Evaluating Processes to Certify Mobile Applications During Developer Relations Activities

In a Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO), the software organizations have opened up their structures to third-party developers aiming to reach goals to ensure the MSECO is working properly, such as increasing number of users, mobile applications (apps) and developers. Thus, the management organization (keystone) by their Developer Relations (DevRel) teams must restructure its processes to support third-party developers and create ways to attract the development of apps. The development of apps during events planned and conducted by DevRel team (e.g., hackathons or developer conferences) requires an approach that allows developers to achieve the expected performance into the MSECO. However, there is a quality contribution barrier, the App Store, the App Store's criteria do not guarantee that apps certified by these criteria have good performance in number of downloads and positive reviews into the MSECO. Aims: We present an evaluation of a mobile certification approach for the MSECO context, called MSECO-CERT (Mobile Software ECOsystem app CERTification), in terms of mobile application downloads, ratings and changes in developers' attitudes. MSECO-CERT comprises support (MSECO-SUP) and development (MSECO-DEV) processes. We describe two empirical studies: feasibility and observational. MSECO-CERT produced a growth coefficient of downloads (363%) and average user ratings (28%) when compared to an ad hoc approach. We observed that the DevRel practitioners (i.e., developer evangelists) and most of the developers (70%) considered MSECO-SUP and MSECO-DEV processes easy to use. They indicate that they would use both processes in the future. The results indicate that a keystone needs to invest in the analysis of their certification processes considering the ecosystem elements and also create mechanisms that allow monitoring the effect of DevRel activities. Our studies also helped to evolve MSECO-CERT by refining roles, activities and artifacts.