployment stage. It is important to know that automation is a large part of the practice but not the entire point of this process. 

4. Speed of Deployment: Usually development teams which deliver at the fastest cycle time are said to enjoy the highest business satisfaction. These teams also deliver the highest quality of software. Increasing the speed of deployment is one of the key goals in DevOps and in order to achieve this goal, companies often deploy technology which provides speed.
Along with this technology, agile development techniques also need to be implemented for organizations to keep in mind that these techniques are merely a means to achieve the final goals like faster deployment and better support of the business processes overall.

5. Increase Feedback from Operations: Only giving attention to the development side of DevOps is not sufficient. In order to optimize the benefits and increase efficiency the company needs to increase communication and collaboration within operations as well as with operations and the rest of the organization.
This helps development team to elevate delivery pipeline with amplified feedback as opposed to automated delivery and sub-optimization.

6. Establishing KPIs to Monitor Success:A clear framework needs to be outlined before taking on DevOps practices which show its true value for the organization. For any business to know if the transition or changes they have adopted are successful or beneficial, they need to keep an eye of key performance indicators.
Similarly to know if DevOps has a positive impact, a company simply needs to monitor the company KPIs. True value of these practices would be better leverage and agility of the technology to support business operations and hence the strategies need to have a quantifiable impact on the business KPIs.

​7. Change the Business Process to Match the Development Pace:  When changes are made in any part of the organization, other parts will also get affected. It is important to keep in mind the bigger picture to ensure the business process are aligned with the new pace being set by DevOps.
For example, the marketing company would need to step up and focus on the higher number of product launches and quicker turnaround times. Without adopting new processes, the internal teams would not be able to keep up with these more frequent launches. Collaborating with other departments is imperative to ensure the principles behind the DevOps philosophy are beneficial for the company.
Source: https://www.datamation.com/applications/9-best-practices-for-devops-1.html

To Sum Up
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Software and the internet have changed the world we live in. Everything from industries to shopping to banking to entertainment. Companies are constantly interacting with their customers via apps on all sorts of devices and businesses need to make optimum use of this technology to deliver the best experience to their customers.
Despite a lack of a standard definition, it is safe to say that DevOps is a journey and not a destination. While most organizations are moving towards implementing these practices, they need to keep in mind it is a long term process with constant experimentation with new tools and processes.
If you would like to discuss DevOps tools and how they can benefit your organization, you can contact our App Scoop development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html.

​While creating a website or an application, the developer needs to focus on two important components; the User Experience (UX) and the User Interface (UI). Both these terms are related to one another – the User Experience is based on effective use of the mobile app and how the user enjoys using the app, whereas, a User Interface is the look and feel of the app, its presentation and the overall interactivity of a product.
Hence, while creating a mobile app, the developers need to work together on the UX and UI, but both require different skill sets. Let’s understand this with the help of an example: 

Take a look at the Facebook home screen. Everything you see in the top and side search bars “News Feed”, “Status”, “Video”, “Upcoming Events”, etc. – is all a part of the UI. So, what the User Interface ideally is that it helps you navigate within the app or website, for example, if you click on Events, you will be navigated to a page where you will be able to see all the events listed in your profile. A good UI is the one that is easy to use and helps navigate the user with ease.
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On the other hand, User Experience is when the user clicks on the Events tab, but has to wait for the events to download for more than a minute. Imagine you try to search for a long lost friend, but you can’t search it or get presented with a multitude of options that do not match your friend’s name. With this kind of experience, it is the UX designer that needs to be blamed for the poor performance. 

Cognitive scientist Don Norman, who first coined the term UX in the 1990s, and Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, explain the difference of UX versus UI by stating that:

“Consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.”
 
What is User Experience (UX)?

While developing a mobile app or website, it is of utmost importance that the design is user centered – that is, that the app should be based on the needs and wants of the user. It is commonly known as UX – it records if the users enjoy using the app and that it is easy to use the app. UX is supposed to be practical, meaningful, affective, and should offer a valuable human-machine interaction.
One of the most important questions that the UX designer must ask is, “How can my company’s product best meet our user’s needs?”
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So, what makes a great UX?

• It should benefit users.

 

• The product needs to be useful and should offer a great deal of value.

 

• The product should be designed after testing different options – validating and invalidating product ideas.

 

• Understanding of the product’s business model.

 

• Understanding the processes clients use.

 

• Understanding the broader context in which users interact and engage.

 

• Should work on all or defined technological platforms.

 
What is User Interface (UI)?

In order to have a good UX, it is important to have a User Interface that is easy to understand and access – UI is basically a presentation of the product. A UI designer is responsible to align how all the features get added on the page, the placement of buttons and icons to navigate and the other visual elements that make the user’s experience to navigate the app or website easily.
One of the most important questions that the UI designer must ask is, “Does the company provide a great product and does its website or mobile application have an intuitive and sleek layout that attracts more users?”
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So, what make a great UI?

• Avoids confusion and clarifies any ambiguities with the help of simple language and visuals.

 

• Incorporating familiar features, buttons or call-to actions and making the elements familiar.

 

• Ensuring that the UI offers speed and providing feedback when a screen is loading – basically, keeping the user informed about what is happening

 

• Keeping the UI consistent on pages so that the user is familiar with the usage patterns.

 

• Making it look attractive always make the app/website more enjoyable.

 
Importance of Design Thinking Process
“The design thinking ideology asserts that a hands-on, user-centric approach to problem solving can lead to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage. The design-thinking framework follows an overall flow of 1) understand, 2) explore, and 3) materialize. Within these larger buckets fall the 6 phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement.”
Reference: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/

As Don Norman preaches, “we need more design doing.” Design thinking does not free you from the actual design doing. As impactful as design thinking can be for an organization, it only leads to true innovation if the vision is executed.
Reference: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/
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At a high level, the UX and design thinking process identifies the purpose of the mobile product, business objectives, customer needs and pain points, as well as how the product will resolve those challenges. A D&D engagement will prioritise the product’s features that will help create a prototype and validated through testing. After both the business model and unique value proposition have been validated by real users, the product moves into development.
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To Conclude
At the end, it is the usability of the application and the personality of your UI that will attract the users. UX and UI developers have different responsibilities but they need to work together to build a great product. The core of creating a good product should be user centric and easy to operate.

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Steve Jobs
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First man discovered fire. Then came the wheel, then industries and machines and with technology came the constant change and modernization of the world today. When the mobile phone had first been launched, it was a luxury item which few possessed and now it is a necessity. The same can be said about the internet and increasing dependence of people on the web. 

For years now the mobile community has been divided on platforms like:

• Android
• iOS
• Symbian OS
• Bada OS
• Blackberry OS

By 2023, it is believed that the number of smartphone users, in Canada alone, will be approximately 30.4 million and the number of mobile phone internet users will be 30.9 million.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/467190/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-canada/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/482507/canada-mobile-phone-internet-users/

It is safe to say we live in a digital world where most tasks are now completed with a few clicks of a button. The top of the market has been the Android and iOS platforms which have effectively been ahead of the other competition. This year, 2019, is said to be different as the hot new buzz is about the Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
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What are Progressive Web Apps?
“Progressive Web Apps are just websites that took all the right vitamins.” – Alex Russell, Software Engineer at Google.

The term progressive web app, coined by Alex Russell and Frances Berriman, is a set of practises to make a web application function similar to a desktop or mobile application. It is not a new framework or technology or an app even, but it aims to offer a uniform and seamless experience to the user so they cannot tell the difference between a PWA and a native mobile app.
Source:https://medium.freecodecamp.org/progressive-web-apps-101-the-what-why-and-how-4aa5e9065ac2
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PWAs are said to load like regular web pages but are also said to work offline and have more features similar to those of a native app. For example, while browsing a website, a consumer clicks on a banner which adds the application to their home screen. It runs in the background, works offline and is downloaded without the use of an app store. 

Many companies today have leveraged the power of the progressive web apps, like:

• Twitter
• Forbes
• Fandango
• Flipkart
• Ola
• Pintrest
• Book My Show
• The Weather Channel

 
Features and Principles of Progressive Web Apps
PWAs follow certain guidelines which ensures clear benefits to both consumers and merchants as well in this increasingly mobile world. Let us have a look at some of these features:

Progressive: The word alone means that PWAs work for all users irrespective of which browser they use. This is because they are built with progressive enhancement as a core tenet.

Responsive: PWAs would be able to automatically adopt different screen sizes and orientations like desktop, tablets and mobiles, which ensures a great user experience and a responsive design helps ensure the app will work on new devices in the future too.

Reliable: A PWA is not dependent on network and can work offline as well. This gives users meaningful content regardless of network conditions. They also have a minimum load time, making them instantly available.

Secure: PWAs are secure by default as the technologies powering these apps require content to be served over HTTPS in order to work. Thus ensuring content has not be tampered with and is safe.

App-Like: PWAs as mentioned feel like an App but are not an app. They provide app style interactions since they are built on the app shell model.

Fresh: These apps are always up to date because of the service worker update process and hence a user does not need to update the same like other native apps. These real-time updates lower down the waiting time for the end users and help the brands to improve the user engagement and retention rate, which eventually add value to their business.
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Engaging: Usually native apps are much more engaging than web apps but having an icon on the home screen makes it easy to access the app. Push notifications and alerts also grab the user’s attention and helps re-engage them. Since it is available on the home screen it helps the brands to remain in the minds of the users and improve the chances of interaction.

Installable: As mentioned, PWAs do not demand longer download time and make memory space available for installing the applications. They are easy to install and does not require the user to visit the app store.

Linkable: PWAs are easily shared via URLs and do not require complex instillation processes.

Discoverable: PWAs are easily identifiable as applications as they reside in browsers. This increases the chances to optimize them as per the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) criteria and improve the Google rankings like in the case of websites and other web apps.

Why Do We Need Progressive Web Apps?
Users spend most of the time on native apps, however mobile web reach is a lot more than that of native apps. It is evident that users are not actively engaged and usually spend time only on their select top apps.
Websites take time to load and those few seconds costs a business a customer. PWAs on the other hand are fast as the data is cache and restarting the app does not need a strong network. Since they behave like native apps, they have access to a devices functionalities and perform tasks seamlessly.
For many companies building native apps, the cost of developing, testing and maintain for several platforms would be ineffective and costly. PWAs would allow these companies to deliver competitive user experience without needing to develop apps for all platforms or dealing with distributing binaries and updates.
More and more companies are shifting towards PWAs as they are cost effective and work on all platforms. It is believed that users of Pinterest’s PWA spend 40% more time on the site compared to the previous mobile website. Ad revenue rates also increased by 44%, and core engagements shot up 60%.
Source:https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/2019-the-year-of-progressive-web-apps-3027aea291f9

In Conclusion
Progressive web apps are the future. As coined by Alex Russell, we know that Progressive Web App is a type of regular web app but with some extras which enable it to deliver archetypal user experience and give the user the best of both platforms as it blends the desktop and mobile app experience in one.
If you would like to further discuss how PWAs can make a difference to your business, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app developers or app development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html
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“Every company, city, and country is becoming digital, navigating disruptive markets, …(and the) role in the digital transformation has never been more important.” – John Chambers, Former Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems.
The era we live in today is a digital age where all industries have embraced and entered this digital world in some way. Industries get to harness the potential of digitization in various shapes and forms, thus making the best of this evolution.
The supply chain industry is no different and today, they rely heavily on digital technologies to ensure accurate data to help with delivery while optimizing resources. 

Digital Transformation and the Supply Chain Industry

Managing the supply chain is a large and complicated area, which is chaotic and filled with multiple challenges. There is a lot of manual work which costs time and money and in a way is a futile exercise with excess paperwork. 
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Each stakeholder would want to manage their own paper work, ledger and data which could make things more complicated and in order to make sense of this data, a third party would need to be involved especially for bookkeeping.
Source: https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/future-iot-devices-ecommerce/

This would seem like a nightmare considering the large scale of globalization which has engulfed the markets. Providing in-time, safe delivery while maintaining supply chain transparency is becoming more tedious. Combining digital technologies would increase the efficiency, reliability, speed and transparency between the manufacturer, supplier and service provider.
In 2019, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain services will be enabled and will have an impact on most organizations. Blockchain and IoT can transform supply chains. However, this transformation will not happen overnight and will need experimentation on the part of companies to ensure the induction phase is smooth before expanding more.
Source: https://hackernoon.com/Blockchain-iot-for-supply-chain-1b07d4afd614

Blockchain Technology
Blockchain is a system of maintaining ledgers which can be traced and audited for collaboration in a secure fashion. This technology has great potential to help transform supply chain management as it stores and manages data, while allowing decentralized and autonomous transactions. This way it helps companies build and maintain customer trust while securing the data as well.
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Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT is a network of intelligent physical objects and things which can connect to a network in order to send and receive data. In a business, data is of prime importance as based on the accuracy of data major decisions can be taken. If the analysis is incorrect due to bad data, it can mean a big loss for companies. 

It is believed that by 2023, Blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of $2T of goods and services. Logistics and transportation companies are projected to spend about $40B each on IoT platforms.
Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2019/01/13/top-10-ways-internet-of-things-and-Blockchain-strengthen-supply-chains/#70bf76315e4e

Improving Supply Chain through Blockchain and IoT
In the supply chain industry, IoT and Blockchain together, can provide multiple benefits for all stakeholders. In the past there have instances where a glitch in the supply chain has led very unpleasant consequences. For example:

• Spread of E-Coli virus due to spoiled lettuce
• Consignment of meat stored incorrectly causing the shipment to go bad
• Delay in delivery due to unforeseen traffic and roadblocks
• Cancelling delivery as it cannot be delivered due to freight/customs issues

IoT and Blockchain technologies can help push the companies in the right direction and can also help save them millions of dollars. They can drive supply chain management to the next level using multiple sensors, GPS, remote temperature control, asset maintenance, operations monitoring and so on.
Let us have a look at a few key factors that the combination of these two technologies can deliver and help improve across the supply chain industry:
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Real Time Supply Chain Visibility
It does not matter if the buyer or seller is in some remote location of the world. It does not matter if there are multiple parties involved in completing this transaction. Now there is end-to-end visibility of the supply chain right from order being placed till it is finally delivered.
Even if the stakeholders are globally dispersed, real-time visibility is possible to track goods and consignments, thanks to IoT devices, as they move through the supply chain. This information is uploaded on a Blockchain framework which allows all participants to access the necessary information. 

Global Supply Chain Financing
One of the main threats of digitization is the increase in cybercrime. People are vulnerable as vital data is out there for thieves to hack into. It is only fair that they would be apprehensive about sharing data for online payments and overseas transactions.
On the other hand, transactions with clients based in other counties is also more tedious owing to the paperwork and bureaucracy which also leads to delays in international payments and dealing with regulations of multiple countries. Discrepancies here would mean significant delays or cancelling the entire order.
In such situations, IoT and Blockchain has significantly improved the landscape of international transactions. They speed up the movement of the goods, reduce the paperwork, prevent fraud and result in a more secure and efficient transaction. A previous cloud trail also makes it possible to speed up the payment process as once the programme has been set, regular and timely payments can be made automatically.
Source: https://blogs.oracle.com/profit/the-benefits-of-iot-and-Blockchain-for-the-supply-chain

Regulated, Controlled and Reliable
In certain industries like the F&B or pharmaceutical sector, consignments need to be transported at exactly the right temperature and at exactly the right time. Once the shipment leaves the warehouse it was not possible to control these factors.
IoT feed makes it possible to monitor the temperature, the quality and even the fastest and safest route to the destination. Modifications in temperature settings can also be done remotely. Sensors also make it possible to know when a container or transport vehicle is due for maintenance.
Blockchain technology and IoT ensures the data captured and received is tamperproof. Hence the security of the information is always guaranteed. This would not only be a boon to the medical industry but also any industry transporting sensitive or commodities of high value.

Data Analysis
As mentioned earlier, data plays a crucial role in any business and industry. IoT and Blockchain make it possible to share data securely with all stakeholders. This data can be analysed for new insights into their supply chain.
This data analysis helps realign sourcing and distribution networks as well as make changes and improve on the design of the supply chain. This data can also potentially solve complex supply chain problems.  
Source:https://www.networkworld.com/article/3269273/improving-supply-chains-with-the-iot-and-Blockchain.html
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Final Thoughts
Tamperproof records, thanks to Blockchain and everything being connected between the real and digital world, thanks to IoT, helps reduce friction by eliminating third parties. Presently, Blockchain and IoT together are disrupting a lot of industries as this combination has been very powerful and effective.
Source:http://www.jacquesraud-consulting.com/fr/plm-et-supply-chain-pour-une-industrie-textile-plus-efficiente/

Customers today are very concerned with fast delivery and exceptional personalized service. Companies have little to no choice in leveraging the digitized methods to provide customers with enhanced services.
If you would like to discuss the possible ways to innovate and transform your supply chain, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app developers and app development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html.
 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin.
Today’s world is fast-paced and constantly evolving. Man has come a long way since the discovery of fire and the invention of a wheel. The power of technology in this day and age is exponential in personal, daily lives as well as in the business world. 

A wave of digital transformation has globally blanketed all walks of life. In order to keep pace with this fast-moving environment, businesses need to find ways to digitize their core processes and systems and also ensure technology and applications are constantly updated.
During these transitions, friction and complications can arise between developmental and operational teams. To avoid these and to aim for a smooth digital transition, the DevOps approach helps bring the development and operations team together. It is more than methodology for a software development. It is a necessary culture to meet the needs to companies developing:

• Software
• Websites
• Applications

How did DevOps Come Into Being?
Requirements of the digital world are fast changing. Software needs to be developed at a quick pace, marketed faster and it must be easy to update and fix glitches and bugs. This is not only the responsibility of the software developers. The operations team is equally needed to deploy and monitor new applications. This led to the DevOps approach.
This approach helps the company go beyond everything purely technical and helps ensure all levels of the company are involved and the key to success is communication. This way the whole company is working towards the success of the product not just the success of their job or involvement in the matter.
Source: https://www.combell.com/en/blog/what-is-devops-and-why-is-it-so-important/
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DevOps are rapidly spreading through the community and this approach is attracting more and more companies to embrace it. An approach which unites teams and does not treat them as isolated entities ensures fewer conflicts as well. 

Implementing the DevOps approach brings many advantages to an organization as a seamless set up gets to operate between the teams, testing executives and operational executives leading to a much better outcome in a project.

Why is DevOps Important?
“DevOps is a software development and application delivery method that takes a collaborative and integrated approach between application development (the Dev) and application operations (the Ops). The goal of DevOps is to deliver applications faster, at an increased frequency and with a lower failure rate.”
Source: https://kemptechnologies.com/ca/devops-tools-resources/
Effective utilization of the DevOps approach helps promote a healthy environment which encourages shared responsibility and accountability between teams leading to a high performing organization. Let us take a look at 5 top reasons why DevOps is important:

Shorter Development Cycle, Faster Innovation
When teams work independently or in separate silos, it is difficult to tell if an application is ready. There are needless delays. With a combined development and operations team, apps are ready a lot quicker which helps the companies innovate faster than their market competitors.
Shorter development cycle means the product comes to market a lot faster and hence it gives the company an upper hand in the market.

Reduce Implementation Failure, Rollbacks and Recovery Time
One of the reasons a team faces deployment failure is due to programing defects, bugs or glitches. Shorter development cycles promote more frequent code version, updates and releases, making it easier to spot shortcomings.
These implementation or deployment failures can be reduced with the help of the agile approach which allows collaboration and modular programming. This also makes it possible to manage rollbacks since only few modules get affected.
Recovery time is a critical issues as some failure is expected, but how quickly that failure can be rectified and recovered is a challenge during development. With the DevOps method, recovery is much faster as the teams for development and operations are already working together.
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Healthier Communication and Cooperation
DevOps approach helps to improve the software development culture as combined teams are happier and more productive. The organizational culture is more focused on performance as a whole and not just on individual goals.
When a team trusts the other teams it becomes possible to experiment, innovate and produce market ready products faster. The operations team is no longer waiting for the development team and it can troubleshoot to fix problems as necessary. The key performance indicators can also be aligned and outlined accordingly.
With this healthy flow of information between the teams, the organization runs more effortlessly and the processes become more seamless as the organization works together towards a common goal. 

Increased Competencies
An increase in the company’s efficiency and competency helps to speed up the developmental process and reduce the rate of errors. Continuous use of servers can be automated. For example, the process of testing a code. This reduces the amount of manual work required, helping the engineers focus on other tasks.
Speeding up tools help increase efficiency like parallel workflows can be embedded into the continuous delivery chain to avoid delays. One cloud based server or environment reduces time in transferring data from one environment to another.

Decrease Costs and IT Staff
DevOps doesn’t only increase the pace of hange but since business is growing fast, the market is also changing rapidly. The company assess cultural, people, process and technology capacities to meet business goals. DevOps helps us to do things faster at higher quality. By automating testing, multiple man days of effort come down to an overnight hands-free process. Also, all the combined benefits of DevOps ensure a drop in general costs and requirements of IT personnel.
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Final Thoughts
The growing automation and toolchain approach, the need for agile processes and development and operations collaboration along with implementations of ITIL and ITSM brought together principles, processes and practices and hence DevOps approach emerged.
Source: https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/
Most of the businesses have adopted DevOps at a rapid rate and organizations are eager to take advantage of the faster delivery, better innovation and performance focused employee team method. DevOps is no more than a set of processes that coordinate and unify teams and processes to enhance software development. 

In conclusion, the impact of a new code is better understood in this practice as the flexibility of fast interaction with other teams helps resolving bugs and issues soon. Thus switching over to a DevOps approach would be a healthy choice for the overall environment and functioning of a company.
In order to make DevOps work for the company, you need a partner who can help and if you would like to discuss how with the App Scoop Vancouver mobile app developers and development team, you can contact us on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html
 

​Over the past decade, there has been a wave of digital transformation, which has fundamentally changed how organizations conduct their operations. A company goes through a metamorphosis with technology at its core to create new forms of business practices and added customer value. 
These digital challenges compel traditional officials to harness new ways of delivering greater customer satisfaction and more personalized experiences. This also helps companies survive in this largely competitive global market.
Superlative customer experience is of great importance for any business today and in order to successfully go digital, an organization needs to equip its infrastructure to handle the necessary demands and changes of the transformative initiatives. Companies need to focus on modernization of their core processes, systems and age old infrastructure on every aspect and level of operations 

The kind of disruption involved, to monolithic processes, often discourages businesses to make large changes or investments in new technologies. However, adopting agile approaches, global delivery models and DevOps are essential components for a successful journey.

Agile and DevOps: Moving Towards Digital Transformation
Adopting these practices, help companies transform and lead the market with the latest digital processes, sheds light on the challenges to come and also focuses on driving the following methodologies within the organization:

Improve Culture
Culture plays a very important role in successful implementation of agile and DevOps. The environment of a company needs to encourage adopting change, teamwork and agility. Involving customers and stake holders from the start is beneficial so that their feedback can be incorporated into the development process.

Management Commitment
For a successful transformation, management on all levels need to support and encourage the change. There needs to be a significant shift in the mind set and attitude so that support for the change starts at the top.

Training
Providing proper training for its employees ensures companies will see best practices being utilized for the organizations benefit. This also leads to a higher rate of revenue and profit growth.
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Relieve Time Pressures
Priority needs to be given to the most strategic work which needs to be completed first as opposed to juggling multiple tasks which may not drive towards the organizations strategy. These practices will aid organizations keep up with the continuously changing, and unpredictable, business environment.
Source: https://www.ca.com/en/blog-highlight/agile-and-devops-essentials-in-the-digital-transformation-journey.html

Benefits of Agile and DevOps in the Digital Transformation Journey

“75% of respondents recognize that Agile and DevOps approaches drive significant business success when implemented together”
Source: http://www.idexcel.com/blog/agile-and-devops-motivating-digital-readiness-and-transformation/
The goal is to enable the organization to create quick, frictionless, friendly, risk-free value at scale, and the financial rewards that flow from that capability, as exemplified by:

• Amazon
• Apple
• Facebook
• Google
• Microsoft.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/11/04/the-twelve-stages-of-the-agile-transformation-journey/#657b97a63dd4

Adapting to Feedback
One of the main benefits of using an agile framework, that it allows for rapid modifications as needed based on customer feedback. It allows for changes to take place at a much faster pace which also helps create a powerful digital customer experience.
Digital and domain skills, identifying the weakness as well as the use of modern software processes like DevOps and agile help ensure a smooth transition which focuses on the core infrastructure as well as changes at the customer service level.
(Source: https://www.infosys.com/insights/ai-automation/Pages/digital-transformation-core.aspx)

Cultural Shift
As previously mentioned, part of using this methodology is emphasizing a cultural shift, empowering employees, providing transparency and accountability between teams and individuals as well. Everyone from management to individual stakeholders receive necessary training, which helps understand and accept the change.

Work Environment
Change is never easy nor is it very easily accepted. Using agile methods and DevOps makes it possible to create a healthy work environment during the transition. Success can be celebrated by the team which also helps boost morale and increases productivity. This also helps make the transition smooth and frictionless.
Breaking down the walls between development and operations, DevOps makes it possible to process change faster and makes things run smoother, all by adopting the right approaches to the technology and bringing fresh thinking to organizational factors.
Source:https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2017/4/why-devops-and-cloud-are-essential-digital-transformation
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Market Creating Innovations and Scalable Operations
Agile and DevOps methodology helps to open up markets as well as transform products from complicated and expensive to simple and affordable. New products meet a new need which people did not know they earlier had. For example:

• Personal computer
• iPhone
• Starbucks coffee

These practices make it possible for stakeholders to rapidly create and supply the needs of the market. 

Success with Agile and DevOps Strategy

Digital transformation process is disruptive enough and therefore it is beneficial to use tried and tested approaches like Agile and DevOps strategies. They provide a framework for change and enable the organization to build the next generation of powerful digital experiences.
Source: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/how-agile-helps-drive-digital-transformation-forward/
In modern day dynamic environments, change is constant and businesses cannot remain stagnant if they wish to grow and prosper. The rule of survival i.e. evolution follows the same principle as digitization. Aligning the methodologies with business strategy helps foresee possible issues, and come up with solutions, which the business might face.
DevOps strategy and agile methodology help create the change right from the culture to the hearts and minds of the people.Experienced talent across the organization can be looped in to contribute to projects. This also allows boundary-less leadership which helps promote the vision and business strategy of a company.
Source: https://www.cio.com/article/3239004/12-tips-for-using-devops-to-fuel-digital-transformation.html

To Wrap It Up
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Digital transformation is a key for success for any business operating in today’s volatile economy. And in this scenario, agile and DevOps methodologies are the essential components for a successful metamorphosis. Adopting these strategies and practices helps companies increase their development speed, efficiency and customer experience while ensuring a smooth transformation.
These strategies help make the organization flexible specially while addressing customer demands, expectations as well as new market opportunities. It is not enough to focus on the technology and processes alone, but also on the use and effective implementation of what is available at hand.
If you would like to further discuss how essential agile and DevOps methodologies are for a digital transformation journey, you can contact the App Scoop mobile app developers and app development team on: https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html