Developing an App for your business? Here are 8 frequently overlooked considerations

Creative Commons Here's looking down on you by Garry Knight, used under CC BY 2.0. with modification

​A friend of mine who owns a small healthcare related business is exploring the addition of a mobile application to support business operations.  She asked me what she should consider as she studied solutions.  I came up with eight considerations that frequently get overlooked that I thought I'd share.  Over the next several blog posts, I'll drill down into each of these:

    1. Be clear on the problem you'd like to solve
    2. Identify the expected quantifiable value.
    3. Understand the architecture requirements
    4. Assess competitive positioning
    5. Prototype & test to refine before going full scale
    6. Understand whom you need to influence for adoption and come up with a plan
    7. Have a governance plan in place, so you are ready to manage your technology investment
    8. It's not all about the technology, put in place the necessary complementary strategies that needed to ensure success

Be clear on the problem

 What's the problem that you are solving?  One of the many reasons technology solutions fail is due to a poorly understood and scoped problem. Framing a problem statement will at a minimum help you get clear on what application features are necessary, and which are not because they don't directly solve the problem.  Moreover, you may even set yourself up for discovering other, non-technology options that address the issue.  A common pitfall is that we get caught up into thinking that the lack of the solution, in the case a mobile application, is the problem.  It just might be so, but if you don't have your problem clearly defined you are at risk of at the very least, scope creep by way of lots of additional features that add cost and complexity.  Once you have a clearly defined problem statement, you can use it to evaluate whether your solution solves the problem and if it does, what solution features are needed.  

For example, my statement "The problem is I can't track how many calories I consume each day"  implies that the only way to solve this problem is providing a solution that tracks calories but doesn't get to the true need.  Digging into the "why" we might find out that this issue is health.  Re-framing this statement to "My bio-metrics indicate that I am at risk of diabetes" focuses on the real need "to be healthy and avoid diabetes" which may or may not be related to the number of calories consumed.   To help guide you to a strong problem statement:

1. Start by describing the situation that exists today. (unhealthy weight, high triglyceride levels, lack of exercise, etc.)   
2. Identify the people involved  (pre-diabetic patient, physician).  
3. Where and when does the problem occur? (Patients of the clinic, detected during annual wellness exams).  
4. What is at risk if nothing were to change and no solution implemented? (Progression to diabetes).  
5. What are you assuming about the situation described?  (Patient's poor diet is causing the problem, the patient would change diet if they were more aware of eating habits)
6. Consider your assumptions, what if the opposite was true?  How would you approach the problem?

In my next blog, I will dig into value.  

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