Understanding the key development is essential for all parties involved in developing a web solution – both the client and the company providing the service. Each of these stages plays a key role in controlling budgets, mitigating risks, and ensuring that the final product meets the needs of the user and the business.
Knowledge and understanding of these stages – from writing documentation to technical support – are especially valuable for business owners planning to invest in digital solutions, project managers and product owners working on the client side, companies launching their first digital product, and decision-makers or investors seeking to understand the development process before committing resources. By knowing what to expect at each step, stakeholders can make informed decisions, set realistic deadlines, and ensure that their project starts – and continues – on the right track.
The Complete Guide to Web Development Phases, Including Discovery and Documentation
Discovery Phase
Discovery Phase is collecting information for an improved and deeper understanding of the industry, the essence of the future project, the customer’s business, as well as the target audience. This phase in web development exists to deepen the understanding of what the client expects from the future web project, in this phase the development company should study the client’s needs as much as possible and make a list of requirements for the product itself. Companies that conduct the Discovery Phase in their work avoid such risks as budget overruns, inexpediency of the project being developed, and untimely completion of work.
Writing Documentation
After the Discovery Phase, writing the documentation is carried out, which consists of several stages: technical description, prototyping, and summarization. During the first stage, the collected data is analyzed to more clearly define the main goal of the project, whether it is a commercial goal or for the internal work of the business. This is followed by prototyping, that is, creating a wireframe for each page of the site, along with all the details. The final stage of writing the documentation is creating a summarization, in which a summary of the work is made, a final assessment of the work and a description of everything related to the project are made.
Development Phase
The development process takes place according to the project work plan, which was agreed in advance with the client and the project manager. This project plan includes such important data as the duration of development, the cost of the project, technologies, the team working on the project, etc. The development of a modern web solution is carried out according to the Agile and Scrum methodologies, which are more flexible and assume the emergence of possible risks, pitfalls and new wishes of the client. Development is divided into sprints, which can usually last two weeks. At the end of each sprint, a summary is made of what was done and what was not done. Each developer receives his responsibilities according to the plan and works on his part of the project. Depending on the capabilities provided by the chosen technologies, front-end developers can write the front-end and back-end at the same time. Accordingly, the main work takes place according to three-servers principle: local, where the code is written, staging, where it is tested, and production, on which the finished project is uploaded.
QA Testing
After the code has been uploaded to the staging, testers are involved in the work. If no errors were found in the code, then the task is transferred to the QA Ok category and moves on, if there is still an error, then the task is marked as QA Fail and sent to the developer for rework. Next, the developer reworks the code and tests it on the staging. If an error still occurs on the staging, the code is sent back to the local server. After correction and a series of tests, the code is tested on the staging, and if there are no errors, then the tasks are marked QA Ok.
Deployment, Maintenance & Support
After checking the functionality and code, we upload the fully finished project to the production server, where it becomes available to all users. Even after the project is completed, our company is obliged to provide technical support for the normal functioning of the project. This includes monitoring the project, periodic updates and optimization of work, installation of protection and security protocols, as well as further development and scaling of the web solution.
Why Discovery Phase Actually Matters
As mentioned above, companies that focus on the Discovery Phase are more successful in creating productive web solutions that meet all the main goals and requirements of the customer and the potential target audience. Thus, the Discovery Phase has a positive impact on the stages of creating documentation and developing a web solution, and the following benefits can be listed here:
- Deep understanding of business goals – identifying the main tasks that the future web solution should perform; coordinating the expectations of the client and the development team.
- User and market analysis – analyzing competitors and their functionality, as well as studying the needs of end users.
- Requirements and technical documentation formation – creating a clear technical task, as well as defining technologies, functionality and architecture.
- Risk and error reduction – calculating potential risks and pitfalls that may arise during project development; the risk of misunderstandings between the customer and the contractor is also reduced.
- Budget and timeline forecasting – estimating the cost and timeline of a web project
- Prototyping – creating the first prototypes of the project and testing the functionality of the future interface.
From the Discovery Phase to launching and supporting it, each stage of the development process brings clarity, minimizes risk, and ensures that your investment delivers real value. By carefully following each stage, the client company receives an effective web product that meets business requirements, fulfills the necessary needs of the target audience, and generates the desired revenue.
In our next series, we’ll take a closer look at each stage of project development—starting with the discovery phase — to show you what happens at each step, what results you can expect, and how these steps contribute to the success of your product.
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