Organizations venturing into their first modern mobile application development journey can find themselves caught flat-footed when it comes to being able to effectively develop a mobile application. Teams with mobile engineers and experience releasing other types of applications may still lack an important key to success. Mobile DevOps, the practice of engaging both engineers and operations teams around automated tools, ensures that the business can maximize their return on their investment on their adventure. But, before you can venture on your journey, it is important to understand the challenges ahead, familiarize yourself with the unique environments you’ll be traveling through, and consider how your tactics might impact whether or not you become the hero in your adventure.
DevOps Challenges Unique to Mobile
Some organizations may assume that since they already have infrastructure and automation in place for traditional applications, mobile applications will fit neatly into their existing paradigms. The mobile development beast is a fickle one though, and will throw a number of new challenges your way. Here are some things you might encounter:
Many build tools do not support these requirements, and can waylay your party when developing your application. But, by understanding these challenges, and identifying solutions early in your process, you can slay these demons before they rear their heads.
Solutions for Mobile DevOps
Fortunately, there is a wide range of solutions available for organizations to tackle these problems. Each has its own tradeoffs, but with so many choices available, there should be an option to fit any organization’s needs. When evaluating these choices, it’s important to understand the costs and compromises involved.
Other factors not easily quantified include things like the impact that brittle, inconsistent, or incomplete DevOps tooling will have on your ability to quickly get changes into the hands of users for testing. When you shorten this feedback loop, it allows you to iterate more quickly on your applications and deliver effective solutions sooner. Additionally, consider your existing toolsets and see if there is any room for re-use. Also, identify who will be responsible for maintaining these systems long term.
What Mobile DevOps Solution Is Right For You?
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges posed by modern mobile application development. All of these factors will need to be considered when picking the right solution. Half the battle in improving your mobile development outcomes is choosing and implementing the right tool. As a step in your evaluation process, download our Mobile DevOps Decision Guide that helps highlight these costs and tradeoffs to guide your decision process.
If you’re interested in learning how to be the champion in your organization’s adventure building your next mobile application, reach out today.
