Creating an App? Here’s How to Speed Up Deployment

Apps have become a part of life – it’s that simple. Everyone either uses an app or knows someone who does. After all, it’s estimated that Americans spend $184 on average per year on applications. It’s safe to say that this is an industry that’ll stay around for quite some time.

But, with such high demand, you might be questioning the profitability of becoming an app developer. You wouldn’t be alone in thinking about it. However, as with anything that is in high demand, speed is a necessity. People want mobile apps that’ll meet their needs, and they want them now. If you take too long, they’ll move on to someone else’s creation.

So, if you do plan on creating an app in the future, you need to be in-the-know. That means learning how to speed up mobile application development and its deployment. You’re in luck – that’s exactly what this post aims to uncover.

Automate with continuous integration and testing

Automate with CI/CD Pipelines

First up, establishing a Continuous Integration (CI) foundation. CI detects problems early on by frequently merging code changes into a shared repository. It is best to use reputable tools at this stage. A tool should automatically compile and package code into deployable artifacts every time a change is pushed.

You’ll also need to run automated tests. A multi-layered testing strategy is best. Include unit tests, integration tests, and static code analysis to cover all bases.

Deployment becomes a well oiled machine

Next, the deployment – also known as Continuous Delivery (CD) – will be automated. There are tools to help with this, too. Such tools will ensure consistency and prevent “it works on my machine” issues, which are quite common. Any successful builds should be deployed to a staging environment – and this must mimic production.

Doing so will enable code to move from development to production automatically. Think of it as a well-oiled machine. As a result, you could be saying “goodbye” to manual, repetitive, and error-prone tasks. And really, what’s not to like about that?

Implement Modern Infrastructure Practices

Code your infrastructure for faster deployments

One the key strategies here is to use Infrastructure as Code (IoC). This allows you to define, provision, and manage infrastructure – load balancers, networks, and VMs – using machine-readable configuration files. Because of this, the most complex infrastructure will be broken down into small, reusable modules to speed up setup for new environments.

It might be useful to consider an immutable infrastructure model as well. This means you do not patch existing servers (“mutable”). Instead, you would create new instances with updates already baked in (“immutable”). Environment consistency is ensured this way, and rollbacks will be instant – much easier.

Adopting modern infrastructure practices – like those mentioned above – is essential. Not only does it speed up deployment by eliminating manual bottlenecks, it also does so through automated tasks and consistency. In the end, where manual provisioning took weeks, automated, self-service infrastructure takes hours or even minutes to complete.

Deliver smaller updates faster with confidence

Ship Smaller, More Frequent Updates

Here, you should also think about continuous delivery – or incremental deployment. This strategy involves deploying functionality or new components in stages, not all at once. Despite it sounding slower, it actually speeds up app deployment by reducing the complexity, manual effort, and risk associated with “big bang” app releases.

While the previous two points in this post will help, you should also decouple deployment from release. This means implementing canary rollouts. Canary rollouts – or gradual rollouts – expose new features to a small percentage of users before the full release. You’ll be able to monitor performance and minimize the impact of potential bugs following this step.

Move fast and delight mobile users

To conclude, mobile apps do take time, but there are proven ways to speed up deployment. Using speed when possible will only improve the chances of success, particularly as users might otherwise find their needs met elsewhere.