Incorporating DevOps Into Mobile App Development

DevOps is becoming an increasingly popular method for developing and delivering applications in enterprises. Accenture estimates that as much of a quarter of organizations the Forbes Global 2000 list use it. It emphasizes communication and collaboration between development and operations inside organizations and focuses on quality assurance and delivery with automated deployment.  Read on to learn how companies are incorporating DevOps into mobile app development.

Gartner and Accenture recently offered great insight into how companies are incorporating DevOps into mobile app development.

Mobile development presents unique challenges for DevOps, and possibly because of that, not all companies that use DevOps use it for mobile apps. Gartner Research Director Jason Wong notes in a blog that a Gartner survey found that “only 42% of those who have implemented [DevOps] indicated that DevOps is used to support mobile app development.”

It needn’t be that way. Both Gartner and Accenture offer great advice for using DevOps for mobile apps. Following are highlights of what they have to say.

Accenture’s paper, Bridging the Gap, DevOps in mobile app development is an excellent place to turn for help. Its first rule is that continuous integration and continuous delivery against a real environment is key to using DevOps for mobile successfully. Although emulators and simulators can be used effectively in the early stages of development, it says, “But as an app becomes more sophisticated, and as the features that end-users will ultimately see are developed, getting the app thoroughly and comprehensively tested across real devices in real-world environments becomes far more important.”

Next rule: Test applications, test infrastructure and deploy frequently. The report says doing this “enhances an organization’s ability to automate the functional, compatibility and performance testing of its application.” And it adds, “Developing, deploying and testing in the infrastructure context will also offer key insights into how well the entire environment, and the application within it, performs.”

Accenture’s final rule is to continually validate an app’s quality. It concludes, “‘Continuous everything’ are the bywords of modern mobile DevOps. The approach should always strive to improve things, processes and culture. The continuous evaluation of efficiency and productivity can offer real insights into performance issues and solutions for making each successive regression smoother and more seamless.”

Many of these rules are echoed by Gartner’s Wong. He says enterprises can solve mobile DevOps’ challenges by:

• Embracing a mix of mobile app development tools while using common collaboration and continuous integration tools.

• Employing mobile test automation to enable continuous delivery.

• Implementing app instrumentation to foster continuous monitoring and analysis.