G00264271

How to Choose a Mobile App DevelopmentPartnerPublished: 15 August 2014

Analyst(s): Richard Marshall, Jason Wong

Creating successful mobile apps demands new skills, a short time to marketand agility. IT leaders often outsource development because they can'tmeet these demands internally; however, this creates its own risks, so thesebest practices can reduce the risks of engaging a mobile developmentpartner.

Key Challenges■ Assessing the technical skills of a development partner when you're unfamiliar with the

technologies can be problematic.

■ Mobile is best developed in an agile, iterative way, whereas outsourcing contracts work bestaround rigidly defined specifications.

■ Development partners often use their own tools or make their own tool selections, resulting inlock-in and added tool diversity and/or complexity.

Recommendations■ Identify development partners with appropriate skills, methods and viability.

■ Establish working practices that focus on agility.

■ Agree on technology and tool choices before initiating a development project.

Strategic Planning AssumptionThrough 2017, the market capacity for mobile application development services will grow at leastfive times faster than an internal IT organization's capacity to deliver them.

IntroductionThe relentless pace of mobile technology presents significant challenges for enterprise developmentteams. Acquiring skilled staff is difficult, and training existing staff may end up redundant astechnologies evolve. Many organizations decide that outsourcing mobile app development is thebest way to deal with these issues. How then, should organizations identify appropriate, reliable andskilled development partners to meet their needs? This research sets out recommendations forqualifying partners and working with them successfully.

Analysis

Identify Development Partners That Have the Right Skills, Methods and Viability

Mobile app projects are often driven by the need for rapid innovation. A reactive approach oftenresults in projects that are ill-defined, with only an approximate brief from which to work. Beforeengaging with potential development partners, your organization needs to decide how much visionis to come from the partner and how much should be internal. This balance, and the associateddevelopment processes, will be foundational to how you select and work with partners.

At one end of the scale, the development partner can be offered detailed requirements and handedexact designs for screen layouts. At the other end, your organization will provide the businessrequirements, and the partner will bring its mobile expertise to bear to identify areas where mobileinnovation can occur. Once this has been agreed on internally, a shortlist of potential developmentpartners can be assessed, based on their ability to work according to the spectrum (see Table 1).

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Table 1. Key Considerations for Partners' Skills, Methods and Viability

What to Ask What to Look For

How many projects has theprospective partner delivered duringthe past three months?

Ideally, it will provide a reference client that has used the provider for multipleprojects.

What is its current financialcondition?

Although you may not get the detail you want, this information, along with theother data points, will give you a better idea of the strength of the company.

How many professional servicesstaff members are there?

This is an indicator of the strength of the company and of the number ofprojects it can deliver. A strong percentage would be at least 75% of overallemployees; however, you should also inquire about the ratio of developers/engineers versus project management/business analysts.

Where is its staff located, and howdoes it determine its projectassignments?

Ensure that there is sufficient onshore or local support and expertise for yourproject and that you are getting experienced personnel for your project. Somevendors may show off their most senior staff, but end up assigning junior staffto projects. Get the staff members that you want assigned to the project in thestatement of work.

Does it have the necessary skills in-house?

Check that it has practices and successful deployments covering mobile userexperience, integration and test, as well as programming competence inrelevant languages.

What development methods does ituse internally?

Ideally, it will be certified in an agile method at each level of the organization,although some proof of adherence to agile methodology is typically sufficient.

How long does it take the companyto port an app to a new version of anOS or a new device form factor?

This will test its code portability and its ability to address constantly evolvingmobile technologies.

What methods does it use to testapps?

Verify that it offers real-device or even real-world testing, including complexcases, such as location-based actions or the use of the camera and anysensors in the device.

What support options, SLAs andwarranties will it provide?

Vendors that provide hosting should provide at least a 99.5% SLA for mobileapps, and specific recovery time objective and recovery point objective times.All development partners should propose times for bug fixes and their triagecriteria.

How quickly are new devices or newOS releases supported? And howquickly are new features supported?

As the OSs add features such as biometrics and voice, it is important tounderstand how quickly initial support and deeper support are typicallyavailable. We suggest that, for new device support and major OS updates, younegotiate an SLA in the contract.

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Establish Working Practices That Focus on Agility

Although a vendor's use of agile methods is good, this does not necessarily translate in theirrelationships with clients. Many development partners are accustomed to working in a model in

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which they receive a highly detailed specification, then they develop and test to this specification,and they finally return the project to the client. Most mobile projects have a different life cycle,starting with a concept that needs to be fleshed out, followed by a number of iterations until asatisfactory first version is ready. After that, a good app will receive frequent, regular updates.

Clearly these are very different models and demand different staff at the development partner.Decide which of these models applies to a project before starting to identify a development partner(see Table 2). This will inform the entire selection process and will change the nature of a request forinformation.

Table 2. Key Considerations for Agility

What to Ask What to Look For

Can you help us define ourmobile strategy?

You want a strong approach that offers strategic-level support, interaction and abusiness-oriented management consultancy. Relevant industry- or domain-specificexpertise must be demonstrated, such as working with beacon technology in retailenvironments.

Can you provide examples inwhich you substantiallycontributed to defining anapp?

Look for successful clients' apps primarily. Some partners will have their own appsdeveloped to showcase their skills. Although interesting, these typically do notdemonstrate an understanding of vertical industries.

Who would be our primarycontact?

Titles and roles matter: A consultant or success partner will indicate a focus onbusiness agility, whereas a project manager suggests a more traditional, lineardevelopment model.

What is your typical cycletime between releases?

An agile company will deploy test versions to the client frequently. This is notnecessarily the same as a sprint length, because they may choose not to expose theirinternal cadence to the client.

How are subsequent releasesmanaged?

Main team members should be retained to ensure that there is no loss of coreintellectual property (IP) throughout the project. Ask for details in the release signoffand deployment processes to verify that the partner knows exactly what it's doingand is thoroughly experienced at doing it.

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Agree on Technology and Tool Choices Before Initiating a Development Project

A mobile development partner should be able to support a mix of mobile development architecturesthat include mobile Web, hybrid and native. Each is better suited to some purposes than others (seeTable 3). Native supports the best user experience, which is why you see it used regularly forcomplex apps or consumer-facing apps. Hybrid provides good portability across devices andstandards-based development. Mobile Web is needed by most companies to reach the widestaudience.

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Table 3. Key Considerations for Technologies and Tools

What to Ask What to Look For

What third-party development tools andservices (e.g., mBaSS) would yourecommend?

The use of proprietary or obscure tools and services can lock you intothe partner for all future work. Pick partners that use common toolsand service providers, such as ones from the relevant MagicQuadrants.

Do you use your own frameworks or librariesfor development?

Dependence on a service provider's IP can lead to lock-in or difficultymaintaining an app in future, if the vendor goes out of business orchanges its activities. Avoid proprietary frameworks wheneverpossible. Confirm whether the development partner owns any of the IPof your custom-developed app.

Do you offer knowledge transfer if we decideto bring the project in-house?

A true development partner will be happy to offer this as a combinedtransfer and training exercise.

What is the licensing structure and what arethe potential ongoing fees for the tools to beused?

A crisp, well-defined statement of potential licensing and ongoing feeswill help establish the total cost of ownership for the app. An unclearposition could result in significant unbudgeted costs.

What kind of usage metrics and reporting dothe tools provide?

This is a valuable capability, but when charged to produce a largenumber of custom reports, it becomes another area of continualenhancement charges.

How well do the tools work with nativeintegrated development environments, suchas Xcode and other mobile products andservices, including mobile devicemanagement, mobile app management, andmobile cloud back-end services?

No single tool or platform can address all of an enterprise'srequirements, so the tools must be open to integrate with others.

With which enterprise back-end systemsdoes the chosen tool integrate?

Ensure that robust integration capabilities are available for thenecessary systems. Validate that the development partner also hasexperience with the back-end systems.

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Some service providers may also partner with mobile application development platform vendors(see "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms") and be certified on theirplatform tools. Such platforms can provide for an approach that typically reduces the rework amongthe mobile OSs and can package apps across several, if not all, types of mobile developmentarchitectures — mobile Web, hybrid and native.

Tool vendors increasingly offer cross-compilation systems based on well-established languages,such as JavaScript, Java, C++ and C#. These are a good choice if you need to bring the projectback in-house at some point in the future, but do not want to invest in training in new languages.

Additional research contribution and review was provided by Adrian Leow, Chris Silva and NickJones.

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Gartner Recommended ReadingSome documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms"

"Critical Capabilities for Mobile Application Development Platforms"

"Prioritize Mobile Application Development to Maximize Business Value"

"People-Centric Experiences: Master the New Trends in Mobile Experience Design"

"Traditional Development Practices Will Fail for Mobile Apps"

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