How to Build the Perfect Mobile DevOps Strategy?
We all know how much technology has advanced in recent years. If we specifically talk about the mobile application industry, with the introduction of Augmented and Virtual reality, the scope of mobile applications has gone to another level. Hence, for you to stay updated and have longevity in the tech industry, you will need to bring your A-game to the mobile app development industry.
For this very reason, I have decided to jot down a few aspects of developing your perfect mobile app development strategy using DevOps as an approach.
First I will tell you what is DevOps and why it is the right approach to build mobile apps and then we will proceed with the five essential pillars of DevOps strategy.
If you are interested and want to know more about, keep reading!
What is DevOps?
It combines two separate terms together, Development and Operations. DevOps is a new standard framework that delivers applications with high efficiency, improving products at a faster rate as compared to when using other traditional software development methodologies.
In short, its main aim is to minimize work progress, ensure a high-quality product, and scale delivery with an automated process.
Why Do You Need a Mobile DevOps Strategy?
The most important question then becomes, Why do you need to apply this approach when it comes to providing mobile app development services?
Well, in this fast-paced tech world where you need to be on top of your game, you would want your product to be efficient, fast, and of high quality. Your product must stand out amongst the various developed products in your category.
To make sure of that, your product must be valuable and easy to use so that more users could benefit from it. Since DevOps works on “continuous” cycles and ensures that the end goal is error-free, high quality and efficient execution, hence it is the best approach to develop your next big mobile application.
The Five Essential Pillars of Mobile DevOps
Just like any other software or app development, Mobile DevOps follows the same steps, which are,
Planning
At this stage, you along with your developers, testers, operations team, and clients sit together and prepare a plan for the entire project. This includes the client's requirements, project requirements, consumers’ requirements, the developer’s requirements, and tester’s requirements. You also analyze the scope of the project, along with the risks and quality assurance requirements as well.
Continuous Integration
Once you are done with your planning, you will move onto the crucial step that is Continuous Integration (CI). As the name suggests, this step involves integrating each developer’s work on developing the mobile application into a central repository frequently.
While you are at it, CI enables you to identify bugs that appear when integrating. You can work on them to ensure a high-quality product towards the end. Taking about its goal, it makes the process simple and easily repeatable with overall reduced costs and early error detection.
Continuous Delivery
Another crucial aspect of DevOps process is Continuous Delivery (CD). It aims to automate the development process to ensure easy and error-free deployments into production at any given point. It does so by producing short cycles enabling new features and changes to be quickly, safely and reliably incorporated.
The process is simple: it runs extensive tests against every build. If it finds any error, it notifies the developers. In the case of no errors, it tests the cycles sequentially.
Continuous Testing
Continuous testing is another crucial aspect of DevOps strategy where each stage is dependent on it. You need to continuously test each developed cycle during the process of continuous integration and continuous delivery to make sure your product is of the highest quality and is developed at a fast pace. In DevOps, it emphasizes on automation of all phases of software testing.
To do that, you will need to come up with multiple strategies with minimum failed deliveries to the production.
Continuous Monitoring
Since each process is cyclical and is happening side by side, you will also need to make sure that you are continuously monitoring your project and its cycles. Continuous Monitoring in DevOps ensures desired outputs of the entire project with stable production regardless of any changes made.
It can only be achieved through proper data and metrics of your working strategy. This way you can identify errors which can be resolved using a focused approach.
A Few Additional Pillars of Mobile DevOps
Apart from the above five steps of DevOps, there are other pillars which you would want to know about when choosing DevOps for your mobile application development.
People
Since multiple developers are working on each aspect of a mobile application in DevOps and there is another team focused on operations, infrastructure, etc., therefore it is necessary to have an effective collaboration among all the members. It will only ensure a high-quality product which will be free of any errors when it will be tested by the consumers.
Communication
Since there are a lot of people involved in mobile app development, therefore communication is the key. Without communicating the problems, progress, ideas, and solutions, you just cannot produce an efficient product in the market, nor can you take charge of everything. The communication can be done either through any application or device if not through meetings.
Focus on the End-User
When developing the product, the entire team, no matter what part they are playing, needs to keep the end-user in mind. You can make sure that by providing a customer environment to your team where they can observe individuals using the product that the team is working on. You can do so by putting every member of the on-call roster so that everyone knows what is happening and how to tackle issues if there are any. You can also make your team members respond to customer feedback. Or at least you can make your team members use the product they are working on.
Valuable
Since we are talking about the end-user, it cannot go unsaid that your product must be valuable for every kind of audience. You make sure that your product is valuable by providing constant feedback during each cycle and integration.
Conclusion
To summarize this article on DevOps strategy for mobile application development, it is really up to you come up with the best strategy for your next mobile application. However, the five basic pillars will remain the same to ensure you have an efficient and high-quality product released in the market.
I hope this article was helpful and persuasive enough to choose DevOps as the correct approach for your mobile app development since this industry requires a bug-free end product and that too in the least amount of time.