How do you handle mobile app updates and maintenance without compromising quality?

During a mobile app maintenance phase for a retail client, planning became our key to success. We clearly defined the scope of each update and aligned it with the app's objectives. One challenge we faced was scope creep, with stakeholders frequently requesting additional features. To manage expectations, I set up regular communication channels, ensuring that developers, testers, and stakeholders were on the same page. By sticking to a well-defined plan and prioritizing critical changes, we avoided delays and delivered updates smoothly, maintaining the app’s quality while keeping everyone informed and satisfied.

Establish Clear Procedures: Develop and document clear procedures for managing app updates and maintenance tasks. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, outlining workflows, and establishing communication channels for coordinating updates across teams. Prioritize Quality Assurance: Maintain a strong focus on quality assurance throughout the update and maintenance process. Implement rigorous testing procedures to identify and address any issues or bugs introduced by updates, ensuring that the app remains stable and functional. Automate Testing Where Possible: Utilize automated testing tools and frameworks to streamline the testing process and identify potential issues more efficiently.

This is very crucial part of any system or app upgrade: Planning Upgrade must be planned well in advance with clear scope and impact analysis And should be announced with consent from all impacted parties like stakeholders, implementation team. A recent incident happend with one of the financial market trading app platform, they did not communicated a critical upgrade with customer and planform was brought down. In consequences, they were imposed with heavy panelty due to loss of customers during market trading hours downtime.

When managing updates for a mobile healthcare app, thorough testing was non-negotiable. We combined unit testing, integration testing, and performance testing to ensure that new updates didn't break existing functionality. I emphasized a mix of manual and automated tests, using emulators and real devices to capture different environments. Usability testing on real devices highlighted a performance issue we missed on simulators. Thanks to this diverse testing approach, we caught critical bugs early, ensuring a smooth update process. It reinforced the importance of testing every angle before releasing updates, especially for apps in sensitive industries.

After releasing a major update for a fitness app, monitoring user feedback became crucial. We closely tracked reviews and ratings on app stores and analyzed analytics data to detect any issues. One major concern was a sudden spike in app crashes on certain devices. By monitoring the crash logs and user complaints, we quickly identified a compatibility issue with a specific OS version. Immediate action was taken, and we pushed a hotfix within days. This experience highlighted how post-release monitoring is essential to maintaining quality and addressing issues swiftly before they escalate.

Realtime analytics platforms such as B2M's Elemez allows one to monitor app, device and network performance 7x24 and proactively spot problems as they occur. This is critical. Our market research shows that while 8 out of 10 frontline workers reports some problem with their mobile device / app each month that keeps them from doing their job, the vast majority of these never report to the help desk. It's critical to have autonomous tools such as Elemez that constantly monitor and report to proactively spot problems as they occur -- especially immediately after an update is made.

After releasing an update, we closely monitored feedback and crash metrics. We noticed users reporting frequent crashes when using a specific feature. By quickly identifying and addressing the issue, we improved the app’s stability and user satisfaction. Monitoring updates helps us ensure high quality and swift problem resolution.

We observed crash metrics and found a bug related to a specific emoji. This helped us quickly identify and fix the issue, improving app stability and user experience.

By adopting a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) approach, we ensure that every feature and update is tested in the appropriate build environment. This process involves automated testing for each build, allowing us to catch and address issues early. Having distinct versioning for each build helps us track which code belongs to which version, making it easier for developers to identify and resolve issues quickly. This method not only speeds up the development process but also improves the overall quality and reliability of our application.

After each update, we review the outcomes and document lessons learned. For instance, fixing a major bug in our last update improved user experience. We share these insights with the team to enhance our processes. This helps us make future updates more efficient and user-friendly.