In this interview I talk to Charles Weir, managing director of Penrillian, shares some observations and thoughts on the impact of the Symbian Foundation. He also discusses the application of Agile techniques to developing software for Symbian devices.
Richard: Have you seen any changes in your business since the announcement of the Symbian Foundation?
Charles: There has been a lot more activity since the announcement. I believe this is because the Foundation has removed a lot of the uncertainty and the additional costs of developing Symbian devices. I love UIQ, it is a beautiful environment and I have a lot of respect for the people who created it. Unfortunately, however, UIQ's net commercial effect was to hugely increase the cost of developing the whole Symbian platform, because effort had to be duplicated on every single application. And even though we specialized in minimizing those costs, we couldn't make them vanish. Removing this barrier has made a huge difference to the market. Of course, I can't say that the increased enquiries we are getting are a direct consequence of the announcement, but it seems very likely. Whatever the cause, it's very good and we're delighted.
Richard: Is this increase driven by companies looking to transfer their technology from UIQ?
Charles: No. I don't really know of many applications that started off just with a UIQ implementation. Most applications started on S60, even though UIQ had better software download performance early on. I'm certainly not expecting any significant volume of work for ports of applications from UIQ to S60.
Richard: So where is the work coming from? What trends are you seeing in the demand for development?
Charles: We are seeing a lot of work coming from operators, but I wouldn't say that necessarily reflect the whole market. I think the key trend is a focus on usability. I've watched the iPhone with interest and while I think it is competition for S60 I don't see it as a threat. But it has taught the industry that usability is the difference between a good phone and a great phone. Also it has shown that usability trumps functionality. We are seeing this in our work; our clients understand that having an application customers use is far better than having lots of great features they don't.
The other trend is in the convergence between Web and on-device applications. While many saw Web applications as the way the industry was going, these applications are and will always be fairly clunky. On the other hand a purely phone-based application can be quite limited. What I'm seeing is a growth in smartphone-based clients that act as front ends to Web services. Some of these applications have quite clever and complex local processing, but they are fundamentally a gateway through to a bigger service sitting out there on the Web.
Nokia Maps is a good example of this, as is Qix, an application we helped develop for the S60 platform.
These applications also lend themselves well to Agile development techniques, something we are finding a lot of success with. You can start developing with a simple Web interface, migrate to something like Java or Flash Lite and then built the final version in native Symbian C++ to optimize performance and add all the bells and whistles.
We're seeing quite a vibrant market for device applications, just not quite the applications we were expecting a few years ago. Most of the successful applications appear to be utilities designed to improve the user experience.
Richard: You mentioned Agile development, I know you have been something of a champion for this approach over the years. How does it practically help with your development work?
Charles: It's vitally important to get the relationship right when working with the customer. We have found that the Agile techniques help to build this relationship. Working this way is a lot of fun: using fast turnarounds to shuffle the project once every couple of weeks. It's very good at keeping the client engaged and enabling us to respond to their changing requirements. Our client's are able to get feedback to ideas very quickly from each fully working release. So, for example, working on Qix we were able to provide Bill Templeton, Zi's product development expert, with something he could take to his clients and potential customers. When these people asked "Bill can it do this?" he was able to go back in a couple of weeks and show them Qix doing "that". It really helped build up momentum between him and his customers. It was also great fun for us: to get the feel that something is really going on, not just a case of starting a project and delivering something three months later that does exactly what the spec said.
Richard: Does the Agile approach have any special relevance to building smartphone software?
Charles: I think it does. Symbian technology is unfamiliar to many, even those of us who have been using it for a while. We have not explored all the possible ways of using and interacting with these devices. With PC development there is a clearer idea of what will work and what won't. Users also know more about PC technology and are better at asking for what they need.
We still don't really understand what you can do with a smartphone and what will work best for the user - there is just not that body of experience out there. There has been a lot of work done on usability, and I have a lot of respect for usability people. But a good smartphone experience is more than minimizing the number of buttons the user has to press. What's fun to do is a big part of the story. Using Agile helps find the fun much more effectively than a clinical specification.
So from that point of view, Agile is the best technique to use for smartphone software, because it's as much a voyage of discovery as it is an engineering project. It's not just a fun way of working it's a way of making a killer application. I love it.
You can find out more about the application of Agile techniques to smartphone development at the presentation Innovate collaborate accelerate - The Qix story - collaboration accelerating innovation being presented by Charles and Bill Templeton at the Smartphone Show at 16:00 on Wednesday 22 October. The presentation will also be available to view on Penrillian's website - www.penrillian.com.
