Challenges in Applying Lean to Building Mobile Apps

In the last chapter, we covered a few core principles of the Lean startup. We discussed the business model canvas, agile development, customer development, and the MVP.

In this chapter, we'll delve into the underlying premise behind this book and explore some of the biggest challenges you will face as a Lean app developer. While there are a number of books about Lean in general, applying Lean to building mobile apps is relatively new territory. Next, we will introduce some of these core challenges, many of which will be revisited in detail later on in the book:

• The higher design bar that app developers face when developing mobile apps as opposed to web apps
• App Store submission cycles, which create delays between your completed iterations and the time they are made available to the public
• The challenges posed by developing multiple platforms
• Difficulties presented to early testers, and how that makes it difficult to grow an early user base
• App ratings, which have a direct impact on your ability to grow your user base and run certain types of experiments

Let's pe into a few of the main challenges and see why they are significant for a developer seeking to apply experimentation.