Agile Development - A Product Owner's Story

The benefits of off-shoring any kind of development are clear - lower costs.  However, it's the potential drawbacks that turn many away from off-shoring apps development, the complexities of dealing with foreign cultures from afar, the lack of hands-on control, communicating with individuals for whom English isn't their first language and, regrettably, the risk of coming a cropper due to fraudsters. It's a shame that these drawbacks exist though as apps development lends itself to off-shoring quite nicely.  I think it can still work, and the low cost benefits can be realised, if it's managed in the right way.  What's needed is a middle man, a company that is based in the UK and has a knowledge of UK industry, culture and language.  They would deal with clients to gather requirements and draw up storyboards and requirement documents.  The middle man would then suffer the pains of dealing with off shore development houses, delivering an end product to the UK bas...

At a recent Mobile Marketing event I was asked by a journalist what apps I had on my own iPhone and which ones I find most useful.  I must admit that when it comes to an app, I tend to only download those that I will use again and again.  What we don't see enough of, outside of gaming apps, are free demo apps.  Personally, I prefer to play around with an app and test to see if it adds value to my life before committing to buying it, even if it only costs a few quid.  As such, a quick flick across my iPhone apps reveals the following that I would recommend to anyone: Camera & Photo Editing I was frustrated with the pre-loaded iPhone camera app so I now use an app called Camera+ from taptaptap.com.  This provides, even on the 3GS, a 1.0x digital zoom and some nifty editing tools including photo cropping and enhancements.  You can upload your photos to the popular Social Networking and Cloud storage sites as well. Social Networking I use IM+ for inst...

Considering that there are over 4.3bn mobile phones worldwide there's no doubt that there is a huge target market for anything that uses a mobile phone. For years service providers have been taking advantage of SMS marketing, ring-tone downloads and other simple services to monetize this market.  The smartphone enables richer, more exciting applications and after a few years of stuttering, the market for Smartphones is starting to take off.  Apple led the way with the iconic iPhone and the Android platform has moved us on to another level.  Microsoft's Windows 7 for mobile brings the operating system giant back into the market and Nokia haven't given up with their Symbian based offerings.  Of course, don't forget RIM and the Blackberry.  This increase in competition together with rapidly advancing technology, better and cheaper mobile data networks, have helped Smartphone penetration to grow.  There were some 41m Smartphones sold in Q3 of 2009. Back to th...

This one is easy to answer. You outsource it. I've recently been involved with a company called AppDragon who provide complete end to end solutions for brands wishing to create mobile apps for Smartphones. It's by far the easiest way because, even if you do have someone in house who has a penchant for coding, there's far more involved if you want you app to be a success. Here's a pyramid diagram I've created that outlines the different stages of a successful app. Yes, it's upside down and that's to reflect the fact that the key elements are the upfront creative and design aspects. Get these right and the rest if a sausage factory... Here's my pyramid. The first layer is essential and you need a partner that is willing and able to listen to your aspirations, goals, ideals, needs, problems and issues and how your business currently operates and then build on your own ideas with creativity of their own. Only if you get this stage right will your app be...

According to Bango, mobile apps downloads are predicted to reach 4 billion for 2010. This, they claim, will rise to 21 billion by 2013. This is based on a prediction of the number of Smartphones out there beating 390 million by 2013, growing at a rate of 20.9% year on year. I don't think these are unlikely scenarios, judging by the current euphoria behind Smartphones and mobile apps. I saw an opposite view the other day, can't recall who from, but their conclusions were negative about apps downloads, based on research that told them only 35% of Smartphone owners had downloaded an app in the previous month. Considering the purpose of an app (they're generally not a one use commodity) this doesn't surprise me. That said, using these pessimistic figures, if there are 390m smartphones in 2013, that's still 1.36bn downloads per annum. Bango claim 45% of developers plan to monetize their apps. According to iTunes the average app price is £2.19. Therefore, using the...

I 've recently done a fair amount of work in the finance and insurance sector, mainly with a couple of large insurance companies. Their products range from pensions and annuities to travel, home and car insurance and they contacted me because they were curious how SMS could help their businesses. Their main aim on first contact was to boost sales by using SMS to alert existing clients to new products and services, directing them to their website or call centre for more information. This works great and the flexibility of SMS means they can modify campaigns at a minute's notice, making special offers to keep in line with competitor offers or to react to events, such as excessively wet weather and the threat of flooding. However, our conversations quickly moved on to other areas of their business where SMS could add value. Firstly we looked at reducing costs by removing the need for inbound calls into their call centres. For example, if a client makes an application for, say...