Choosing a Software Methodology

Developers can easily adapt most modern software methodologies to mobile development. Whether your team opts for traditional Rapid Application Development (RAD) principles or more modern variants of agile software development, such as Scrum, mobile applications have some unique requirements.

Understanding the Dangers of Waterfall Approaches

The short development cycle might tempt some to use a waterfall approach, but developers should beware of the inflexibility that comes with this choice. It is generally a bad idea to design and develop an entire mobile application without taking into account the many changes that tend to occur during the development cycle (see Figure 16.1). Changes to target devices (especially preproduction models, but sometimes shipping devices can be substantially changed in software), ongoing feasibility, and performance concerns and the need for quality assurance to test early and often on the target devices (not just the emulator) make it difficult for strict waterfall approaches to succeed with mobile projects.