Development of mobile applications can be as easy as knowing any Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Putting together some screens, running a quick test and finally submit to App Store; this all can be achieved so easy and quickly Or it can be complete process of designing GUI, usability testing, QA testing on thousands of devices, a full beta life-cycle, and then deployment a number of different ways. this all depends how you take approach to develop your next mobile application.
In this session, we will be talking 101 session of mobile applications development, what process we need to follow.
Process – The process of software development is called the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) which covers following phases of the SDLC with respect to mobile application development, including:
- Requirement Analysis
- System Analysis & Design
- Code Generation
- Testing
- Implementation
- Maintenance
Today we will talk on Requirement Analysis of SDLC for Mobile App Development: Usually it starts with kick-off meeting and other formalities, i will be focusing on business processes, basically which are the services of your organization, you want to offer on mobile or through mobile app.
how we will decide what business processes/service or services need to be offered through mobile app?
- we have to collect list of all services of organization
- Which services is on high priority or have high demand for mobility
- and is there any clear path or info is available for this business process
- and we will put them into Quadrant Chart to simplify the decision
Any business process/service that have a high demand or mandatory required and easy to develop through mobile app, will be placed in green part and these are the services which will be part of our first development and accordingly we will start other phase of SDLC.
Selection of application type is based on number of factor and we have already discussed in earlier post Understanding Mobile Application Development – HTML5, Native or Hybrid
Few of other questions we may need to get answered like:
- what is the level of service simplicity, very simple will lead to HTML5 app, moderatly complex will lead us to Native App and complex will end up with Hybrid App
- What is the requirement with respect to App features like, GUI, look & feel, performance, distribution, application lifespan, access to device, notifications, storage requirements, location awareness, connection-offline & online, technical skills required.
To summarize this phase, we need to define our objective and strategy for each service, as may be certain services are better canddiates for mobilization compare to others, identity these and select few for pilot project. further all services may be not required to go for native app, may be these can work with HTML5 etc.
When creating UX Mockups/mobile front end, it is very critical to keep in mind the Interface Guidelines for the respective platforms that the app will run. The official design guidelines for each platform are:
- Apple – Human Interface Guidelines
- Android – Design Guidelines
- Windows Phone – Design library for Windows Phone