This sounds like an obvious step but it’s one that is often overlooked. Every mobile project should flow from a company’s business goals. PointAbout has developed a Process Funnel that helps our customers clearly define their goals for mobile. Below are just a few of the crucial questions that must be addressed before setting out to build a mobile product:

Customer-Facing or Internal? Defining the audience is critical. Mobile is not a “vertical” within the enterprise but rather reaches horizontally into all aspects of the business. Mobile is a new distribution channel, just as the Internet was. As a first step, businesses should prioritize projects that will have the greatest impact and highest ROI based on their needs, which may be customer-facing or internal.

Highlighting brand, building buzz or generating revenue? Many times mobile projects are started at the request of a member of the executive suite because of external pressure to “do something” in mobile. This pressure can lead companies to rush into development before clear goals are set as to whether the project is expected to highlight the brand, build buzz for the brand, or generate revenue for the business. Without a clear definition of what constitutes a successful return on the project’s investment, it will be difficult to analyze and track the project’s success.

What constitutes a successful feature set in version 1.0? PointAbout focuses on defining a project’s success by prioritizing features and scoping the functionality necessary to have a successful version 1.0 launch. Often a business will get bogged down in feature creep and never get to a successful launch if it doesn’t focus intently on the desired feature set during pre-development.

These are just a few of the goals that must be clearly defined and benchmarked, with specific deliverables set against each goal. PointAbout specializes in this type of work. Our Process Funnel work methodology is a result of working with many large enterprises in mobile development and handling issues like these.