Adopting DevOps in mobile app development can change the game for many companies. DevOps ensures that all the various teams become more productive in terms of execution.
However, adopting DevOps is not an easy process, as it requires many technical and business decisions, but after successful implementation, it can add value to the organization in terms of customer satisfaction, increased efficiency. and increased income.
To adopt a continuous mobile DevOps workflow, all issue points and potential issues must first be identified.
The challenges of adopting DevOps for mobile app development
While the basics of adopting DevOps for online apps and mobile phones are the same, adopting DevOps in mobile programming still presents some challenges. These challenges include –
- Cross-system support
Mobile phone apps have several target environments. Most mobile apps target multiple devices, operating system versions, device specifications, and so on.
- Apple App Store and Google Play Store
Typically a cell phone program cannot be deployed directly to a cell phone. You have to go through the App Store for iOS and Google Play Store for Android. The app goes through an App Store submission and review process.
- Pull a deployment model
Traditional deployments work according to a push model, where a new version of the program can be pushed, whether it is an online program or a cloud program. However, the process of updating a mobile app is a pull process as it is up to the user to choose whether or not they want to update the app.
- Testing of mobile programs
Nothing is worse than a one-star rating for your mobile app. dissatisfied customers can publicly damage your brand through the App Store or Play Store. So it becomes extremely important for you to do rigorous testing using functional, usable and performance testing techniques for your application.
How to Adopt Mobile DevOps?
Adopting Mobile DevOps in your organization requires 3 thumb rules that need to be followed –
Rule # 1 – Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
- The mobile development team must ensure the traceability of all developments including code, settings, scripts, documents, text files, etc. Continuous Integration must be practiced, which ensures that the code delivered by one team works with the code delivered by the other team. Frequent constructions need to be done and new code needs to be integrated with the code previously developed.
- Android and iOS completely dominate the landscape app of mobile phones. Android and iOS are very fragmented. There are various types of Android for almost every brand and Apple has also branched out iOS to support the iPad. Due to the fragmentation, developers must maintain a separate build for each of the variants and platforms targeted.
- Mobile Developers usually use IDE to manually generate builds. Different versions are generated for different platforms manually. As the number of versions increases, developers can use scripts to generate automatic versions. Developers can manage these scripts by assigning versions to it, thus ensuring that any build can be reproduced at any time.
Rule # 2 – Testing and Monitoring
- Mobile Development lags behind corporate networking programs in test automation. Most of the mobile testing is done with simulators instead of with real physical devices and testing with simulators is a completely manual process. Considering the number of platforms and form factors, it is not even possible to do manual testing. The only possible way is to test your program with automatic testers.
- Every mobile app needs to interact with back applications and services. Mobile apps follow a rapid development process that results in more versions compared to the back application. This rapid development results in new features in the program that are not yet supported by the production environment. To solve this problem, the entire ecosystem is available in virtual cases. This results in fast testing and also saves hardware resources.
- It is a very common scenario that the program performs well in the test environment, but fails in the live environment. There may be different factors associated with failure such as network conditions, memory, power, and so on. So it is important for the developers to ensure continuous performance by checking by adding third party SDKs to the program like a log, crash report, etc. to find the real cause of the failure.
Rule # 3 – Quality and Delivery
- The developers need to carefully monitor the feedback and ratings on App Stores for future improvements and improvements, which results in continuously improving mobile apps.
Advantages of using Mobile DevOps
- Creation of better applications
- Faster Publishing Time
- Reduced question marks
- Inconsistent development process
- Lack of ownership
- Hand tested
- Instability in workflow
- Poor communication
Conclusion
DevOps has become the future of an application development process, whether it’s a mobile app, an internet app, or a server app. It can help an organization transform its development process resulting in a faster release of the products.
Free integration between tools and processes can contribute to the overall functional success of the organization.
If you are looking for an App development company in Pune that is reliable and reasonably priced, search on AndroidDevelopers.co or share your project details with us here. We will find out a few good development companies for your project.
