Nowadays there is an increasing interest in mobile application development. However, developers often disregard, or at least significantly adapt, existing software development processes to suit their purpose, given the existing specific constraints. Such adjustments can introduce variations and new trends in existing processes that in many occasions are not shared with the scientific community since there is no official documentation, thus justifying further research. In this paper, we present a study and characterization of current mobile application development processes based on a practical experience. We consider a set of real case studies to investigate the current development processes for mobile applications used by software development companies, as well as by independent developers. The result of the present study is the identification of mobile software development processes, namely agile approaches, and also of shortcomings in current methodologies applied in industry and academy, namely the lack of informed and experienced resources to develop mobile apps.
Currently, millions of apps are available in different online stores to smartphone users. The most successful mobile applications have been downloaded over a billion times [1] and each day new applications are launched to the mobile market, making it extremely attractive both for companies and indie developers to invest their time and money. Such demand has often led mobile software (SW) developers to adapt established SW development methodologies or submit new proposals that fit the c onstraints related to m obile S W development.
The mobile SW development particularities are diverse, but surely include short and frequent development cycles, frequent technological changes (platforms, operating systems, sensors, etc.), limited documentation, specific requirements and resources of the development team and the client, among others. In addition, all these possible factors are prone to constant innovation [2].
