Perhaps the most important facet of agile software development is its innate ability to satisfy user requirements better, more accurately, more consistently, than what is considered ‘traditional’ software development. Where ‘traditional’ software development begs the user for all necessary information upfront and then reluctantly for feedback at the end of a project, agile development never lets the user out of sight.

This one differentiation separates traditional and nontraditional, slow and fast, waterfall and agile, 50% requirements satisfied and 100% requirements satisfied. The iterative nature of agile development forces engineers to go back to the user regularly, but more importantly, forces them to think of the user continuously. This interaction, and its psychological properties, is at the discretion of the platform employed.

While there are thousands of sales people that will graciously explain why one platform is more worthy than another, I will for once stay software agnostic and comment solely on the significance of the decision. As with any methodology, one platform may lend itself more appropriately to agile development (and the notion of continuous user involvement).

IT Gets User Friendly

As the consumerization of IT continues to change the landscape of enterprise technology and the coinciding trend of mobile applications surges, will employees begin to expect a series of easily accessible applications customized to their enterprise? An interesting post from CIO’s Shane O’Neil brings light upon the emerging demand for a custom enterprise app store.

Depending on the current IT environment, this dream may be difficult to execute, but large organizations can better manage the way employees use their technology if they offer a convenient way of attaining, managing and updating it. Specifically, when it comes to mobile applications, where numerous options from Apple, Android, and Blackberry are used in conjunction with enterprise applications, does an enterprise AppStore make the most sense.

A Common User Experience

Enterprise IT systems are moving towards a common user interface customized to their brand aesthetic. In other words, every system a company uses will look, feel, and work in a similar fashion (at least on the top interface level). If this is the case, an enterprise AppStore full of apps and add-ons would be a logical method of distributing and managing applications and components of applications.