Are Businesses Constraining their App Developers – to Their Own Cost?

The majority of developers (56%) believe that finding the balance between constraints on their creativity while meeting specific business drivers is vital to the success of development projects. This was among the key outtakes of over 100 developers, from all over Europe, attending the recent Esri Developer Summit Europe event in London.

The survey, which looked at what helps developers create the next big thing, highlighted developers’ desire to make their mark through innovative design in a fast-moving new age of location aware apps and geofencing - and their frustration when this cannot be accommodated within projects.

Fewer than half the sample, 44%, said that successfully meeting clients’ project specifications was the number one priority driving their development of apps. As many as 18% ranked building real technical innovation into the app, and 16% being able to develop new apps quickly as their top driver.

This focus on creativity was reflected in the summit’s key theme: bringing next-generation apps to life by making them more spatially aware.

“It is clear that geospatial developers know that creativity and innovation is often key to delivering a client’s brief in a compelling and usable way,” said Charles Kennelly, CTO, Esri UK. “Esri understands how challenging it can be to communicate this to clients, and we are working hand-in-hand with the development community to reduce the barriers to doing this.

“Events such as the Esri DevSummit series are designed to give developers an insight and input into what we as a business are planning now, and in the future, not least in terms of pushing the boundaries through innovative and pioneering apps development,” he added.

This sentiment will be applauded by many developers across Europe. 34% of the survey sample identified ‘having an in-depth understanding of product roadmaps as one of the biggest challenges they were facing today. Underlining the point, input from and engagement with project management was also cited as a key challenge by nearly quarter of the sample (23%).

Often, it is their own community of peers that counts for most with developers. In all, 89% of survey respondents regarded it as ‘important’ to get acknowledgement and support from fellow developers. Just 2% of the sample said it was ‘not important at all’, highlighting the growing strength of the open source developer community.

For more information please visit: http://www.esri.com/software/developers/main