HowTo build a WebApp: Strategic Planning
Intro
Hi and welcome to the first article in this series. I will cover the whole process of building a modern Webapp. We will start with an initial planning (covered in this article) and finish with the public deployment of the app.
I will rather focus on the development process than on implementation. There are a lot of great tutorials out there to learn how to code and implement stuff. This series has two goals:
- encourage and teach readers to use a well structured process when building an app
- test myself to see how much I am aware of all the things to consider and document that
Please be aware that there is no single development process which fits every project! There are parts which you probablby will find in most parts. But there are also things which are not needed at any time. Furthermore one could discuss about the order of the different steps. Keep that in mind when adopting this for you project.
What are we going to build?
Throughout the series I will build a Webapp to use the Pomodoro Technique. So you can track the development progress with this project. You can find the app here: PomodoroEasy
I will use established, modern techniques to do so. I dont focus on the latest, hyped technologies, but rather solid, well known and robust suff. I love things like Node.js and meteor.js! But I came up with the idea for these articles because I wanted to improve my Ruby on Rails skills for a project I am currently working on: UFOstart.
So I am biased towards some products as I want to learn more about them. But I am not going to build a dinosaur! But as I am not focusing on implementation this series should also be applicable to your node, django or whatever project.
What’s missing in this series?
You will not find informations about how to validate you product idea. But I would like to mention that you definitely should do so if you want to get a commercial product and make money out of it. With my background i as a developer I hate to say this, but: Markets are more important than functionality!
As I am doing this project as a one man show I will not cover team building and coordination. Regarding the coordination I recommend to read about SCRUM, I love it.
So let’s go for it and get a basic outline for the whole project.
Outlining the development process
I will throw the outline at you and explain it afterwards:
- Get a plan for the project (we just startet with that)
- Define what the app will do
- Document the domain model
- Get site structure and mockups
- Define an API
- Build the backend with RESTful API
- Build a web frontend client
- Deploy the product
This is the basic idea of the workflow. We start from scratch, get the concepts done and build it afterwards. After that we will have a deployable product and publish that.
If your project is non-trivial (that’s almost every piece of software) and you really want to make something out of it, you will iterate through this process. Of course you will not define the whole API again and again but you will cycle through concept (1.-4.), building (5.+6.) and deployment phases.
In the follow-up articles I will cover these steps in single articles. But lets get a short description of every step right here:
1. Define what the app will do
This step is very important. If we would not define the app functionality in the first place but start to implement it too soon, we easily end up with confusing, unfinished software. We need a well defined functionality to stay focused and implement the important things.
2. Document the domain model
With the knowledge what the app should be capable of doing we will create a domain model. This is a conceptual model for the app. It helps tremendously to do an efficient and effectiv implementation.
3. Get site structure and mockups
In this step we lay down the strucute of our app. We define the different views of it and create mockups for the UI. This way we get an idea of the app layout and rethink the features.
4. Define an API
From the domain model we have all the entities in our app. We are going to make the models and behaviour available through an API. Before starting the actual implementation we will define this API. Together with the domain model we have defined what exactly has to be implemented.
5. Build the backend with RESTful API
At this point we are well prepared to start coding! We will start with the backend as the core of our app. From the domain model you will get data models and database structure. The API is based on the predefined concept.
6. Build a web frontend client
As we have the backend in place, we can start to implement a client which consumes the API and allows usage of the app.
7. Deploy the product
In this final step we are going to push our app to a server and make it available to the public.
Continue Reading: Define what the app will do »
