Situation-specific Business Model Development Methods for Mobile App Developers

The development of effective business models is an essential task in highly competitive markets like mobile ecosystems. Existing development methods for these business models do not specifically focus that the development process profoundly depends on the situation (e.g., market size, regulations) of the mobile app developer. Here, a mismatch between method and situation can lead to poor resource management and longer development cycles. In software engineering, situational method engineering is used for software projects to configure a development method out of a method repository based on the project situation. Analogously, we support creating situation-specific business model development methods with a method base and new user roles. Here, the method engineer obtains the knowledge of the domain expert and stores it in the method base as elements, building blocks, and patterns. The expert knowledge is derived from a grey literature review on mobile development processes. After this, the method engineer constructs the development method based on the described situation of the business developer. We provide an open-source tool and evaluate it by constructing a local event platform's business model development method.