How will emerging technologies impact business requirements and user needs?

1 Business requirements

Business requirements are the specifications and goals that define the purpose, scope, and functionality of an application. They are derived from the business vision, strategy, and objectives, and they guide the development process and the evaluation of the final product. Emerging technologies have a significant impact on business requirements, creating new possibilities for innovation, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. However, these technologies also increase the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment and application domain. To respond to these changes, application developers need to adopt an iterative and user-centric approach to business requirements elicitation, analysis, validation, and management. This includes using techniques such as prototyping, testing, feedback, and prioritization to validate assumptions, reduce risks, and deliver value incrementally. It is also important to communicate effectively with stakeholders to ensure a shared understanding of the business requirements and emerging technologies.

2 User needs

User needs are the problems, desires, and expectations that users have when they interact with an application. Influenced by context, goals, preferences, and emotions, user needs determine satisfaction and loyalty. Emerging technologies have many impacts on user needs, such as enhancing capabilities and experiences with features like personalization and interactivity, increasing awareness for quality, security, and privacy, changing behavior with new modes of interaction like voice or augmented reality, and creating new user segments with different needs. To address these impacts, application developers must adopt a more empathetic and holistic approach to understanding user needs. Personas, scenarios, user stories, and journey maps can be used to understand context, goals, preferences, and emotions. Usability testing, analytics, feedback can measure and improve satisfaction and loyalty. Accessibility, inclusivity, and ethics should be designed into the application to ensure it meets user needs in a respectful and responsible way.

3 Emerging technologies

Emerging technologies are the new or evolving technologies that have the potential to disrupt or transform the existing ways of doing things. Characterized by rapid development, high uncertainty, and high impact, some examples are Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Blockchain, and Internet of Things (IoT). Each of these technologies has its own benefits, challenges, and implications for application development, often interacting and complementing each other in various ways. For instance, AI can enable Cloud Computing to provide more intelligent and customized services; Cloud Computing can enable Blockchain to scale and operate more efficiently; Blockchain can enable IoT to provide more trust and security; and IoT can enable AI to collect and analyze more data.

4 Application development

Application development is the process of creating software applications that run on various platforms, such as web, mobile, desktop, or embedded systems. It involves planning, designing, coding, testing, deploying, and maintaining the applications and is influenced by factors like business requirements, user needs, technologies, methodologies, tools, and standards. Emerging technologies can provide new opportunities and challenges for creating innovative applications and require new skills and knowledge for understanding and integrating them. They can also introduce new risks and uncertainties for ensuring the quality, security, and reliability of the applications. To leverage these impacts, application developers need to adopt an adaptive and collaborative approach to development. They should learn continuously to update their skills and knowledge on emerging technologies. Best practices and standards should be used to ensure quality security and reliability. Agile and DevOps methodologies and tools should be employed to facilitate collaboration, coordination, and automation of the development process. Furthermore, cloud-based and open-source platforms and frameworks should be used to access and integrate emerging technologies.

5 Future trends

Future trends are the patterns and directions that indicate how the emerging technologies will evolve and affect the business requirements and user needs in the future. They are based on the analysis of the current and potential scenarios, drivers, and impacts of the emerging technologies. For example, AI is expected to become more pervasive, powerful, and human-like, enabling more automation and personalization. Cloud computing is predicted to become more ubiquitous, scalable, and diverse. Blockchain is anticipated to become more mature, interoperable, and regulated. Additionally, IoT is expected to become more connected, intelligent, and responsive. These future trends will have significant implications for the business requirements and user needs, as well as the application development. They will create new possibilities and expectations, as well as new challenges and risks for stakeholders involved. Consequently, application developers must be prepared to exercise foresight, innovation, and adaptation.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?