Why CI/CD Automation Is Vital For Mobile Devs To Stay Competitive

Devs around the world are facing more pressure than ever to release more interesting content and faster patches for bugs. Over 80% of developers are releasing code faster than they did in 2021, requiring new tools and tech to stay competitive in already one of the most competitive industries in the world. One of the newest and faster growing methods to help devs streamline their developmental process and communicate between teams better is with CI/CD.

Continuous integration/continuous deployment, or CI/CD, automation is a series of practices and processes that streamline the various stages of development, testing, and deployment of apps. Continuous integration (CI) is the first step of this method where developers, sometimes several times a day, upload new updates and hotfixes to a shared repository. Each time new code is added, an automated process takes the code, compiles, runs a number of tests, and checks for proper integration.

This step is designed to catch and fix issues as early as possible in development, while at the same time maintaining and ensuring that the codebase remains stable and always ready for deployment. The second stage, continuous deployment (CD) takes the automation a step further. After code passes through all checks and tests run during the CI step, it’s automatically moved to the deployment phase, where the code can be pushed directly into production or into a staging environment. Having a new build ready to be pushed to the consumer often makes sure that the latest version of an app is always ready for release, while requiring little if any human intervention.

Together, CI/CD automation is able to accelerate the development cycle by enabling a much more efficient and reliable workflow for developers. Introducing automation removes the need for devs to waste time on repetitive tasks and reduces human error, leaving engineers free to add new content and features, fix bugs, and improve the end user experience. 

Today, many companies are pushing towards streamlining their operations as much as they can. In 2023, 24% of DevOps processes are now fully automated, as compared to 19% in 2021 and only 8% in 2020. However, while businesses and industries around the world have begun to embrace CI/CD into their development pipelines, the mobile app space has yet to see such a necessary piece of tech truly catch on.

Mobile app devs are now more than ever facing increasing demand for faster and more interesting content and updates. With the number of mobile users worldwide being over 7.3 billion and over 250 billion mobile apps downloaded in just 2022, it’s no wonder why this industry faces such a skyrocketing rise in demand. The demand for mobile app devs is expected to rise from 17% to 24% by 2026 and has pushed existing devs to release more code than ever before. Half of devs say that they’re releasing code twice to up to five times as fast as they did in just the past few years. 

Even with the rising demand for engineers, the mobile app industry faces incredibly difficult challenges due to the gargantuan market they aim to reach. As consumer expectations rise, more and more developers are needed to remain relevant, might as well compete, causing an even greater labor shortage. Another labor shortage is occurring in the DevOps space, as finding experienced and well trained professionals for setting up and maintaining CI/CD pipelines are few and far between. This shortage leads to a bottleneck that prevents companies from even getting started. 

Alongside lack of specialized workers, high expectations means that if even small bugs are missed, negative reviews and quick uninstalls can run an app into the ground. Keeping an app perfectly stable, beautifully designed, and flawlessly functional constantly is a big ask for any development team, especially as if your team can’t keep up, someone else will. Along with these issues, the cost of development and even spaces on app stores and other platforms continue to rise, raising the stakes even higher for those trying to get a hold in the highly lucrative, but highly punishing, mobile app market. 

However, with the use of CI/CD automation into mobile development pipelines, many mobile devs are able to stay ahead of the curve. With the market changing as fast as it does, CI/CD allows developers to quickly respond to feedback and trends, as well as catch bugs sooner and release code faster.

Learn more about how automated CI/CD is changing the game in the rapidly evolving mobile ecosystem today.

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