The number of smartphone users has surpassed 3 billion and it is estimated to grow by several hundred million in the next few years (Source). With a substantial increase in the number of mobile users and application downloads, it has become evident that the mobile app industry is growing at a steady rate. And it shows absolutely no signs of slowing down in the near future.
Today the global technology landscape is progressing towards more and more disruption but the same cannot be said about the early years of the digital shift.
Years ago when we were navigating the wave of digitalization, the IT industry was focused on meeting the growing demands of the mobile phone market, and businesses were focused on capturing a mobile presence.
As a result, the vital elements of mobile app development such as the app development costs, security, the quality of code, and maintainability were left on the backburner.
The surge has finally settled down and today app development companies have taken the center stage. In this changing landscape, it has become significantly important to focus on the elements that were previously neglected and adapt new methodologies that provide quality solutions with lower costs.
And that is exactly how DevOps comes into the picture.
DevOps for mobile apps development is a modern approach that enables seamless application delivery from inception to production. The features of DevOps break the development-operations barrier and marks the departure from the traditional waterfall approach to agile software development.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a unique approach that emphasizes effective collaboration between all the stakeholders involved in creating a digital product. It includes project managers, developers, mobile application development companies, and members of the operations staff.
While the traditional techniques and approach to software development led to additional development time, costs, and customer dissatisfaction, DevOps bridges the gap between development and operations and overcomes the challenges associated with continuous software delivery.
The idea behind DevOps for mobile app development is to foster a culture of collaboration between teams that previously worked in siloes.
DevOps is not merely an approach, it can be perceived primarily as a culture or a state of mind. It foregrounds a shift in the mindset, improves collaboration, and facilitates tighter integration. It brings together agile, continuous delivery, and automation so that development and operation teams can be more efficient and release software faster and more reliably.
Through DevOps, it has become relatively easy to align business goals and deliver higher value to the customers. Adopting DevOps in the enterprise is highly beneficial. The same can be said for businesses as it brings positive returns on investments.
A study confirms that organizations that implemented DevOps exhibited 63% experience improvement in the quality of their software deployments and 63% were able to release new software more frequently. (Source)
How is DevOps Different From Agile App Development?
DevOps and Agile are widely used terms in mobile app development, and most companies make use of at least one of these practices.
There are different ways in which organizations embrace both agile and DevOps for mobile app development. Some people consider Agile and DevOps to be the same. However, that is not true. There is a considerable difference between agile and DevOps.
DevOps is a method of software development that focuses on communication, integration, and collaboration among development and operations to facilitate rapid deployment of products. It is a set of practices that automates the process, aligns teams, and increases an organization’s speed to deliver products and services.
Agile Methodology emphasizes continuous iteration of development and testing. The agile development process breaks down the product into smaller modules and integrates them for final testing. The agile approach is iterative and incremental in nature and can be implemented in many ways such as Scrum, Kanban, etc.
While the agile approach entails more Scrum meetings and Retrospectives to address gaps in the customer-developer communication, DevOps for mobile app development entails more documentation and specifications to address gaps between development and operations.
The founding principle of agile is to bring Agility to development while DevOps revolves around bringing agility to both development and operations.
Read more about devops for mobile app development
0
