Chapter 6 – Skill Gap Analysis

Explains how to figure out what skills you need to have to get your app built and how to figure out which ones you are missing and what you might do about that.

Chapter 9 – Managing to Milestones

Explains how app projects can be organized and managed and gives some recommendations about strategies that have worked for me.

Chapter 8 – Interviewing and Selecting a Developer

Discusses the process of determining whether a particular developer might be a good fit for your app project or not.

Chapter 10 – Understanding What You’re Getting

Explains how to estimate the quality of the app that you are getting and the code that is being written for it.

Chapter 12 – Communicating Using Bugs

Explains how to use a bug or issue tracking tool to communicate with your present and future development teams.

Chapter 11 – Pulling the Plug Early

Explains how to determine how far off track your project seems and how to decide whether it’s recoverable or not.

Chapter 13 – Testing

Explains how to find and work with testers of your app to get the quality you need.

Chapter 14 – Submission and Beyond

Discusses submitting your app to the store, what to do if it gets rejected and how to start planning your follow-up release.

However much we’d all like there to be, there’s no Silver Bullet or Magic Formula that will make an app project successful. However, that doesn’t mean that app creators are helpless. Just because there’s no guarantee of success doesn’t mean that the right knowledge can’t drastically change the odds.

Consider the Stock Market. There’s no guarantee that you won’t lose your money in the stock market. Some people were heavily invested in Enron, or AIG, or with Bernie Madoff. But those are rare exceptions. The vast majority of well diversified investors make money over time. Contrast that with the Lottery. A few people, statistically, have made more money than they’ve lost on the lottery, but they are few and far between, and their existence doesn’t make the lottery an intelligent investment strategy.

Unfortunately, it can be hard for many people to tell the difference between the app-development-project equivalents of the lottery and the stock market.

This book isn’t (and can’t be) about “how to have a successful app project every time.” Instead, it’s about how to maximize your chance of success – about how to make sure you’re investing in the Stock Market instead of playing the Lottery. With the average app development project running into tens of thousands of dollars, we’d like to hope that reading this book will a small investment that can make a huge amount of difference in your odds of success.