subject: Best Practices For Mobile App Development [print this page] With the introduction of smart-phone technology, mobile application development became an integral part of the software development industry.
Initially, smart-phones didnt have much utility for the masses, they were aimed at providing services to business people only. But soon, Steve Jobs realized the necessity and future scope of smart-phones and began his work in getting smart-phone telephony to common man. It was then, a user-oriented smart-phone, known as the iPhone, entered our world of needs.
iPhone apps were in no way related to business purposes; their apps were fun-to-use, didnt facilitate data management, didnt have specific purposefulness and surely didnt support working capabilities like Blackberry did.
Mobile application development gained its momentum after introduction of such smart-phone technology, which not only aimed at providing sophisticated applications to its users but also possessed an artistic perspective. Through years of polishing of the developmental process in mobile apps, here are a few best practices which have been discovered over time:
Independency: Analyzing the growth rate of mobile platforms of later 2010s, platform independency of application is most appreciated and desired quality in mobile application development. Also, after studying the increased user dependency on smart-phones, application developers are making sure that apps so developed are cross-platform as companies dont want to loose their customers due to compatibility issues between application and platform.
Security: Mobile applications for m-commerce, enterprise applications or some other application which deal in sensitive data or information, need to be developed by implementing high security measures. Apps should be secure enough so that the intrusion rate must be at its lowest level and data can be managed with the application securely.
Design: Architectural design for an application should be closely studied in order to come up with the best application in category. Layered architecture is supposed to be a good design architecture for mobile app development because of the modular nature of different layers.
Proper lifecycle plan: Type of SDLC should be planned initially, so as to develop the application with less number of risks. Efforts to develop the application should be cleverly directed and managed, in order to provide a high quality application.
Automated feedback mechanism: Embedding an automated feedback mechanism in the app helps getting reviews from the users. Whether they like it or dislike it, it could be easily tracked. Also, technical issues could also be reported with such system to inform about the application behavior under stress conditions or some under alienist scenarios.
Managing update process: To continually serve the users with the latest additions in any application, efficient update notification procedure should be involved. This helps users to get the knowledge about the availability of new version or add-ons for the current application.
Components strategy: Careful strategy and strict policies for laying down different components so as to provide cross-platform functionality should be instituted.
Finally, devising a mobile strategy around the basic requirement with different add-on parameters mentioned above like, security, automation, design, independency etc. cover different mobile platforms and helps businesses to grasp the larger piece of cake.
