By Susan Eustis

Building a Mobile App: Kevin Stoodley, IBM Fellow, John Wiegand, IBM Rational Chief Architect, and Leigh Williamson, Distinguished Engineer IBM were able to demonstrate the steps for building a relatively simple mobile app from beginning to end at the IBM Innovate conference today. They explained that the complexity of building an app is to make something fairly difficult look really simple.
Building even a simple mobile phone app depends on designing from the glass to the back end by noting the functional and non-functional characteristics as a first step. These engineers had a tool that let collaboration occur in a concise manner. There was a sketch of user interface (UI) links. This was a simple sketch, but it was complete, it had been tested with users, not just designed by programmers.
The links in the app took into account the need for traceability, for describing relationships visually. It looked so simple to build the app once these engineers were able to show relationships between modules with a path. The audience could see descriptions of modules linked to a mockup with full disclosure of context.
Once you can see the app requirements, it was demonstrated how development works. The image had been integrated as someone had fulfilled the task of getting a graph from the marketing team. There was a requirements composer, there was a code developer. Once the tasks were integrated in the tool, one of the team could choose implement. With the development modules interacting with team concert it was possible to fill out missing pieces in relatively short order.
Developers work to test coverage and accuracy of the code, to be sure that it works. Traceability is a significant aspect of the code development. Relationships are expressed as links. User stories represent test cases that are a significant aspect of the app development.