Chapter 1. Enterprise iOS Applications
Enterprise application development is never a particularly fun endeavor. You tend to end up in large teams. There’s lots of process to follow and layers of management all eager to make sure things are proceeding on course. There are lawyers who have to get involved with every piece of paperwork that you need signed. And, of course, you’re frequently stuck having to slap a fresh coat of paint onto aging legacy software that can be fragile and difficult to interface with.
By contrast, the entire Apple development universe is about making thing fun and easy to use and producing eye-popping user interfaces that do incredible things. Unfortunately, when these two worlds collide, one or the other of the philosophies tends to end up on the losing end of the stick. Either you abandon all the practices that your management chain places such value in, and hope they can be understanding about it, or you have to sacrifice speed and functionality to appease the Gods of Process.
But there is a middle ground! Over the last year, I’ve been involved in a pioneering mobile application at a large, established software vendor. It’s the first mobile product the company ever created, the first use of Apple technology by the company, and the first time Objective-C has ever found its way into the source control system. And in spite of the steep learning curve that was required to get the processes and people up to speed on the Way of Apple, we shipped on time and with ...