It's easy to spend a lot of time and money on building mobile apps -- but all the resources you apply to it doesn't guarantee your mobile application will be a success. Many companies have spent lots of money and time on custom mobile apps only to have them fail.
It needn't be that way. Mobile enterprise apps won't be a success if they don't meet expectations or are too complex. Mobile business apps that are complex or don't fit well into the daily workflow won't be adopted by employees. If those in charge of developing mobile apps take the right steps, they can make sure their projects will succeed. So says a recent Gartner report, "Five Actions Every Mobile App Development Leader Must Take to Maximize Success." The report isn't based on navel-gazing, but instead on Gartner research, so it's well worth listening to help guarantee your mobile applications will succeed. The following are the five steps Gartner recommends.
Communicate Your Expectations to Management, Colleagues and Mobile App Stakeholders
This sounds simple, but it's harder than you might think. Start by identifying stakeholders, and then create a stakeholder analysis worksheet. In Gartner's words, "This worksheet will be a living tool that you'll maintain during your first few months and will continue to use throughout your career." After that, gather your team, and tell them your expectations. Then describe your plan to your direct manager.
Define a Mobile Baseline That Becomes a Foundation for Continuous Improvement
This means defining the scope of your projects, doing an assessment of where the organization is with respect to mobile, and establishing a mobile center of excellence composed of people from IT and other business groups. Then identify the five most important issues that need to be addressed, identify existing mobile architectures, frameworks, tools and apps, do an inventory of current mobile project, and do a complete financial review.
Create and Execute Your Mobile Vision, Goals and Objectives With All Teams Involved in Mobilization Efforts
This involves synthesizing all the information you've gathered in the first two steps, and based on that, creating a blueprint for taking action. Instead of tackling too much at once, identify two key issues you'll attack and go at them hard.
Develop Mobile App Business Cases to Determine App Development Prioritization
Gartner says that an astonishing "75% of mobile apps will be developed without a positive business case." That's a recipe for long-term failure. Don't let it happen to you. Create a business case for your apps taking into account the target audience, the business benefits, the costs, and the risks. Based on that, develop metrics for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ROI and Value on Investment (VOI).
Define and Implement Metrics to Evaluate and Update Your Strategy and Plan for Key Mobile Resources and Activities
This is the final step. Now that you have your metrics developed, apply them to each mobile project before you get started. Develop a way to report on them to your group and people outside of it. And ask your key stakeholders for their feedback such as "What's working and what's not?" "Are we delivering quickly enough?" and "Are we doing the right things?"
If you manage to do all that, you'll be well on your way to mobile success.
If you've already done that, take the next step and begin building your application with speed and reliability using Alpha Anywhere. Click here to try it out for yourself!
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