Modern applications help you leverage your unstructured and structured data available in your organization. They allow you to collect data, analyze it, share your findings, innovate your operations and continually improve as you grow. When you decide to modernize your applications, you have to build them on top of three essential pillars so you can achieve your goals.
The Foundation
While each of these pillars is equally important, you do need to start with the foundation. Here are the key areas that you need to address, so you begin with a solid structure.
- Infrastructure: Do you have the right infrastructure to support a modern application environment? You can’t leverage the latest features if the underlying hardware and operating systems can’t support it.
- Elasticity: Your business requirements may change overnight due to rapid shifts in your market or a disruptor appearing out of nowhere. You need a flexible foundation that can adapt to this environment.
- Availability: You need dependable access to your critical business systems and data.
- Security: The threat of data breaches and other types of cybercrime are significant, and nothing stops app modernization faster than needing to drop everything to deal with a hacker. Make sure your security measures are appropriate for your infrastructure.
- Governance: Are you getting as much as you can out of your new systems and modern applications? A strong governance program allows you to improve your performance and risk management.
The Experience
You can have an app with the most modern features in the world, but if it’s difficult for users to work with, you’re not going to get far. Here are the areas to focus on with the user experience of modern apps.
- Personalization: Users have experience personalizing things the way they like them with other apps, so they want to retain that capability when they start using yours.
- Mobility: Some users rely entirely on their smartphones and tablets for their internet usage and connectivity, while others switch around based on their location. Modern apps support mobile environments without compromising on the UX.
- Device Agnostic: Mobile devices, workstations with various operating systems, laptops, desktops and countless other devices are in use within your audience. Make your app device agnostic, so you don’t alienate your audience before you start.
- Usability: How easy is it to use your app? The navigation should make sense, features should be clear, and it shouldn’t take your app long before the users understand the value it brings.
- User Analytics: Learn more about the way users interact with your modern apps by collecting data and running it through a user analytics solution.
The Support
Building a modern app is step one. Now you need to give it the support and resources that it requires.
- Continuous Improvement Mindset: The application modernization process is never complete. You continually improve the functionality and experience as new use cases get discovered and innovations appear on the market.
- Backlog of Application Enhancements From User Input: User feedback is one of your most valuable modernization tools. Create a backlog of new features and other changes that match how your audience actually uses the app.
- Regular Release Schedules: Get in the habit of scheduling regular releases for your apps. View software development projects as a marathon, rather than a quick sprint to the original release.
Application modernization may require a significantly different approach from your organization is used to. Learn more about this process and how you can successfully implement it in your company with our latest white paper, “Application Modernization: How and Why You Should Think Like a Software Company.”
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