Critical success factors of mobile application development

MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2016.The development of mobile applications is fast growing and many mobile applications are being evolved into the software world every year. There are significant differences between the successes of these mobile applications. Similar to social media applications which started with instant messaging, to Facebook, and WhatsApp. All these applications have different degrees of success. In this research the researcher attempted to determine the critical success factors of mobile application development. To achieve this aim, we conducted review of previous literatures on mobile application development, description of current state of mobile application and how it is performed in South Africa, Nine success factors were identified through thorough review of some previous research reports includong: open source technology, individual development skill, software development kit, functionality, portability, system development methodology, mobile devices specifications, back-end integration and web to network integration. Survey research method was applied and questionnaire was used to collect the needed quantitative data. Descriptive statistics was performed to detaermine the critical success factors of mobile application. The result obtained showed that individual development skill is the most critical success factor while open source technology is not a critical success factor of mobile applications development.. Each level of importance to mobile application development was ranked. Furthermore, T-test analysis was performed and the result indicated practical significant difference in the use of system development methodology in mobile application development; mostly larger organizations make use of system development methodologies during mobile applications’ development. Also perform is the analysis of variance and the obtained results indicated that different business entities perceived the important of these factors in different ways. The outcome of this research will add to the knowledge in academic environment and helps in the development of of successful mobile applications.Master