Do you know more than 50% of all companies are now embracing DevOps practices to build mobile apps? This indicates that the future of building mobile apps heavily relies on continuous integration and continuous delivery. In today's fast-paced digital landscape, mobile app development needs to be agile, secure, and scalable to quickly adapt to user demands or market fluctuations.
Mobile DevOps is not just about building a highly functional app; it's about creating a robust product that can thrive in a dynamic environment. This approach is specifically designed for developers to address the unique challenges faced in developing, testing, and delivering mobile apps.
What is Mobile DevOps?
In simple terms, Mobile DevOps is an extension of the standard DevOps methodology tailored for mobile app development. It bridges the noticeable gap between IT operations and development environments, enabling a seamless flow of code changes from development to production.
Key Components of Mobile DevOps
To get started, let's explore the key components that comprise mobile DevOps:
1. Continuous Integration (CI)
CI ensures all code changes are tested continually and automatically, followed by integration into the primary branch. This reduces the overall risk of future bugs and prolonged maintenance.
2. Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD)
CD automates the app release process, ensuring all updates are delivered to end-users quickly and reliably. It manages the app release process for App Store or Google Play store and test environments like Firebase and Testflight.
3. Automated Quality Analysis or Testing
Mobile DevOps enables automated execution of test cases for the app on diverse platforms like iOS and Android. This ensures compatibility and performance are consistent across all devices, from smartphones to tablets. Experts use tools like Appium, GitLab, Selenium, and others for continuous testing and quality analysis.
4. Monitoring & Feedback
As part of Mobile DevOps, experts utilize dedicated tools for automating the process of continually monitoring application performance and gathering feedback to resolve potential issues faster. Tools like Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, Jenkins, and others are used to monitor and provide feedback on mobile app performance.
How is Mobile DevOps Different From Traditional DevOps?
Mobile DevOps differs from traditional DevOps as it specifically addresses the unique complexities in mobile ecosystems. The latter is suitable for software of all types, whereas Mobile DevOps is designed to overcome platform-specific limitations and shift-left approach challenges.
Platform-Specific Limitations
Mobile app developers often face challenges like device fragmentation, performance optimization for constrained environments, APIs, and more. Mobile DevOps simplifies the process by automating routine tasks like App Store/Play Store submissions, cross-platform compilation, complex code signing, Beta testing, and others. This enables smooth releases and mitigates post-release mobile app fixes.
Shift-Left Approach
The key aspect of implementing Mobile DevOps is emphasizing a shift-left approach. This involves testing and quality assurance at the early stages of the development lifecycle, reducing costly post-release fixes. By prioritizing early checks and validation for quality and performance, Mobile DevOps ensures a better user experience and avoids post-deployment corrections.
In What Ways Does Mobile DevOps Help Professionals Build Robust Apps?
Here are some ways Mobile DevOps proves reliable and effective for mobile app development:
1. Managing Continuous Updates
To ensure consistent performance with next-gen features, frequent updates are required to address changing user preferences, new device launches, and OS updates. Mobile DevOps utilizes CI and CD pipelines for automating and accelerating the launch of app updates.
2. Supports Cross-Platform Compatibility
Mobile DevOps provides an environment where code gets tested continually on real devices and virtual environments specific to Android and iOS platforms. This ensures seamless compatibility across both platforms, delivering a consistent user experience.
3. Improving Security
Cyber attacks, data breaches, and other threats are common in mobile app development. Mobile DevOps integrates security patches throughout the development lifecycle through automated security checks like penetration testing, vulnerability scans, code analysis, and others. This ensures potential issues are fixed in real-time.