At the Cambridge Wireless Software SIG launch meeting at the start of the month I ran an exercise to try and identify the top issues of concern to software developers in the wireless space. The goals of the exercise were to explore whether we could come to some sort of consensus on the issues faced by developers working in this space as a guide to arranging future events.

The participants grouped themselves into 3 teams and were given about 25 minutes to come up with their views on the top issues and how they were related. After the 25 minutes were up each team presented their results to all participants.

Team 1

Due to the businesses they worked in this team focussed on issues beyond the mobile device.

• The realities of the current network pose problems
  • Limited bandwidth
  • Lack of reliability
  • Network latencies
• End-to-end performance of the total solution
  • Controlling costs
  • Providing a satisfactory level of service

Team 2

This team came up with 4 device-specific issues:

• Lack of uniformity across the target platforms - could an open platform be the solution to this?
• The ‘micro’ form of the mobile user interface
  • Limited display size and resolution. Variability in aspect ratios.
  • Variability in button numbering and button functions on the kepypad.
• The role of network proxies
• Testing at a high level of abstraction

Team 3

I was in this team and since I knew how the exercise was going to work (and since I had a couple of very experienced wireless people with me) we came up with quite a number of points.

So, variability in the target devices, the user interface and network issues come up again.

Feedback for the participants indicates it was a useful exercise and it’s helped us plan future events.

The next CW Software SIG will take place on April 11th 2008. I’m currently organising the agenda which will probably look at the future of mobile development as seen from the search engine providers’ perspective.