An Investigation into Mobile Application Development Processes: Challenges and Best Practices

The mobile device market has witnessed swift industrial growth over the last decade. The quick expansion of this new computing platform has almost outpaced the software engineering processes customized to mobile application development. However, there is still lack of novel research initiatives around the mobile application development process. There remains a deficiency in development standards and best practices which expose the mobile device to potential attacks. This deficiency needs to be addressed promptly and requires further work. The objective of this research is to better understand the current methodologies adapted and to investigate challenges faced during the mobile application development processes that are different from traditional enterprise application. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted from the mobile research and development community. The survey questions covered the entire mobile application development lifecycle starting with requirements, and ending with bringing to life a complete mobile application. The study contributes towards a greater understanding of mobile application development process, examines real challenges confronted, and investigates the best practices that can be successfully implemented to enhance, evaluate, and improve the performance of the mobile application development process. These findings can also be considered as a possible research topic that indicates the breadth of research requirements and prospects in mobile computing.