The term “Mobile application development” has become one of the most critical aspects for SMEs, Startups, and entrepreneurs in recent years. Mobile apps are among the most effective sources to make your audience aware of your business features, strategies, and services.
Below is the survey conducted by Statista presenting the global revenue of mobile apps from 2017-2025.
On the other hand, DevOps in mobile app development has become an increasingly popular buzzword in the IT industry, with many developers leveraging its potential benefits.
But what is DevOps, exactly? And is it really worth the hype? In this blog post, we’ll explore the idea of DevOps in mobile app development, uncovering what it is and whether or not it can truly help developers build better apps.
Table of Contents
What is DevOps?
DevOps is an increasingly popular term in the world of software development and mobile app development. It is a process that ensures an optimum level of transparency and effective collaboration between development and operations during the software development life cycle. The process helps improve the speed and quality of product releases.
The goal of DevOps is to create an environment where developers and IT operations teams can work together to quickly and efficiently release high-quality products. It is achieved by automating tasks such as building, testing, and deploying applications, as well as managing infrastructure.
Ultimately, DevOps helps connect all the concerned stakeholders, including project managers, designing & developers’ team, operation team, etc., effectively forming a crucial part of the software development project.
DevOps also increases efficiency since teams don’t have to spend time manually deploying code or dealing with complex infrastructure.
Overall, DevOps should not be viewed as a mere approach to handling IT operations but also as a technically advanced culture that minimizes the overall project development time & cost.
Apart from this, it helps speed up the entire process and trims extra investments. And to offer evidence for this point, you can go through the following tabular presentation which clearly shows the difference between DevOps and traditional IT Ops:
Also Read: E-wallet Mobile App Development: Process & Key Features
DevOps v/s Agile App Development Process
|
Parameters of Comparison |
Agile |
DevOps |
|
Basic definition |
The agile methodology requires an ongoing iteration of designing, coding, & testing in the software development life cycle. |
The DevOps methodology requires focused attention on communication and integration, leading to effective collaboration among the developer’s team. |
|
The motive of the methodology |
Effective in handling and delivering complex software projects. |
Effective in catering to end-to-end engineering processes. |
|
Objective |
The agile methodology extensively focuses on constant modifications. |
The DevOps approach focuses on ongoing testing and delivery. |
|
Suitable team size |
It is suitable for a smaller team as a small team facilitates quicker project development. |
It is preferred for a larger team but also suitable for a smaller team. |
|
Skillset required in the team members |
The approach requires the entire group of team members to have a variety of skills that are also similar in nature. |
The approach does not require the entire team to have a similar skill set. In fact, the skillset gets divided between the operation and coding teams. |
|
Commonly accepted frameworks |
It is compatible with tactical frameworks like Sprint, Safe, Scrum, etc. |
It is not bound to any commonly accepted frameworks. |
|
Feedback is generally given by |
The clients of the software or the ultimate app users. |
The internal working team over the project.
|
|
The key target of the methodology |
Software development |
End-to-end business solutions |
|
Shift left (test early and often) |
Shifting Left leads to the developer’s incorporation in the testing cycle earlier than before. |
Along with Shift Left, it also uses Shift Right which leads to testing in the software’s post-production phase. |
|
Documentation |
The approach itself is less focused on the project’s documentation as the priority is on the working system over a team of members with similar skill sets. |
DevOps’s prime concern remains robust documentation as the project is developed by one team and deployed by the other. |
|
Must-have tools |
Commonly used Agile tools vary from project to project and include the following: · Hudson · Jenkins · Jira · Pivotal Tracker · Kanboard |
DevOps tools depend upon the stage of development, and the notable ones include the following: · Git- coding & building · Selenium- testing · Puppet- deploy & operate · Kubernetes- build, deploy, & operate |
|
Emphasis on automation |
Low focus on automation. |
Automation is among the primary goals of DevOps, so the emphasis is high on it. |
|
Key benefits |
The key benefits of the Agile approach include the following: · High-quality product · Unparalleled flexibility for the team · Enhanced client satisfaction · Predicting risks is more straightforward |
The key benefits of DevOps include the following: · Quicker software deployment · High innovation owing to focus on automation · High transparency promotes high productivity · It overcomes the bottlenecks of the traditional approach |
|
Primary goal |
It eliminates the barrier between the client and the development team. |
It eliminates the communication barrier between the development, testing, and Ops teams. |
DevOps in Mobile App Development: Is it Helpful?
The use of DevOps for mobile apps by app development companies in India is helpful for companies. Although it is not very convenient to start with, it becomes easier to implement and apply this process adequately. Once integrated, we can see its tremendous impacts on productivity, efficiency, client satisfaction, and revenue.
But when you start implementing DevOps in Mobile application development, you should inspect the concerns, issues, and solutions. Let’s discuss the diverse aspects of DevOps separately.
What Are The Major Advantages Of DevOps In Mobile App Development?
Developing a successful mobile app requires careful planning and execution to ensure that the end product is usable, reliable, and secure. Fortunately, DevOps offers a variety of tools and techniques to help developers create better mobile apps.
Here are the eight ways to discuss how DevOps can be advantageous to make better mobile apps.
1. Continuous Testing and Monitoring
There are many OS versions, so it is impossible to do manual testing for all versions. But most of the mobile application testing is done manually on simulators instead of on the actual devices.
In the manual testing process, a mobile app can perform well during testing, but it is not a big deal to break down in the live environment. The common factors behind its failure are memory errors, network issues, etc.
So, to avoid these types of issues, developers and businesses must continuously monitor through third-party SDKs for logs, crash reports, and so on to find out the base of the problem or the failure.
2. Creation of Advanced Apps
It helps create better applications that enhance user experience. This is the universal truth that the user experience is one of the most critical factors for the success of any business. Mobile DevOps helps in instant reporting and feedback, regression testing, and a transparent development process, which is beneficial for removing errors, faster fixes, and optimizing the user experience.
3. Faster Release Time
DevOps helps save development time as it increases the collaboration among the different departments and teams involved in the particular software development, which makes the whole communication process transparent. It leads to the exchange of information, resulting in a faster release time.
4. Improves Communication & Collaboration
DevOps focuses on communication and collaboration between development and operations teams to create a more efficient and successful workflow. By combining the knowledge of both these teams, DevOps helps developers produce high-quality mobile apps with shorter development cycles.
It enables developers to quickly deploy, monitor, and maintain mobile applications while operations teams are able to troubleshoot and address any issues.
5. Quality Control
DevOps helps maintain the quality of the software development process as it can look through the parts of the code from beginning to delivery while considering corrections that get added. DevOps helps in resolving bugs and create updates for future enhancements and modifications.
DevOps plays a vital role in improving the process of software development. And the important thing is that it looks after the various aspects of software development, keeping in mind the whole structure. As a result, it helps control the quality of software development, effective collaboration, valuable monitoring, and overall success of the app.
6. Stabilizes the Work Environment
Integrating new features over a mobile app requires uncompromised focus, and the tension involved adversely impacts the workspace stability, ultimately leading to poor productivity. DevOps practices are renowned for better handling new features owing to good documentation and higher transparency. The mobile app development process gets steadier & more stabilized with DevOps.
7. Automation Promotes Innovation
Compared to the traditional approach of mobile app development, DevOps offer automation rooms that lead to quicker detection and elimination of the issues from the app. Overall, it saves time and allows the developer’s team to create new and innovative features for the project.
8. Automating The Build Process
The build process is one of the most important steps in mobile app development. It’s the process of transforming the source code into an app that can be deployed to the app stores. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most time-consuming and tedious tasks.
But, DevOps can help make the build process faster, easier, and more efficient. By automating key tasks, such as compiling and deploying your app, you can save time and effort. It can enable you to get your mobile app to market faster, which can help you reach a larger audience.
Automation also helps reduce manual errors, which can result in costly rework. By automating certain tasks, you can help ensure that your mobile app is of the highest quality and works as expected on various devices.
9. Ignore Process Delays
DevOps helps make the whole software development process transparent, saves time, and enhances communication among various teams. Apart from this, it helps in creating advanced software and apps. DevOps helps in ignoring multiple kinds of process delays such as:
- Inconsistent development process
- Lack of ownership
- Manual testing process
- Instability in workflow
- Poor communication
Steps To Take Before Implementing A DevOps Strategy
Are you thinking about implementing a DevOps strategy for your organization? Before you get started, there are some important steps you need to take to ensure the success of your DevOps implementation.
By following these steps, you can ensure that your organization is well-equipped to adopt a DevOps approach and maximize the potential benefits of this powerful strategy.
Number 1: Evaluate your needs
Before diving into a DevOps strategy, it’s important to evaluate your current needs and determine whether the methodology would be beneficial. Without clear objectives and business goals, you will fail to leverage the ultimate benefits of DevOps.
Number 2: Prepare for the Shift
Start by educating the entire team about the simple definition of DevOps and why you are embracing the process. Elucidating the team with the overall benefits leads to a more convenient experience in the cultural shift. As DevOps requires unified collaboration, starting with a common viewpoint serves as a decent strategy.
Number 3: Analyze Your Present Scenario
Numbers always help when it comes to measuring success, and DevOps is no exception to it. To measure results after the DevOps implementation, analyze the time taken in different mobile app development processes like coding, testing, etc. Once you implement DevOps, you can remeasure them to determine the effective gain in the enterprise.
Number 4: Pave the Way for Collaboration
Creating an effective path for collaboration is an essential aspect of DevOps, and you must start by breaking down the organization’s silos. Diverse mobile app development teams are bound to suffer from initial glitches during the start of the journey, and resolving the issues plays a vital role in successful DevOps implementation.
Number 5: Plan Your Budget
Create a rough estimate by weighing the cost of new tools and frameworks necessary for DevOps implementation. Implementing a new process or a technology shift without proper fund allocation only leads to unexpected glitches and a financial burden on the enterprise.
A thorough budget will help you better understand the resources needed to successfully execute the project and give you an idea of the potential costs involved.
Once you are done with the above parameters, you can proceed with implementing DevOps in the organization. Let’s look at the standard procedure for implementing Mobile DevOps.
Read Also: What is a Mobile App Business Plan? Expert Tips to Write it For Your App Startup
How to Implement Mobile DevOps?
Mobile DevOps is a powerful and comprehensive approach to mobile development and deployment. By unifying the processes of development, testing, and deployment, mobile DevOps allows companies to reduce time-to-market, improve product quality, and reduce the risk of costly outages.
Following are the four ways to implement Mobile DevOps.
#1. Continuous Integration and Delivery
Developers should code to facilitate feature integration with other aspects of development. The principle of one team should be to work in a way that aids the other team’s role in the development process. The developers should note that all development aspects must be transparent, including text files, scripts, documents, configuration, code, etc.
#2. Testing and Monitoring
If we talk about mobile applications, various hurdles come in their development and even after their development. So, to avoid that, it is necessary to do its testing and monitoring. But hold on! The manual testing fails to work, as it is just on simulators and emulators, and various issues may arise while using it in a realistic environment.
So, in a nutshell, let me tell you that you should do the testing process in the natural environment as various factors are included in the application process, such as resolution, screen size, features, capabilities, and so on of each device.
For better performance of the apps, there must be continuous testing and monitoring with the help of an automated testing process, which will help improve the frequent handling of builds, finding bugs, and finding solutions to the issues.
#3. Collaboration
Mobile DevOps is a practice that combines software development, operations, and quality assurance teams to collaborate together in order to deliver mobile apps more quickly and reliably.
By adopting Mobile DevOps, organizations can increase their agility and create better user experiences with their apps. Here are five ways to implement Mobile DevOps within your organization.
#4. Quality and Delivery
The developers should keep a constant eye on feedback and ratings over the app stores and app markets that offer insights into future progress and improvements and ultimately result in the continuous improvement of the mobile apps.
Challenges in Adopting DevOps For Mobile App Development
DevOps is quickly becoming the norm when it comes to mobile app development. However, implementing DevOps into your development process isn’t always easy. Let’s explore five of the most common challenges you may face when adopting DevOps for mobile app development.
# Multi-platform Support & Mobile App Testing
Just a 1-star rating from the customers can harm your brand’s name based on the low performance of your mobile app. As a result, it requires you to perform rigorous testing with the help of functionality, usability, & other testing techniques for your app to avoid a poor rating in the app store.
# Security Concerns
When it comes to mobile app development, security is one of the major concerns for businesses. And with DevOps, things can become more complex. As mobile apps often contain sensitive information, it’s essential to make sure that security protocols are up-to-date and properly implemented.
One of the main challenges of using DevOps in mobile app development is ensuring that security protocols are constantly updated. You must be able to quickly identify and patch any vulnerabilities in your code as well as monitor user activity to detect any malicious behavior. To do this, you need a powerful and reliable continuous integration system that can be quickly deployed.
# Dependability on the App Store
It usually happens that sometimes you cannot deploy the apps, leading to an extra step delaying the app deployment on the user’s device. It requires the developers to come up with some direct updates and necessary bug fixes in the app.
# Scalability Issues
While DevOps enables organizations to quickly and continuously deliver applications, it can be difficult to scale these applications when the demand for them increases.
The lack of scalability is mainly due to the reliance on shared resources. Since DevOps operates within a shared environment, there’s a risk that the demand for a certain app could outstrip the resources available. It means the development team would need to manually allocate additional resources in order to meet the increased demand.
# Insufficient Focus on Client Needs
Greater obstacles frequently stem from human-related variables than those directly tied to technology. One of the objectives of DevOps is to increase team productivity, which is strongly related to the ability to automate various stages of the software development lifecycle provided by DevOps. However, the customer must also be considered while implementing DevOps processes; customer value must serve as its foundation. Utilize DevOps’ benefits to enhance the client experience. Continuous communication is necessary for innovative solutions, and DevOps is about successful communication.
Final Words
So, it can be concluded that DevOps in mobile app development is indeed worth the hype, as it enables developers to quickly and efficiently deliver high-quality applications with improved stability and reliability. It also provides better collaboration between developers, testers, and operations teams, allowing them to quickly identify and resolve any potential issues.
By utilizing DevOps in mobile app development, organizations can gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
With the increasing demand for mobile applications, it is clear that DevOps is an invaluable asset for any organization looking to develop successful applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question – What is DevOps for mobile apps?
Answer – It’s a principle that helps align developers, operations, and infrastructure. The idea is simple—and it’s not new, although it’s certainly gained steam in recent years: Developers should be empowered to manage their infrastructure and applications in production.
Mobile DevOps includes instantaneous feedback reports and is accessible equally transparently. This feature empowers developers to be able to debug errors and troubleshoot errors. This is also a convenient way to perform data analytics.
It is possible because mobile DevOps provides real-time insights and mobile app analytics that also includes user metrics and data from other sources. It can be immensely valuable in an organization where there are many mobile app users, mainly where it has evolved into a full-fledged solution providing business insights.
Question – How can DevOps be useful?
Answer – DevOps eliminates divisions between developers, operators, and quality assurance professionals, who, once working towards a shared goal, are all devoted to an increased value for your organization, which, in turn, helps your customers have a better time.
The significant benefits of using DevOps include the following:
- It helps in reducing time-to-market
- DevOps helps in reducing deployment failures.
- It helps in improving application quality.
- It helps in increasing customer satisfaction.
- DevOps also increases productivity.
- It improves team collaboration.
- Improves end-user experience.
- It enhances application performance.
- Increases software development agility.
- Reduces risk
- Increases innovation
- Improves IT efficiency
- Enhances communication
- Reduces costs
- It makes IT more agile
- Improves collaboration between teams
- Enhances employee engagement
- Increases team motivation
- Reduces time spent on rework
- Improve organizational learning
- Improves code quality
- Helps in achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Question – What is the primary goal of DevOps?
Answer – The main goal of DevOps is to eliminate process bottlenecks that delay software releases and slow down time-to-market. It’s about reducing lead times and getting more work done in less time. The idea behind DevOps is to connect all departments involved in creating a product so that they share information and collaborate while enabling continuous delivery throughout development cycles.
In short, it aims to integrate developers with operations and IT teams to become a unified team focused on delivering business value faster, rather than as individual silos working separately towards their own goals and objectives. Organizations are adopting agile methodologies these days, but only a few follow it through across all departments.
Question – What is DevOps complete form?
Answer – Multiple resources have managed to put together pieces of information from all over on what DevOps is. So let’s go with one such example.
According to Wikipedia: DevOps (sometimes de-ops) is a software engineering methodology that focuses on increasing communication, collaboration, & integration between software developers as well as information technology (IT) professionals.
Question – What are DevOps values?
Answer- The idea behind DevOps is to merge different departments under one big tent. It would make it convenient for teams to collaborate and talk freely about challenges in their respective disciplines.
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