Think Differently About Mobile App Development. How engineering managers and leaders should re-think about their software engineers and how to maximize their value to the organization.

Copyright © Onymos Inc. 2020

A Mobile-First, API Driven Economy Today’s consumers are increasingly savvy. When it comes to interacting with their favorite brands and companies, they expect a flawless, integrated experience. Whether a business-to-business or end consumer interaction, people know what they can and should expect from your app.

There is enormous pressure on engineering leaders to continue to delight increasingly fickle users. This is driven by a mobile-first mantra that pushes device manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Google, Huawei,…) and OS suppliers (Apple, Google) to drive innovation by continually adding new bells, whistles and other differentiations. Every release of HW or SW introduces something new in a relentless drive for innovation, putting pressure on app developers to keep up.

The second pillar of delivering a superior user experience is aligning with leading 3rd party service providers. Want easy payments? Stripe nailed it. Need a simple messaging interface? Turn to Twilio. Apps are more connected than ever, resulting in an increasingly complex web of interdependence.

The power of this API interdependence is the foundation of Glenn Solomon’s Forbes article, Why Developers Are Fueling the Next $1 Trillion Software Wave.

Selecting the providers and integrating their APIs is required to keep up with the relentless pace of change.

Software is eating the world As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella famously said, “All companies are software companies,” which in turn makes software engineers your productivity and growth engine.

Whether your team is local, near-shore, or off-shored, the chances are that developers are your most valuable resource. When viewed through this lens, engineering managers are inclined to re-evaluate where and how these resources spend their time.

More than merely evaluating productivity, managers and leaders today are looking to maximize the value of the productivity of their development ‘engine.’ Keep developers focused on developing cutting edge innovations, the features and capabilities that attract and retain users.

Meanwhile, identify functions, routines, and processes that can be automated or at least adopted so that even entry-level engineers can contribute to driving value.

A blank slate

Page 2

https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/06/23/why-developers-are-fueling-the-next-1-trillion-software-wave/#3b15170a1a31

Imagine your team is tasked with building a new mobile App. There’s no baggage to carry forward or existing architectural constraints. A reliable team of developers is in place, ranging in experience from junior coders to experienced architects.

And the biggest miracle of all - clear product definition.

The team sets out to complete the product. Architecture and functionality decisions are made. User experiences and data flows are defined. Development of lower value functionality is assigned to junior developers, while more experienced coders take on high-value functionality and complex tasks.

As an engineering leader, you understand that the low-value functionality is a necessary tax on the development project. Users expect Face ID bio-authentication and Google (or Apple) login or a geo-location service to be respectful of the battery drain. Developing these capabilities will not cause users to give the App 5-star reviews, but not having them, or implementing them poorly, will definitely impact the user’s experience.

It’s a tax, pure and simple, and the company pays the tax in the form of software engineering - your most valuable resource.

It doesn’t take long, but soon the wheels start to come off the project. Things get complicated for the low-value functions; there are implementation issues or questions. Senior engineers get pulled from creating the innovative and compelling functionality needed to win in the market.

Deadlines and deliverables start to slip - but there’s competition, and the business can’t afford to be without this app in the market.

The engineering and business teams start to negotiate the definition of an MVP (minimum viable product). We might cut some corners in terms of architecture (you already know this leads to tech debt, but it doesn’t have to be paid back until later… perhaps much later).

The irony, of course, is that an MVP must contain the low-value foundational elements - login, access, notifications, …. All the capability users expect but won’t reward the company for.

Meanwhile, left on the cutting room floor are the high-value functions, the capabilities that differentiate the app with competitive advantages.

One day you check in on one of your brightest

Page 3

A Balanced Approach

A balanced approach to app building.

Project Realities Drag Engineering Down (and Left)

engineers, and they are working through issues on a Chat function - a function that has been created and re-created at least one million times.

You think to yourself - there must be a better way.

Is there a better way? You are responsible for delivering competitive products that meet requirements while being on time and budget. Yet the example above is all too common and all too real. Unfortunately, the common approaches to resolving these issues are not particularly appealing.

More people, more problems For less experienced managers, the knee-jerk reaction is to get more resources. But savvy managers know, more doesn’t always equal better.

Of course, this glosses over the practical issue of finding software engineers, then hiring, training, and retaining software engineers. Hiring qualified, and quality engineering resources remains a significant challenge for the industry.

Most would prefer to ensure the existing team has the resources to work smarter, not harder.

Let’s (not) go low-code! In the software development world, low code platforms are a hot commodity. They democratize app development turning everyone into a ‘creator.’ According to a recent Gartner survey, 30% of new Apps will be created in a low-code platform. While there is undoubtedly a place in the market for these products, the reality is that 70% of apps will rely on good, old-fashioned software engineering.

For all their appeal of simplicity and expanding capabilities, the reality is that choosing to create on a low-code platform is a lot like getting married. Only get married if you plan to be married for the life of the App. The cost of keeping the family together can be substantial, but divorce can be ruinous. If or when you decide to separate, it’s virtually impossible to extract the App from the platform. To move forward, the app will likely be re-built from scratch.

A Time to Think Differently Imagine if, over the first weekend of the project, rather than committed developers to building the basics, you were able to select the full stack Components and functions required from a suite of options. The standard elements that every app needs. A substantial portion of the MVP.

These components are developed by professional developers and built to the highest quality. They include all the little features and capabilities your team would produce if they had added days or weeks. The components are full-stack, from the UI to plugins for your preferred cloud infrastructure.

Page 4

When the team starts on Monday, those Components are done, now ten or 15 of the initial development milestones are complete.

Rather than your team being mired in creating or re-creating fundamental building-block functions, they can immediately jump forward to more advanced capabilities.

If the development project was a 100m race, having the basic code blocks completed is like starting at the 40 or 50 m mark. With this advantage, you could:

- Concentrate your most valuable resources on building the most valuable capabilities of the app;

- Meet development deadlines, plus add capabilities into the base product;

- Free up engineers sooner to work on new or other projects;

- Get to market faster, which equates to faster time to revenue, or valuable user feedback to refine and improve the app.

It seems obvious that providing developers a set of pre-built Components is a competitive advantage.

The Onymos Advantage Onymos was founded by Shiva Nathan, a senior engineering leader with more than two decades of software development experience. Time and again, he experienced the problem described above - too much investment in re-creating fundaments, too little time left for truly competitive, differentiated functionality.

Onymos is purpose-built to address these inefficiencies and provide engineering leaders a better way to build mobile apps.

Onymos provides nearly 20 software Components. These components are stitched together to create a Fabric that provides the foundation for an app dev project. Enterprises can use one or more of the Components to accelerate the app dev program.

- Full-stack components. Each Onymos Component contains a customizable UI, functional service logic, and configurable back-end connectivity to your choice of cloud providers. Many other components or plugins offer the front-end, leaving data storage or secure connectivity to be developed.

- Serverless - like your team would build. Too many partners expect your customer data to pass through an interim server. It may be harmless or nefarious. Either way, it’s your customer data. Onymos full-stack Components connect your app to your cloud provider - nothing in the middle.

Page 5

Onymos Drives Talent to High-Value Activities

- Maintained with Realtime Releases. Components are provided as a subscription with Onymos’ Real-time Release (RtR) program ,which ensures each Component is relentlessly up-to-date.

- Licensed Source Code. For enterprises that need complete visibility or deep customizations, Onymos offers customers an option to acquire the complete, licensed source code stack for its Components.

- Environments and frameworks. Each Component is built in standard HTML, CSS, JS/TS and supports the common development frameworks, including Cordova, React Native, Ionic and native (Swift, Java) environments.

Conclusion Maximizing the value of employee productivity is important at all levels, but it’s absolutely crucial for your most valuable software development resources. The Onymos Fabric suite of trusted, full-stack building block Components that jump-start app dev programs. Keep your engineers focused on creating competitive advantages.

The Onymos Fabric is used by development teams worldwide and is deployed on millions of devices. Learn more at www.Onymos.com.

Page 6

http://www.Onymos.com

A Mobile-First, API Driven EconomyA blank slateIs there a better way?A Time to Think DifferentlyThe Onymos AdvantageConclusion