For a mobile app designing company, building highly-effective and useful applications is paramount. To keep up with the changing needs and technology evolution, it should implement the new processes and systems for effective solutions. As the volume of work increases, IT operations in a mobile app development company and operations should take into consideration their approach to DevOps and integrate the design to bridge the gap in mobile app development in an effective manner.
The quick DevOps evolution
DevOps has evolved rapidly as an integral part of modern app development and delivery. The DevOps methodology has shed its status as a niche strategy and evolved to a mainstream opportunity. Gartner estimates that the DevOps Ready toolsets market size is to be more than $2 billion by 2020, displaying the huge potential and robust market adoption. However, alongside the benefits, DevOps also brings unique challenges in developing and operating a mobile environment. The challenges are what’s holding most organizations back from realizing the full potential of the approach. As the amount of work in enterprise application development exponentially grows, IT operations face enormous stress if DevOps is not properly used or implemented. DevOps, without doubt, is one of the buzz words in today’s Agile business culture. It has been widely adopted in various types of software organizations creating yet more different products, resulting in solutions and systems that are highly effective.
DevOps in mobile
DevOps in mobile means integrating continuous integration as well as testing process tightly with delivery and deploying and wrapping up everything in continuous operations. Developers and app development teams in general focus on creating the actual product while at the same time relying on their own vital tools. The QA is stakeholder that’s interested and also responsible for testing the regressions, product performance, and preferably automating as many aspects of testing flow as possible. The operations maintain integration, continuous build, and deployment, and delivery environments and take care of the releases.
Rules of thumb in Mobile DevOps
Mobile DevOps is an approach focusing on communication, integration, deployment, automation, and measurement of collaboration among application developers, testers, and operations. The entire thing is to acknowledge the interdependent nature of the approach as well as rely on the right methodologies, tools, and infrastructure to develop, to deliver, and to test the applications faster and in a more efficient way. The rules of thumb are the following.
- Develop and test against the real environment. The most important thing for developers of mobile is that the end-product works across all target devices. Using simulators or emulators are acceptable in the earliest development phase, but when an application gets more sophisticated and have the features that end-users would see, the only way acceptable would be to test applications on real devices. Using a cloud service, which contains the correct set of mobile devices is the perfect fit for the mobile DevOps toolchain nowadays.
- Frequent deployment and testing. The agile method praises using continuous integration and delivery tools. There are many great open source and commercial tools available, which help companies build, deploy, test and release their applications. The most meaningful value-add to the flow is mobile test automation, which could accommodate frequent builds to test context and allow instant bug hunting. Continuous testing and development integration could allow companies to respond to the market and the competitive changes on time.
- Considering and validating quality characteristics continuously. Modern mobile DevOps is all about continuous everything. The approach must always strive to boost things, process, culture and reconsider what tools must be used. Continuous evaluation of the productivity and efficiency could acquire insights into real performance problems and how to make things work seamlessly and smoother in the next regression. Changing DevOps tools should be a consideration every now and then, particularly if there are doubts on the present environment, the capacity to deliver and work as efficiently as possible.
The principles of the DevOps approach
The principles of the DevOps approach puts emphasis on people and culture above processes and tools, thus bringing business owners into the design process intimately would boost the success of DevOps. Organizations should embrace a mix of integration and collaboration tools from both teams. The seamless interaction would unlock the full potential and benefits of the methodology and will ultimately contribute to the overall business and operational success.
More than ever, mobile is more important. The growing competition with mobile apps and user acquisition has pressured organizations to act fast with its development and operations. In the DevOps culture, tools and process have a critical role. In general, the adoption of the right methods, tools, and technologies hasten up the development and testing process tremendously.