I’m a Silverlight developer and currently, do not own a Windows Phone 7. But I do want to create applications for the Windows Phone 7 platform, so how do I go about this? Luckily, the emulator is excellent.
Unfortunately, the testers reject an application the minute they find one problem and not all problems/errors. Thus it took 4 attempts to get my application approved. If they’d given me a complete list of errors, I would have only needed to re-submit once.
So, based on this experience, I’ve realised that the best way to develop for Windows Phone, or any mobile platform where testers preview your work, is frequently and often.
So for my application, I started out spending the first day doing what’s called Scoping. I figured out that the application I wanted to make could be split into 5 versions, each one better than the previous. This makes the development time small for version 1.0, and the process of dealing with the testers the most time consuming.
On an emotional level, the joy of getting an application into the market place has encouraged me to work on the next version with more energy.
From a development point of view, by using this approach, I’ve also learnt more about the platform and because my application is small (to start with), major errors are easier to fix and therefore as the development continues, I leverage this experience to my advantage. The advantage being that the next version will not be rejected.
GTRoberts says:
Thats a good idea Clinton although without knowing the app, isn’t five possible future versions a few too many?
Also, given the major confusion and fustration with the marketplace submission process and sometimes vauge testing “results” – it be far more constructive for the m/p testers to provide all bugs/issues to the dev’s instead of just returning the app on the first problem they find.
Clinton Rocksmith says:
Yes, 5 versions can seem like too many, but it’s 5 lots of added functionality, each one building on the previous. The goal is to get an app into the marketplace and then release the added functionality from what was learnt in the submission process.
For instance, I have a calculator that determines the space between cameras to create 3D for films and photography. The first version has basic functionality where the user must know all the settings for their camera. The second version talks to Azure to pull down a list of cameras and their settings. The third interacts with the cloud and allows for integration with Post production software.
Thus, the software still does what it is supposed to do from version 1 but just gets better and better.
If I built this to the full functionality, I would be frustrated and possibly be up for a complete rebuild by not learning about the submission process incrementally.
I agree that the testers need to fully test the app, because they’re making extra work for themselves by having to test the app over and over. Not to mention the time taken for the developer to wait for testing to be completed.