Mobile DevOps Fundamentals

There is no doubt that Mobile DevOps is quickly becoming a key part of the mobile development process, enabling teams and organizations to quickly develop and release mobile applications. We will discuss the fundamentals of Mobile DevOps and how it can help your team to reach your mobile development goals through the use of this process.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Mobile continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) fundamentals
• Choosing between self-hosted and cloud-based continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD
• Do we need a Mobile DevOps engineer?

Sounds interesting! Let’s begin our journey toward Mobile DevOps.

The importance of Mobile DevOps

Businesses are increasingly relying on mobile applications today. DevOps is an essential part of the mobile development process because it manages the development and release of mobile applications. To streamline the development process and improve the quality of mobile apps, CI, continuous testing (CT), CD, and continuous deployment techniques are used.

It is an approach to developing mobile applications that emphasizes collaboration between development, quality, product, and operations teams to ensure mobile applications are delivered quickly, frequently, and reliably, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 3.1 – Mobile DevOps

With Mobile DevOps, teams can collaborate more effectively and efficiently as they develop and release mobile applications faster and with fewer errors (as much as possible) since they can work together more. This helps reduce the time required to develop a mobile app, while also...

Mobile CI/CD fundamentals

If you are familiar with the fundamentals of DevOps for web apps, backend services, or other types of apps, you already know the concepts of CI/CD. In mobile, it’s the same but with specific tasks that are required to build, test, and release the mobile apps.

But before jumping to the CI/CD part, I’d like to give you an idea about the preparation stage, which is the planning stage or phase.

Continuous planning

As a team, we should agree together about the process that we will use to implement Mobile DevOps and CI/CD. The continuous planning stage involves gathering requirements from stakeholders, creating a project plan, and determining the necessary resources. This is an important step in ensuring that the app meets the needs of the users and aligns with the overall business objectives.

Also, we need to clearly define what you want to achieve with your mobile CI/CD strategy. This may include improving the speed and quality of your...

The benefits of CI/CD for mobile app development

Having mobile CI/CD has more positive effects than only making an existing process a little more efficient for the following reasons:

• It allows developers to focus on writing code and monitoring mobile apps in production
• A faster deployment time and faster delivery to markets
• All versions of the mobile apps are accessible to QA and product stakeholders
• The test results, code change logs, and release logs are always available
• Enhanced communication and productivity
• Improved employee engagement
• Customers are more satisfied

Determine which tools and technologies will be used in your mobile CI/CD pipeline. A version control system, build automation tool, testing framework, or deployment platform may be included in this list.

The tools and infrastructure of Mobile DevOps

As we discussed before, Mobile DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and infrastructure aimed at streamlining the development...

Do we need a Mobile DevOps engineer?

The best answer always is that it depends on the team’s objectives, goals, scale, skill sets, and experience. You can have different team members responsible for the Mobile DevOps stages, but don’t forget that we mentioned previously that it’s a team effort and collaboration. However, if the team already has a DevOps engineer responsible for the DevOps implementation in general in the company, it can also help the mobile team, or involve it in the mobile part by doing the following:

• Understand DevOps practices for mobile, such as code signing and releasing mobile apps.
• Learn the basics of mobile app development. Learn a new programming language, such as Kotlin or Swift, and gain experience building mobile apps.
• Create, deploy, and manage mobile apps in the cloud as you develop your knowledge of cloud computing.
• Contribute to open source projects or work on personal projects to get hands-on experience working...

Summary

Mobile DevOps is a crucial practice for the development of high-quality mobile apps. It is a powerful process that can help teams develop and deploy mobile applications quickly and efficiently. By leveraging automation, testing, and continuous deployment, teams can ensure that their applications are stable, secure, and up to date. With Mobile DevOps, teams can achieve their mobile development goals more quickly and efficiently.

Mobile DevOps also helps to simplify the development process by automating repetitive tasks. This allows developers to focus on the creative aspects of development, such as creating innovative features without having to worry about mundane tasks. Additionally, it ensures that the mobile app follows best practices and is optimized for specific platforms and devices. This allows organizations to create high-quality mobile applications that are well suited to their users’ needs.

By using automation, version control, cloud services, monitoring...