Building Out Your Application From a Demo

It is time for building out your application.  You have a core engine for solving the main problem and a clickable demo to show off the user experience.  Those provide the skeletal structure of our product.  However, there is a lot of meat we need to add to those bones.

Help Yourself

Administration is a requirement for most applications.  It may not be a requirement users will ever experience.  However, you will likely make use of some sort of administrative activities as you implement and test the product.  Thus, when you build your admin tools early in implementation, it provides a more significant return on investment.  Go ahead and crank out those tools first and do not worry about the look and feel at this time.  You are likely the only user at this time.

Connect to the Organs

Hook up the pages to the database or data store as well as the inputs for the core engine.  These critical areas of functionality should be connected early to help provide you more time to test and run the features through their paces.  Yes, you want to be in a position where the core engine is a stable and reliable chunk of code already.  Nevertheless, linking to that and making it available during testing can only help.

Be Happy

The first full path through the application should be the happy path.  That becomes sort of a baseline for you to ensure the application functions to some extent.  Once you have all of the steps in your happy path implemented and hooked up, start branching off from that.  Implement based on the most used features.  This approach helps with testing and provides a useful tool sooner in the implementation phase.

Your Homework

Time to make your vision come to life.  The homework this time will advance you to an actual product.  There will be plenty of work ahead.  However, you will be able to start using bits and pieces of your solution as part of completing the homework this time.  A clickable demo has a little bit of satisfaction it brings.  Building on functionality as we do in this step should bring a substantial amount more happiness to you.