We’ve already talked about the Mobile DevOps lifecycle and the main reasons why mobile needs a different approach, but there has been very little discussion on the tangible benefits of Mobile DevOps. Featuring opinions of experts in the field who've implemented an effective set of tools into their app development, this post shows you how adopting these practices can improve not only your apps — but your entire process.
Better collaboration
"The simpler the CI is to understand and configure, the less stress it brings to our team. Bitrise’s workflow pattern has allowed us to become incredibly productive"
Joe Birch, Android Lead at Buffer
In essence, what Mobile DevOps does is bringing the development teams and other teams on the same page. Each team has clear visibility of application performance, which enables them to share the workload. More ownership and effective cross-functional collaboration between project managers, developers, QA, data, design, security, and web teams and more transparency and scalability help teams work better together.
More time for innovation
"We could just outsource all the bothersome tasks to Bitrise, leaving us with more time to focus on the product itself." Mark Szulyovszki, Co-Founder at Drops
Another main idea behind Mobile DevOps is a more efficient allocation of resources in order to build better products and a better product lifecycle, faster. The biggest advantages of Mobile DevOps are more automation, eliminating manual tasks, streamlining the CI/CD pipeline from the beginning to the end, all to leave more time to focus on aspects and features of the product that actually improve profitability.
A more stable environment
"Bitrise enabled our teams to ship code to our customers with high confidence." Franz Busch, iOS Engineer at Sixt
More automation and fewer manual tasks also result in more stability and more confidence among team members. In a more stable and seamless operation environment, it is easier to keep crash rates low and to tackle the challenges resulting from the fragmented nature of mobile apps: different operating systems, phone times, version support, and so on — even with increasingly frequent changes.
Accelerated processes
"By accelerating our CI processes, Bitrise allowed GetYourGuide to rapidly iterate while growing from 4 mobile engineers to 12 in less than a year." Simone Basso, Director of Engineering at GetYourGuide
Thanks to more automation, hour-long manual tasks, days-long setups, and builds that otherwise took hours can be shortened to minutes. Frequent iterative cycles during development enable faster deployment of the code, new regression testing, and verification. Accelerated processes enable teams to reduce bottlenecks and significantly shorten the time from planning all the way to the release stage.
Faster resolution
"In an agile development environment with dynamic iterations, Bitrise has provided invaluable support in maintaining high app quality." Isabel Rios, QA Engineer at Mozilla
Mobile DevOps minimizes downtime and accelerates feedback loops to help teams fix bugs, issues, incidents, and unblock release pipelines more rapidly. Different testing options in CI/CD tools, such as integration testing, regression testing, and acceptance testing enable instant reporting and feedback. These tools provide mobile teams with an easy way to quickly troubleshoot and resolve problems.
Enhanced user experience
"Bitrise allows us to focus even more on developing new features and optimizing our products." Tomáš Linhart, Principal iOS Engineer at Babbel
UX is one of the most important factors in today's competitive mobile app scene — compared to desktop apps, users are much less forgiving when it comes to worse user experience. Allocating more time on focusing on market needs, user behavior, and feedback heavily affects product perception. More resources for innovation and enhancements result in better user experience and consequently, happier customers.
You can read more about our take on Mobile DevOps on our landing page that we created to share our insights, experiences, and to explore all facets of the best practices in mobile app development. If you have thoughts on mobile DevOps and want to contribute, please reach out to us at:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitrise
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