HP: Enterprises should work in cycles to ensure mobile app development keeps up with changes

An app's user impact is more important than design elegance, adds Quocirca

Enterprises should work in cycles to ensure that an in-house mobile app does not stagnate and continues to keep up with the pace of change in technology, according to Fil Zanasi, business development director at HP Software UK&I.

Zanasi was speaking on Computing's web seminar titled "Five vital features of a mobile app for the enterprise".

Answering a question from the audience regarding mobile apps that are developed and then not touched, Zanasi suggested that businesses should ensure there is a cycle in place from the release of version 1.0, to keep updating the app.

"After version 1.0 is released, the business should find out what the user experience is like, monitor the performance and availability they get from the app and then using an agile method, the app should be upgraded to version 1.1.1," he said.

Clive Longbottom, senior director at analyst firm Quocirca, added that the priority for any business must be the impact on the users, not how elegant or clever the code is.

"That's not just on mobile but in all app development. When someone suggests changing the colour of something within the app, a developer may say that they aren't going to do it, but tell the app to sing ‘God save the queen' and they'll be happy to do it," he suggested.

Zanasi said that some businesses - including one household telecoms company that he knows of - has an end-user committee, so that even if a senior member of staff or a developer working on an app wants to change something - or not change something according to the brief, the app will have to go in front of the committee, and they have the power to block it from going through.

But businesses should be wary that it is hard to find a good developer in the first place, said Longbottom. Particularly those who can design good user interfaces.

"Those who design on the front-end are really in short supply. Most developers are fine at designing something for a 10-inch screen, but if you ask them to then make that same app available on a three-inch screen and a six-inch screen, they struggle with shrinking things down without having to write different code in different places," he said.