Software Development Processes
for Mobile Systems
Is Agile Really Taking Over the Business?
Luis Corral, Alberto Sillitti, Giancarlo Succi Center for Applied Software Engineering
Faculty of Computer Science
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
May 25, 2013
1st International Workshop on the Engineering of Mobile-Enabled Systems – MOBS 2013
Developing Mobile Software
● Traditional development and quality frameworksoffer comprehensive criteria for conducting general-purpose software projects.
– ISO 25010, SPICE, CMMi, ISO 12204, ...
● None of them has been developed considering the
context of
– Mobile users
– Mobile execution environments – Mobile application markets
Main Approaches
● What are the processes that respond efficiently to
the challenges of the mobile environment...
– ...and facilitate the development of high quality products
of this domain?
● Agile Methods, NPD Engineering, Spiral and
Plan-based methodologies have been proposed.
– The majority of the methodologies show a convergent
approach based on the Agile home ground themes.
● What are the Agile-based methodologies that have
Agile Mobile Development
● Mobile-D (Abrahamsson et al., 2004) ● MASAM (Jeong, Lee and Shin, 2008) ● Hybrid (Rahimin and Ramsin, 2008) ● Scrum (Scharff and Verna, 2010) ● SLeSS (Cunha et al, 2011)
● The reviewed Agile-based frameworks deem to suit
the needs of the mobile environment.
● Let's discuss:
i) The suitability of Agile methods to fit the mobile needs.
ii) The contribution of Agile methods to implement mobile products.
iii) The real use of the proposed methodologies.
iv) The rise of new conditions that challenge some of the premises upon which the proposed
methodologies were designed.
● Mobile apps should be developed quickly and keeping
a low price in a competitive market of millions of potential users and products.
– Agile practices allow adapting processes and
practices to the unsteady needs of the mobile domain.
– Agile methods provide flexibility to understand the
market, structure the product and release it short time frames.
● At the level of abstraction presented in the papers and
experience reports, is hard to make this claim.
● Agile practices may suit the business needs of the
mobile environment, but fall short on providing an
implementation framework for the mobile product.
– Great focus on the “what”, Less focus on the “how”
Is Agile Impacting the Final Product?
● Unfortunately, it is poor.
– Field studies attempt to identify evidence on the OSs,
SDKs, type of applications, but not in the methodologies.
– They suggest a clear trend on shortening the
development cycle and broaden the impact of a single iteration (related to some Agile principles)
What is the Evidence of Use?
Methodology Year Case Studies Cited By
Mobile-D 2004 16 17
MASAM 2008 0 3
Hybrid 2008 0 9
Scrum 2010 1 4
● In 2004 the mobile business and development
environment were different to the current one.
● A decade of evolution on the mobile domain (software,
hardware and business models) has brought significant advancements.
– Ten years ago, concepts like App Markets,
Location-Based Services, Geolocation, Mobile Software
Development Kits were emerging terms or simply did not exist.
● Still missing a clear link between the proposed
methodologies and their utilization in a production setting.
● Development surveys pay little attention on mobile
software development frameworks.
– Open Question: The Agile paradigm was really adopted,
dismissed, or the business created a new one?
● The evolution of the mobile environment challenges the
original association between the Agile and mobile software.
● Mobile requires Agility.
– Large, obese projects will not success in such a
dynamic world (devices, markets, users, etc.)
● Mobile can live without Agility.
– No silver bullet can be claimed, any disciplined
development process can be helpful.
– Later approaches prove that Agile falls short on solving
the complex needs of this heterogeneous world.
Questions?
Luis.Corral@stud-inf.unibz.it
www.inf.unibz.it/~lcorralvelazquez/mobile/
@Luis_Corral
Luis Corral, Alberto Sillitti, Giancarlo Succi Center for Applied Software Engineering
Faculty of Computer Science
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
May 25, 2013
1st International Workshop on the Engineering of Mobile-Enabled Systems – MOBS 2013
