Flutter App Development and Agile Processes – It’s a Match!

Your business is scaling, revenues are more than satisfying, and the customer base is growing. After conducting a cost-benefit analysis, you decide to invest in mobile app development. You already know the benefits of developing an app: boosting sales, increasing customer engagement, and differentiating yourself from competitors. What next? 

Do you do it in-house or find a trustworthy mobile app development partner? How does the Agile work? How do you prioritize the scope of work and take care of user experience? What target platform should you select – iOS, Android, or both? What technology will help you achieve this target most effectively? What is Flutter app development?

What is Flutter, and why is it so good?

Flutter is an open-source framework developed by Google for building cross-platform applications. It allows developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms like iOS, Android, or the web. It uses the Dart programming language and provides a rich set of pre-designed widgets and tools for creating visually appealing and highly performant user interfaces. It fits great with various products, from the app managing your diet to the gamified solution helping organizations achieve their climate goals. 

How is Flutter app development different from native solutions?

Creating a mobile app using native technologies means your app will work exclusively on one native platform, for example, iOS or Android. Check out the differences between native and cross-platform in our other article: 

• Native and Cross-platform App Development – All You Need to Know as an Entrepreneur
• 4 Most Popular Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

How is Flutter different from other cross-platform frameworks?

Flutter is the most popular framework for cross-platform development; in 2022 it was chosen by 46% of developers specializing in multi-platform apps. See some of the Top Flutter Apps with Real-World Examples & Business Stories.

While the popularity of different frameworks (f.e. React Native, Cordova, Iconic) is decreasing, Flutter is gaining a larger and larger market share. It is the only one with a mobile-first approach, resulting in great performance and stability. We have also noticed this trend in Droids On Roids, where the Flutter Tech Team is experiencing the most rapid growth among technical groups.

Compare Flutter with other cross-platform development frameworks:

Flutter vs React Native – Which is Better for Your Project?

4 Most Popular Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

6 powerful advantages Flutter brings to the app development process

1. Iterative approach

The Agile methodology is a project management style that enhances customer collaboration and response to change. Scrum and Kanban are Agile frameworks with practices, values, and rules that help teams structure and manage their work. Each Agile framework promotes delivering value iteratively, which means that your team will follow the cycle of planning, executing, and evaluating. 

With Flutter, developers can write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms, tremendously reducing the time from implementing new features to collecting feedback. The ability to develop apps for both Android and iOS at the same time takes away a lot of effort. It means a few things for a business owner like you: your costs will be lower, and you will validate the product much quicker. 

2. Stands on empiricism

When developing your product with an agile team, you will quickly notice that learning always comes from experience and observation. Scrum – one of the most popular Agile frameworks, stands on three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Simply put, you must have a clear vision of the process to inspect and adapt to the changes. 

Flutter allows developers to also follow this idea in a technical way. The hot reload feature lets them change the code and instantly see it in the app. Thanks to that, they can experiment, test new functions, and quickly gather feedback from you (The Product Owner) or directly from users.  

3. Simplified collaboration 

It may seem that more developers mean faster delivery, but it’s not necessarily the truth. It is not a secret that communication flows better inside smaller teams. The most effective crew consists of three to ten members. 

As Flutter developers work simultaneously on Android, iOS, and even web applications – you don’t have to worry about the number of people on your team or creating a few separate groups to deliver your product. 

4. Encourages cross-functionality  

Agile teams are cross-functional and self-organizing. This means the team has the expertise to deliver a seamless, high-quality product without being blocked by missing competencies or external decisions. 

Flutter provides shared development environments for all team members. Sharing the same codebase boosts collaboration and knowledge exchanges between developers. As their platform-specific background is no longer a blocker, they can easily take care of their colleagues’ tasks during vacation days or help each other remove obstacles using good practices such as pair programming. 

5. Value-based

Mobile app development starts with the product goal and ends with the user. To find your way to satisfied customers, we must deliver value. To do so, we must ensure that what we develop is what users truly want. The best way to do that is to begin with research, prototype fast and check the solution with users. 

Writing code for all platforms simultaneously makes the Flutter app development process fast and smooth. Still, it doesn’t remove a thing from the user experience. The UI components in Flutter follow platform-specific design guidelines, ensuring familiarity and a native-like experience for the end user.

6. Community driven

Agile is based on experience and promotes continuous learning. It is compatible with Flutter’s community-driven ecosystem. The framework’s popularity further supports knowledge exchange between developers. It provides access to pre-built components, libraries, and plugins that can speed up development and address specific requirements or impediments the team may face in solving a complex problem.

Read also: Pros and Cons of Flutter App Development

Wrap up

Let’s sum up the key advantages of Flutter in your mobile app development process using the Agile approach: 

1. Supports a fast development cycle
2. Provides quick and constant feedback loop
3. Reduces the need to create multiple teams per platform
4. Brings knowledge transfer to another level
5. Lowers the risk connected with capabilities not being shared between team members  
6. Feels like a native experience for the end user

Deciding what technology to choose for your mobile solution isn’t easy. If you’re thinking about Flutter, the main pros from a Business Owner perspective are: 

1. Speeding up the development process
2. Lowering development costs
3. Simplifying scalability 

Check if Flutter will be right for your next mobile app! 

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