Innovation is essential for mobile app development, but it can also introduce risks and bugs that affect the app's stability and performance. How do you balance the need to deliver new features and updates with the demand for a reliable and consistent user experience? In this article, we will explore some strategies and best practices to keep your mobile app stable while innovating.
Version control is a system that tracks and manages the changes made to your app's code over time. It allows you to create different versions of your app, such as development, testing, and production, and switch between them easily. Branching is a feature of version control that lets you create separate copies of your code for different purposes, such as experimenting with new features, fixing bugs, or merging changes. By using version control and branching, you can isolate your innovation efforts from your stable code base, and avoid breaking or conflicting changes.
In my experience I believe 2 things can be done. 1. Use A/B testing that way you can always rollback or test on small groups to reduce the risk 2. Always do the change in chunks rather than doing a big bang. That way you can iterate more quickly.
Stable app is essential for earn customer trust and retention. Things I found useful for Android are During development 1. Maintain backward compatibility 2. Use recommended design patterns like MVVM, MVI 3. Modularization to ensure less dependency and faster releases 4. Using a feature flag controlled by config to enable/disable features Post Development 1. Good code review mechanism 2. Testing on large set of devices, use Firebase Test Lab. 3. Well defined CICD mechanism Launch 1. Gradual launch of app over period of time. 2. A/B testing to make data-driven decisions about features 3. Feedback mechanism using Firebase Crashlytics, Firebase performance etc to find stability and latency to help improve future releases
Make sure you have good processes in place for when it's time to merge your changes back into the main repository. Merging should not be a free-for-all, but a carefully organized process which includes peer code-reviews with one or more other senior *and* junior engineers so everyone gets a chance to learn.
Establish a set of health metrics to monitor, as well as threshold, so when metrics cross them, teams are alerted. This practice forces teams to have an opinion on what good looks like and what trouble looks like as well as builds the habit of keeping a pulse on how things are going.
Build new features or improvements in small increments, implement automated testing, and continuously release via deployment pipelines.
Testing is a crucial step to ensure your app's stability and quality. You should test your app at different stages of development, such as unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing. You should also test your app on different devices, platforms, and scenarios, such as network conditions, battery levels, and permissions. Testing your app thoroughly and frequently will help you identify and fix any issues or errors before they affect your users.
To keep it stable you need a good set of tests that are divided in various sets like: unit tests, ui tests and integration tests. Unit tests ideally should be there from the beginning, as code base is growing, people joining, you forget about things you have done a year ago. With all that more and more things are becoming very complex. A lot of moving pieces written long time ago by people that are not even in the company anymore. Unit tests will give you confidence that the change you made for this new feature won't break anything else. This will allow you to refactor and adapt the code to build those new features. There is nothing worse when you release this new fancy thing and break the app for everyone else. Keep it tested!
You can also test on a larger group of people using the Internal and Beta testing feature of Playstore. If you only want a selected set of people to get access to the latest version of your app before it goes live to everybody, add these users as internal testers on the Playstore and then release the app to the Internal Testing Track. In case you want the real-world users to test it, either release it on Beta track or go for incremental release where you only release 10% of the app, monitor it, fix the issues and release for 20% and so on.
Crash reporting and analytics are tools that collect and analyze data about your app's performance, usage, and errors. They help you monitor your app's stability and identify any problems or opportunities for improvement. Crash reporting tools, such as Firebase Crashlytics or Sentry, can alert you when your app crashes, and provide you with detailed information about the cause, location, and frequency of the crash. Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel, can track and measure your app's user behavior, engagement, and retention. By implementing crash reporting and analytics, you can gain valuable insights into your app's health and user satisfaction.
You can also integrate Firebase performance monitoring library to get a deeper insight into app performance metrics such as frozen frames, api response times, etc
Crashes and bugs can be found in production application, it is necessary to collect and analyse these issues. Some of the major crash/bug reporting tools are, Bugsnag, Sentry. Combining Amplitude (Event/User tracking tool) and any of the above tool will give a well rounded and robust system that gives valuable insights into your app's health and user satisfaction. With this analytics system in place you are sure to be on top of your game.
Feature flags and A/B testing are techniques that allow you to control and experiment with your app's features and updates. Feature flags are switches that enable or disable certain features or functionalities of your app, either globally or for specific segments of users. A/B testing is a method of comparing two or more versions of your app or feature, and measuring their impact on user behavior and outcomes. By using feature flags and A/B testing, you can roll out your innovations gradually and safely, and test their effectiveness and feedback.
Think of feature flags and A/B testing as the levers and dials of your app's evolution. They give you control and insight into how your app changes and grows. Feature flags are like light switches, allowing you to turn on or off specific features for different users. It's like giving some passengers in a car their own adjustable air conditioning. A/B testing, on the other hand, is like trying out different routes on a road trip to see which one gets you to your destination faster. You can compare two or more versions of your app to see what users prefer. By using these techniques, you can roll out new ideas cautiously and measure their impact before making big changes. It's like taking a test drive before committing to a new car.
Use of feature flags and A/B testing is one of the most important tool one can have to introduce new features and innovations. Once we have introduced a cool AI feature that required 3rd party API integration. We released this for 1% of the users to check the adoption and get some feedback. This also gave us an important insight on the possible usage patterns and associated API costs. We could model our budgets and ROI based on this experiment and optimize the API usage based on this experiment.
Coding standards and best practices are guidelines and conventions that help you write clean, consistent, and maintainable code. They cover aspects such as naming, formatting, commenting, structure, and design of your code. By following coding standards and best practices, you can improve your app's stability and readability, and reduce the risk of errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities. You can also use tools such as code linters, formatters, and analyzers to check and enforce your coding standards and best practices.
Best practice is to organize the code in classes, methods and functions, that can be reused in whole project. Following a perfect coding standard and code strategy gives uniform appearance, It improves readability, maintainability and it reduce complexity also. Do not forget to include only required files/libraries in code We don't have to make file/project bulky by including all related libraries. This is the big mistake which many developers are doing. Code and files should be light weight. Don't create lengthy functions. Avoid deep nesting. Write as few lines as possible. Think ?? twice/thrice and code once. ??
Consider coding standards and best practices as the recipe for a delicious dish. Just as a chef follows a recipe to create a masterpiece, developers adhere to these guidelines to craft clean, organized, and reliable code. These standards cover various aspects, from how you name variables to how you structure your code. They serve as the secret ingredients that make your app's code elegant and maintainable. Much like using a grammar checker for writing, there are tools like code linters and formatters that act as quality control for your codebase. They ensure your code aligns with these standards, like a chef's assistant helping you maintain consistency.
Communication and collaboration are key skills for mobile app development, especially when you are innovating and changing your app frequently. You should communicate and collaborate with your team members, such as developers, testers, designers, and product managers, to ensure that everyone is on the same page and aligned with the project goals and requirements. You should also use tools such as project management software, chat platforms, and code review systems to facilitate and streamline your communication and collaboration. By communicating and collaborating with your team, you can improve your app's stability and quality, and avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or delays.
Effective collaboration and communication within the team cannot be overemphasised. We use Agile and Scrum as our development practice. The whole team is in sync with collaboration tools like Teams. All requirements management, planning and bug tracking happen through Jira. Not only the product management, development and QA team - even the App Support team needs to be in sync with the latest development and feature innovations and are equipped with the support SOP/ FAQ etc. And obviously, we keep the customer always in loop even while we are developing thr new features. As part of our Release process and checklist, we ensure that the new feature release goes thorough all these communication checks.
Try using tools like Android profiler, APK Analyser and libraries like Leak canary, Instabug/Bugsnag, etc that will provide you with details about various aspects of the performance of your Android application.
Here are some additional point with the help of ChatGPT :) 1. Maintain a well-structured release management process to control the rollout of new features and bug fixes. 2. If your app relies on external APIs, ensure they are reliable and provide fallback mechanisms in case of failures. Stay up to date with latest version 3. Keep users informed about updates and changes through release notes and in-app messaging. 4. Regularly back up user data to prevent data loss in the event of unexpected issues.Have a robust data recovery plan in place. 5. Stay updated with relevant app store guidelines, privacy regulations, and industry standards to avoid compliance-related issues.