So you’ve extended your customer service channels and now you’ve got a mobile app. As an organisation you’re used to developing for employees, but not for customers. All of a sudden you’re a consumer-facing mobile app developer. And that means some things have to change.
Says IndigoCube MD Ziaan Hattingh: “When you write those kinds of apps you need to move from being an organisation that writes apps for its own use to one that develops for its customers’ use. Your app has now become a product. And the development team and the development lifecycle need to adjust accordingly.”
Developing back office apps for internal users gives development teams a great deal of control in terms of what releases they can put out when, and how often to update apps. Consumers are a whole lot more demanding though.
“If the app doesn’t work or is clunky it gets deleted and the user goes back to the app store for an alternative. You need to develop quality apps, and you need to do so quickly – things change fast and you need to keep up with the competition,” Hattingh says.
“The critical question here is ‘can your software development lifecycle keep up?’,” he asks. “Can you write quality, quickly, with good security? I don’t believe many organisations in SA have the skill set and structures and processes to enable that. Mobile and mobile apps have the potential to put pressure on a lot of organisations to improve their software development life cycles and how these are managed.”
Hattingh believes that the need for more rapid development times and processes will lead companies still using waterfall methodologies to move to a more agile, iterative approach.
“Your mobile app is now part of you and your product set and it’s open to the full glare of public use and scrutiny. If there’s a problem you need to fix it and release immediately – this is no longer a back office app that your employees will just deal with until the next iterative upgrade.
“Mobility will drive companies towards more efficient development and deployment of apps. That’s not a bad thing,” he concludes.