How to Make a Desktop Application

Deliverables: Project charter.

ScienceSoft starts development projects with outlining your business needs first and, in case you’re developing a desktop software product, analyzing the market. Then, we describe the functional scope of the future desktop app, including user roles, content, and permission matrix. As a result, high-level project requirements are formulated and documented along with the information and decisions on:

• App’s value or the problems it helps to solve.
• Target app audience.
• Disadvantages of similar existing solutions.
• App’s advantages over competitors (in case of a product app).
• Development risks and constraints (and ways to address them).
• Success metrics (KPIs to measure project success).
• Selected desktop platform(s) and reasons for targeting them.

Deliverables: Project management plan.

After ScienceSoft experts have outlined your desktop development scope and objectives, our PMs help to devise a project management plan – a document that suggests the necessary design and development efforts while considering business risks and constraints, outlined during the discovery step. All the efforts should be approximately but realistically estimated time-wise and assigned to participant roles. Once you verify this high-level plan, the project moves on to the next phase.

Deliverables: Software requirements specification, solution roadmap, quality management plan, risk management plan, change procedures, responsibility assignment matrix, final schedule (updated project management plan).

ScienceSoft considers the goal of this step to be delivery of the final documentation that thoroughly describes the future development process. We make sure that the key deliverable – a software requirements specification – contains a desktop app’s purpose, overall description, use cases for different user roles, functional and non-functional requirements, as well as key modules and their interaction in the form of an architecture diagram. The SRS we create also defines the technology stack (development tools, programming language, key libraries and APIs) and highlights integration details.

At this final planning step, ScienceSoft also documents the:

• app evolution plan,
• project quality standards and control metrics,
• ways of addressing most possible risks to the success KPIs,
• a matrix that assigns participant roles to certain team members,
• a schedule of assigned tasks,
• methods of handling changes to the schedule.

Deliverables: UX wireframes, UI mockups.

ScienceSoft's UX designers first translate the app’s functional requirements into minimalistic wireframes that should give a crude but clear idea of how a user will interact with software. Together, the wireframes constitute a prototype of the app, which is often created with interactive digital tools. Once the prototype passes user testing, our UI designers transform it into full-color graphic interface mockups and then hand over to development.

Expert's tip: To collaboratively create striking and user-centric desktop app designs, ScienceSoft's UX and UI designers recommend using Sketch and InVision apps.

Deliverables: Desktop app, source code, user’s installation guide, system manual for administrators.

Following the planned schedule, ScienceSoft's team works according to the chosen methodology: Scrum, Kanban, etc. To prevent code issues from affecting the entire code and causing significant delays in the release schedule, we perform quality assurance in parallel with development and fix issues as soon as possible. If necessary, the QA and development teams can also collaborate to create a user’s installation guide and administrator’s system manual.

Expert's tip: ScienceSoft's DevOps engineers recommend automating the processes of code delivery and testing with a CI/CD pipeline. In our experience, this can speed up development by up to 20%.

Depending on whether the app is an internal solution or a commercial product, ScienceSoft either deploys and integrates it with the required corporate infrastructure or releases to the public. The second option implies that the app has an installer and is distributed as a .exe/.pkg file on the product website or published on Windows Apps Store or Mac App Store.

If your app is published in an official web store, the store itself takes care of notifying users about updates. But for apps published on other Internet/intranet resources available through HTTP/FTP of file sharing, ScienceSoft creates a built-in app logic for automated update checks.

Expert's tip: It's crucial to think of your distribution method ahead to avoid the risks of urgent and costly code changes. ScienceSoft's business consultants always discuss distribution method during the project planning stage.