Mobile Internet applications on ubiquitous mobile networks allows real‐time, anywhere, anytime connectivity to services. Owing to its scalability and potential cost savings, mobile communication is being increasingly applied in the business and consumer communities to create innovative data and voice application, which run over the Internet infrastructure. This paper describes the findings from a case study at an organisation that integrated mobile applications developed by third party developers. This paper presents a five dimensional reference model that provides a measure of project complexity for mobile systems development. This reference model aims to incorporate the unique context of mobile systems projects to: improve skills‐task allocation, allow more accurate development costing and improve project management performance on complex projects.