Mobile Application Developers – Lifeline for the Mobile Markets

Today's globalized business world is not just technology enabled but is also  turning mobile. The large number of smartphones and tablets sold across the world, is a proof to this. Such a technological evolution has paved way for development of large number of software applications that would help end users with ease of  performing various job functions and also ensure business continuity. However, this also introduces the organization to significant factors that needs proper vetting before initiating  development of mobile application solutions.

The demand for more  flexible, reliable, secure  and integration  with the other applications has paved way for mobile application developers and the mobile market to expand exponentially.  The applications developed for the mobile market helps people and companies fulfill the task with ease. The mobile phones which have today become more than a communication device, have replaced the computers and laptops with their easy and anytime anywhere access mode.

Wikipedia defines mobile application development as the process by which application software is developed for handheld devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. Organizations around the world always want to reachout to their  customers on time. Use of smartphones helps organization  interact with their customers instantly. Leading service providers have facilitated the development of  customer-centric mobile applications for various platforms.

Mobile application developers have worked to design and develop a number of application to perform activities such as transferring funds,  shopping, playing games,   finding locations and much more. However, these applications being developed for different platforms, involves incorporating strategies and tools to enable the mobile application tun into functional applications.  Further, these applications are made available to the end-users either as a preloaded versions or are available for downloads as per customer requirement, making mobile application development companies climb the growth chart. Further, with a large number of android phones and hand held devices, these organizations also ensure efficient android application development.

The enterprises involved in such product engineering has a clear focus on location based services,  mobile media streaming, messaging and synching.  The mobile  application developers are also equipped with deep understanding of domain knowledge.  The customer-centric development of mobile applications for various platforms has facilitated the successful deployment of these  applications in GPS, social networking, maps, game applications, payment gateway, shopping cart etc. However, making  web applications accessible on different leading mobile platforms, helps organizations attract and retain  customers and  increase profit. The cross platform  development reduces any technical barriers.

Related Links: product engineering , mobile app development

Bring Innovation to Products with Embedded Agile Software Development

Today agile software development is rapidly gaining popularity among enterprises as adopting agile methods helps greatly to improve software development or application development processes. Software development teams often face issues such as unpredictable schedules, poor quality, long development cycles, missed customer expectations, late delivery, and developer burnout. This can be overcome effectively with the iterative approach of the Agile Development.

Wikipedia defines agile software development as “a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle.” Simply put, in agile development the project is broken into small iterations of one or two week’s duration. Each iteration ends in a working software, which is used to gauge the software development progress. Unlike other software development models, agile development gives emphasis on the following.

·         Human interaction and team work

·         Continuous customer/developer collaboration

·         Responding to change rather than following a plan

Embedded software is “a software system that permanently resides in a device whose operations it controls.” Embedded software is mostly used in mission-critical applications and agile characteristics such as short iterations, pair programming, and frequent communication with the customer help the embedded software developer in developing embedded applications (that reside in the software layer and are hardware dependant (i.e., "middleware")) as well as device software such as drivers and firmware.

Today technology innovation is driving rapid changes in the embedded Agile software development space, where sophisticated features are built into increasingly small hardware and complex software designs. Enterprises keen on developing embedded applications using agile software development methodology should collaborate with someone who has worked on a wide range of embedded agile software development solutions, from storage to networks to mobile solutions. They must have expertise in managing the following:

Processors & Hardware Platforms
·      Motorola 56K
·      Texas Instruments DSP
·      ARM
·      IA32
·      MIPS
·      PowerPC
·      SH-4
·      StrongARM
·      xScale
·      Motorola 68010
·      Intel 80386
·      IXP-425
·      IDT
·      Columbia
·      AM64

Real-Time Operating Systems
·      Android
·      VxWorks
·      Embedded Linux
·      RTLinux
·      Windows CE
·      Symbian
·      eCos
·      Nucleus
·      ThreadX
 Languages
·      Assembler
·      C/C++
·      VC++
·      C#/.NET
·      PHP
·      Perl
·      Java
·      Java EE
·      Ruby
·      HTML/PHP/SQL/XML

Embedded software development is the future of IT industry as it helps to bring innovation to products. Hence, pay attention to it and start investing in it from today onwards.

Related Links: Application development, Android application development

Velocity Platform Tools in Application Lifecycle Manage

The research and development of software applications is a complex process and you need highly proficient tools with intelligent capabilities that can help you face the challenges and emerge victorious and more experienced. As the environment is a competitive one you need to develop products that are of global standards. There are some challenges that can overpower and wreck your normal operations such as the lack of collaboration between the various teams resulting in a disjointed effort.

If you want to develop competent software you have to ensure that the potentials of the individual teams are harnessed and utilized to deliver optimum results. It is very important that each team member be aware of the priorities and the progress. Real-time collaboration helps in executing critical decisions on time for effective results. There should be high visibility so that the entire process can be managed efficiently and in alignment with the main objectives. An integrated velocity platform helps in addressing the challenges and leverages collaboration that delivers excellent application lifecycle management services.

The velocity platform is equipped with tools to provide end to end traceability of the processes, enhance visibility by providing real-time updates and reports to help the teams to identify the areas of concern, and accelerates product R&D services. The velocity platform competently captures the product requirements while remaining aligned with the priorities of your business. It helps to create links between the requirements which helps you to assess the status and its value.

The velocity platform facilitates the project managers in release planning, capacity planning, sprint planning and risk management which helps in enforcing an agile project management process. It provides remarkable test management capabilities by tracing the products and testing them for identification of any defects so that they can be remedied to build a robust and productive product. The tools leverage integration for the successful development and deployment of software products.

The velocity platform facilitates hooking source control tools like Perforce, Vault, SVN and CVS which enables traceability right from requirements to users, defects and source code check-ins. It provides a flexible dashboard which can integrate real-time activity stream widgets and enables each team member regarding the code check-in and check-out exercise thus eliminating the possibilities of dependencies.

The platform also has eminent analytic and reporting capabilities which help in extracting and calculating the metrics to help the development teams to predict their position in the process. The deployment of business intelligence tools that ensures optimized application lifecycle management process is a must for developing agile software.

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