Roles in the mobile application development lifecycle

Like most kinds of software development projects, mobile application development is a team effort. Members of the team fulfill different yet important roles from analysis to development to testing to administration and management.

The IBM® Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution provides tools in support of these roles. Depending on your role, certain packages and features of the Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution are more relevant to you than others. These roles are typical in a software development project.

They might not all apply in every project, and many projects might involve roles that are not listed here.

Team administrator
A team administrator is responsible for the installation, configuration, ownership, and management of the IBM Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) server. The CLM server consists of Jazz™ Team Server running the following applications:
  • Change and configuration management (Rational Team Concert™)
  • Requirements management (Rational® Requirements Composer)
  • Quality management (Rational Quality Manager)
Build administrator

A build administrator is responsible for the installation of the Rational Team Concert Build System Toolkit on one or more servers that are designated to run builds. The build administrator is also responsible for the creation of build definitions and build engines in the CLM server. In some projects, particularly smaller projects, the roles of team administrator and build administrator fall to the same person. In other projects, they fall to different people. Both approaches work well.

Worklight Server administrator
A Worklight Server administrator is responsible for the installation, configuration, and operation of one or more IBM Worklight Servers. Typically, at least one installation of the Worklight Server is used by the Rational Team Concert Build System Toolkit servers. In simple topologies, the Worklight Server might be installed on the same server as is a Build System Toolkit. Additional Worklight Servers might be installed for purposes other than builds. For example, a senior developer such as a technical team leader might want to use Worklight Server to manually manage and exercise mobile applications and adapters. A quality professional might want to install or use one or more Worklight Servers to support testing activities.
Developer

A developer is responsible for writing and unit testing mobile application code, and integrating their work with the work from their colleagues. A developer uses Rational Team Concert, also known as the Change and Configuration Management application of CLM, to work with source code, work items, change sets, iterations, plans, builds, and more. A developer also uses Worklight Studio with the Rational Team Concert Client to develop and test mobile applications in a team.

Quality Professional

A quality professional is responsible for testing the mobile application under development. A quality professional uses Rational Quality Manager, also known as the Quality Management application of CLM, to create and manage test plans, test cases, test execution passes, and test results. A quality professional might also use one or more Worklight Servers in the development and execution of test plans. Rational Quality Manager and Worklight Server are accessed through a web browser; therefore, it might not be necessary for a quality professional to install any packages of the IBM Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution. However, it might be necessary for the quality professional to install other packages (Worklight Server, for example) to fulfil other roles on the team.

Analyst

An analyst is responsible for managing the requirements to be met by the mobile application. An analyst uses Rational Requirements Composer, also known as the Requirements Management application of CLM, to collect and organize requirements, write use cases, sketch story boards, and more. The Requirements Management features of CLM are accessed through a web browser. Therefore, it is not necessary for analysts to install any packages of the Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution unless they are required to fulfill other roles on the team.


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