If 2013 was the year to get down to business, 2014 is the year to wake up and deliver. However, it’s not so much that app dev priorities or resolutions have changed; it’s their importance and focus on execution and delivery that is more critical than ever. No surprise that this fact continues to hold true: delivering applications faster to the business is still the #1 application development priority for 2014.
At the Gartner AADI Summit in December 2013, Serena surveyed IT executives about their top application development and delivery priorities for the coming year and discovered some notable results:
- 56% of respondents confirmed that faster delivery of applications is the top priority.
- Better alignment with business needs and developing mobile apps were the second and third highest priorities, coming in 54% and 51% respectively.
- Expanding the use of Agile was very closely behind at 50%.
We found that the priority “Continuously Deliver Apps” grew in importance the fastest (up 17%), followed by “Develop Mobile Apps” and “Standardize Our Methodology,” both of which recorded a 15% increase since 2012. A slight decline was seen in the importance of delivering applications faster, suggesting the focus is moving to execution of the top priorities.
Another interesting discovery was the significant increase in the adoption and importance of 4 key App Dev initiatives:
- Managing application development as a business process
- Having end to end traceability from the business request to production release
- Providing a centralized or federated repository for all artifacts
- Integrating all of the different tools in the application development and delivery process
While most software development delivery teams increasingly embrace agile, mobile, big data and cloud within the application strategies and portfolios, the biggest challenge for respondents is finding a way to define and deliver software faster and better while aligning with the business, market and customer needs.
See complete results from the survey in the graph below. Plus, check out the infographic, which will give you an at-a-glance view and analysis of the survey results. You can also see survey results from the Gartner 2012 AADI Conference as a comparison.
