App Maintenance
An App Maintenance Agreement is vital to ensure that whatever technology has been produced in producing your app it is kept in control.
Why would you have a maintenance contract?
You have a maintenance contract for many reasons but the main reason is so that your app stays active without crashing meaning that you DO NOT let your customers down. When you build your app you want as many users as possible right? So with that in mind and a large anticipated number of users you need to be able to quickly react if there are any issues. The aim is to have thousands and thousands of active users and you cannot wait for resource to be allocated in case of emergencies. A maintenance agreement is best run alongside a monitoring agreement.
Evolution Of Your Product
In this day and age users naturally get new ideas regarding how they want to use it apps hence it will also require the App to evolve. Without keeping the App and usage modern and ‘in trend’ you are at danger of users switching to another platform, which is latest technology etc. This is why a maintenance agreement is best working alongside a carefully worked out roadmap.
Here are a few reasons why you will need to keep your app up to date.
- The human environment of the App changes e.g. Organisational strageies change, Laws change, and users turn over.
- The technological environment of the App changes e.g. Operating systems, networks and hardware change.
- New possibilities coem into the market and make us less content with old features.
- iOS change their SDK.
- Android changetheir SDK.
- Facebook change SDK
- Old functions gets outdated and new functions are introduced with trends, (for better performance, and security)
Therefore after you have launched your app and if you are serious about it staying around long term then you need a dedicated team to maintain it. The App is at risk if you don’t have a full time or part time dedicated team.
Typical Examples of the work that would be included in a standard maintenance contract;-
- Server management
- Emergency repairs due to hacker attacks.
- Emergency contact number to call in an emergency
- Weekly App Traffic report
- Emergency repairs due to hacker attacks.
- Emergency contact number to call in an emergency
- Weekly App Traffic report
- Monitor web service & API calls
- Application Monitoring
- Monthly App Error Analysis Report
- Adaption or modification when new OS versions are released
- Remote monitoring and remote assistance
- Analyze how your app performs on different devices & operating systems
- Compare performance across different app versions
- Monthly Security Auditing
- Monthly Transaction Trace Report
- Database Backups