Cross-platform mobile app development : a qualitative research and systematic mapping study

Dissertant

Zuhud, Tasnim

Thesis advisor

Zayn, Samir

University

Birzeit University

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering and Technology

University Country

Palestine (West Bank)

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2019

English Abstract

Cross-platform frameworks for mobile application (app) development allow developers to deploy solutions on a range of platforms such as iOS and Android.

Mobile apps developed using cross-platform frameworks can be run over different platforms, its development process reduces the time, effort, and resources cost.

With the increased use of such frameworks, it is of utmost importance to understand the contributions and challenges in this emergent field, especially at industrial contexts.

Although there have been numerous studies in this area of research, there is a lack of a coherent view at the industrial contexts.

To address this issue, a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) is conducted to map state-of-theart empirical studies in this field.

The SMS study introduced new perspectives for the intended case study at the industrial context.

More specifically, the SMS study revealed a need to focus on code maintenance as well as testing methods.

Accordingly, in this thesis, a qualitative research is conducted with four different software development companies in Palestine.

This study aimed to understand how industrial teams approach mobile crossplatform development.

Further, it worked to identify the challenges they face in the areas of code maintenance and software testing.

The findings concluded in this research cover the important aspects in the industrial contexts, including the development process of how and why the cross-platform development approach is chosen.

From the practitioners’ perspectives, the developers’ experience is the most influential factor in the development process.

Further, it covers the used technologies in the industry and the dominant one from the practitioners’ perspectives, where they agreed that React-Native is the promising and dominant technology.

Additionally, the main challenges that faced by the developers are introduced, it has been noticed that the libraries written by the providers are the major challenging area.

Moreover, this research discussed the testing and found that the majority of the companies support the manual testing only.

Finally, the maintenance for the crossplatform apps is also discussed, the developers clarified that the maintenance process becomes complex when the app has many injected native modules.

Main Subjects

Information Technology and Computer Science

Topics

• Cartographic materials

No. of Pages

50

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-958205