One of the topics that keeps coming back when I meet my CIO colleagues is “why are you still doing app development?” The rationale is that it is unsustainable and that there are much cheaper alternatives, so it doesn’t make sense. I have a different view point and I am sure that the Wellesley community members will agree that what we have been able to do in the past few years have been tremendously helpful to them. I briefly want to describe the rationale and provide two of the most recent examples though we have a lot I can talk about…

We are pretty strategic about choosing to write an app. By the way we are not talking about Mobile app, but just a plain old web app. We get requests, or more often, we generate ideas that result in an app. The process is to ask the faculty member of staff interested in an app to put in a request and we evaluate whether an app exists out in the world that will satisfy the request and whether it is something that we can support. If it does, we get the cost estimate. If it doesn’t exist or if we feel we can build it cheaper, we will do it. We always go into it as “forever beta”, meaning, “don’t expect a completed product, but we will incrementally add features” and are also not afraid to toss it out if an alternative emerges after a few years. We have adopted bootstrap, so our apps are reasonably responsive. Simple, right?

(more…)