DevOps: Software & Pipelines for mobile development teams

Scripts allow you to:

• Implement a CI/CD pipeline.

• Automate certificate management.

• Build configuration files.

Having the above is not just a point of discussion anymore; it's a prerequisite.

Comments we often hear:

• "We don’t need it right now. We can manage manually."

• "Isn't that excessive for a single app?"

• "We can perform all our testing in one environment."

Disclaimer: If you or your team is working on, or beginning with, one or multiple software applications, I assume these are related to business operations. If not, I presume they don't generate revenue or reduce costs in any significant manner.

After a team establishes a product and a structured process around it (whether for release, testing, or debugging), the next step is automation. It's not only the business logic in code that can affect your app. Misconfigurations can be even more damaging. A CI/CD pipeline addresses this concern.

Another perspective: Changes are time-sensitive. The more changes there are to integrate, the more the time window expands, sometimes even exponentially [O(n^2)]. Efficient tests instill confidence in the viability of a new release.

Tips + Benefits:

• Adopt current agile practices; configuration file reviews can avoid detecting issues in config files

• automation process; it helps reduce human error in resource provisioning and ensures consistent deployments

• Secrets Management: manage connection strings, keys, secrets, and certificates within tools provided by the CI system and manage them per environment

• Access Control: you get the benefit by using manage identities or service accounts to automate resource provisioning

• Avoid configuration drift; inconsistent deployments

The pipeline is so important in mobile that even Apple created one, XCode Cloud 👩‍💻 ☁️

Any CI/CD is better than no CI/CD - StackOverflow

"Profiles," "certificates," and "tokens" might seem like interchangeable terms, but they are distinct from one another. For simplicity, I will refer to them as "certs." It's beneficial for the team to download the same certs. Without this consistency, there can be confusion and a lack of organization. A tip to avoid such issues is to use Fastlane 🚇. Many teams at various companies, including Google, utilize it.

As for DevOps, it is not just a methodology, a single software tool, or a specific role/task.

… You can fix the problem at the source, by focusing relentlessly on the length of time between when a line of code is written and when it is fully deployed to production …- stackoverflow Fullfillng the promise of CICD