Situational Application Usage: A Framework for Success in Enterprises.

Abstract

Situational Application usage is on the increase. Instead of targeting large scale projects which traditional IT developments address, Situational Applications look to remediate the often forgotten longtail of business requirements. They are often considered as temporary solutions to an immediate demand, which (solutions) fit poorly with an organisation’s robust software development and delivery lifecycle. Despite both fulfilling a legitimate business need, and seeing an increase in usage, there are few positive or well publicised success stories within industry and/or academia. In this paper we will investigate the motivational use of Situational Applications in enterprise, as well as the benefits and risks which they bring to both end users, and organisations as a whole. Whilst it is beyond the remit of this paper to answer how situational applications can be implemented successfully, a methodology will be proposed such that further research can be undertaken. The method defined, if implemented, would allow the creation of a template for successfully creating, deploying and maintaining situational applications. Furthermore, it would facilitate the creation of a risk analysis model to determine if situational applications are appropriate for a given organisation as well as document key performance indicators for measuring success. If an enterprise was truly able to successfully create, deploy and maintain Situational Applications consistently, then the possible benefits to an organisation’s return on investment would be significant. Such benefits could be enough to challenge the use of traditional software applications for addressing business requirements as well as existing widespread software development lifecycle approaches