Top mobile CI/CD challenges in app development lifecycle: A beginner’s guide

The mobile app development ecosystem has witnessed a significant transformation recently due to the rapid adoption of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices. 

In its "Magic Quadrant for Application Release Orchestration" report, Gartner predicted that businesses implementing robust CI/CD workflows will witness a 75% reduction in their time-to-market and a staggering 80% decline in post-deployment defects.

Interestingly,  the harmonious integration of CI/CD practices within the mobile app development lifecycle unlocks fast release rates, reduces costs, improves DevOps efficiency, and eliminates risks. The CI/CD approach is the centerpiece of new uninterrupted mobile experiences, underlining a dramatic shift towards more scalable mobile applications. It automates mobile app development by compiling codes, running tests, and generating installable artifacts.

With businesses demanding more efficiency, continuous integration implementation ensures superior code quality for multiple mobile app developers by quickly streamlining the merging of multiple code sets into a shared repository. It also bridges the gap between conflicts and integration issues.

The mobile CI/CD enforces code quality standards and saves up to 20% of mobile app development company time through accelerated iteration cycles, heightened quality assurance, and seamless deployments. The approach works on ground levels and solves problems associated with formatting, static analysis, and coding conventions. As a result, the businesses unlock mobile CI/CD pipeline benefits like

• Improved consistency and maintainability
• Faster feedback loops enabled by automation
• Quickly identification of bugs
• Better deployment performance across all metrics
• Streamlined release management
• Standardized and automated workflow
• Faster delivery cycles
• Improved code quality

Furthermore, when Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment practices are implemented in the mobile app development lifecycle, deploying apps to various environments becomes quite easy, with a greater reduction in manual dependency. Over-the-air (OTA) updates facilitated by CI/CD pipelines enable beta testing and staged rollouts, gathering real user feedback for rapid iterations.

However, the mobile app development lifecycle performance tends to suffer when businesses fail to address mobile CI/CD challenges efficiently, pointing to major disruptions. Let’s quickly look at the main culprits and how to solve them using must-know solutions.

Major mobile CI/CD challenges in the mobile app development lifecycle

1. Integration challenges

Integration issues are always a thorny issue whenever applying CI/CD pipelines to software development projects and are often the root causes of delays. The first and most common complexity is agile testing, as the agile development process demands frequent and intensive testing. However, it may take some work to incorporate testing into the pipeline. A possible way to address this could be to include an agile testing tool that fits perfectly into the pipeline and make testing automatic to provide quick feedback.

Toolchain incompatibility is another integration problem in mobile app development when CI/CD approaches are deployed. One issue is that one team uses one tool, and another team uses another tool, making it difficult to integrate these into a pipeline. A solution to this is to ensure that tools used in this process are interoperable or find other means of translating between tools. You can also replace the toolset with solutions from the same vendor, but this increases your dependence on one company.

Next in line is configuration management. The problem with the various tools is that they have different configurations and, thus, need to synchronize better. This challenge can be addressed by making the configuration parameters uniform across applications, including file extensions, APIs, and data schema.

2. Scalability challenges

The CI/CD pipelines face various issues, but the main one that strikes at the core of the concept is Scalability; it proves to be a huge challenge as improper growth handling can be time-consuming.

When working with numerous development teams and increasingly establishing software projects, it is critical to guarantee that the pipeline can handle the upswing in volume. The first and significant concern is capacity: what happens when the traffic increases, in terms of the quadruple of infrastructure required by video, where cloud services with auto-scaling can present a feasible option.

Moreover, with an increasing number of tasks in the pipeline, an efficient distribution of resources in the pipeline study can be complicated, so containerization tools such as docker and Kubernetes are used to improve resource use efficiency. Dean and colleagues state that KPI limitations may also emerge at the pipeline level, and overall performance often needs to be subjected to load testing; based on the results obtained, appropriate optimization steps must be taken.

Furthermore, the upturned complexity increases the probability of security threats and breaches, giving credence to ensuring that all aspects of the pipeline, including the third-party tools and services, are well secured. When properly implemented and accompanied by the right endorsements of various cloud services, containerization load testing that is well realized, and proper information security measures, upscale CI/CD pipelines can help organizations overcome scalability challenges and support burgeoning development teams and ever-growing software projects.

3. Test automation challenges

Test automation, a core component of CI/CD practices, is a promising strategy with multiple benefits for engineers. However, that is only part of the story: It is crucial to discuss how its practical application and continuous refinement can exacerbate problems within an engineering team. Standing in the way is a major limitation: updating and sorting out the test cases is an arduous and complicated task that may take a considerable amount of time.

Another possible challenge that some people need help to overcome is the development of proper, efficient test scripts, especially when working with large and complicated applications. In addition, problems with compatibility can arise while installing and integrating test automation tools with other components into the pipeline. The testing environment is normally complex and challenging, and the process of setting up and running the environment itself can be a very time-consuming and complex task as well.

To overcome these challenges, CI/CD engineers need to have an overall blueprint and a plan for introducing the test automation process. This involves properly identifying suitable tools, updating the testing case or script well, and ensuring compatibility when merging with other tools in the process. By dealing with these issues effectively, organizations can benefit from the possibility of increasing the functionality of test automation and achieving maximum positive results by using the analyzed strategies.

If you need help dealing with this CI/CD challenge during the mobile app development process, Kellton can help. We solve the complexity by combining user-friendly GUI with sophisticated administrative functionalities so that managing the testing tasks becomes easier and more efficient.

4. Security challenges

Security testing is a comprehensive yet essential process that must be followed periodically to detect various flaws attackers can exploit and resolve before they can be leveraged. Security monitoring needs to be made known as often as possible to determine if a prone place is susceptible to an attack and avert any vulnerability that may have been realized. If these complex issues are managed ahead of time, organizations can improve the rein quantification, robustness, and security of their continuing deployment.

Continuous deployment in the mobile app development ecosystem is compounded with numerous threats in terms of

• security and monitoring
• compatibility and scalability issues
• test and deployment issues
• communication compliance
• rollback management

The accessibility issue remains another challenge. Compatibility with the current systems and the preexisting structures remains a problem area that requires much planning and coordination. To cope, businesses need to ensure that the mobile application performs optimally with large traffic and intensified workload.

Quality assurance is also crucial to ensure the advanced code functions as planned, meets required standards, and has been tested rigorously. Communication is also paramount when supporting the coordination of activities between different teams and with other groups of stakeholders because it ensures timely evaluation and resolution of emerging issues.

Another crucial factor that should be considered is the ability to meet compliance and regulatory considerations when doing the deployment, especially when the deployment is to be done in a highly regulatory business or sensitive areas. In addition, it is crucial to address potential threats and failure concerns related to the deployment and devise foolproof rollback and disaster recovery processes in case of any inconvenience.

Security challenges within continuous deployment can be categorized into three key areas: less prone to vulnerabilities by employing practical coding standards and continuously undertaking security testing and vulnerability checks.

Applying secure coding can be difficult as most developers and teams are concentrated on creating new functions and capabilities. However, it is crucial to consider the principles of secure coding and practice them alongside the approach that delivers new features.

5. Monitoring challenges

Monitoring efforts are strenuous because ‘keeping an eye’ on software after its release, especially complex systems or applications across multiple environments, can be challenging. When it comes to monitoring CI/CD processes, some of the most common challenges include the ones related to distributed systems and how to keep synchrony when dealing with multiple environments.

Supervising fine-grained distributed systems is challenging since isolating the problem in complex and distributed systems is only sometimes straightforward. These systems have many subsystems and interactions, making the root cause of a problem very difficult to identify, especially when it is a system failure or slowdown.

Moreover, managing applications across development, staging, and production environments adds another layer of complexity to the problem. Dealing with these different areas can sometimes make it challenging to maintain consistency of behavior, performance, and compliance with expectations. Small differences in structure, dependencies, or environment can lead to inconsistencies that are hard to identify and correct.

To address these monitoring challenges, one needs to employ a multi-faceted and sound strategy that entails harnessing state-of-the-art monitoring solutions, established best practices, and systematic approaches tailored to the nature of the monitored systems and applications. Monitoring strategies must include identifying problems and providing mechanisms for identifying and correcting these problems with a fast turnaround time to enable deployed software to function efficiently in the requisite environments.

Streamline your mobile CI/CD process with Kellton

Ready to overcome the challenges in your mobile CI/CD process? Kellton provides end-to-end mobile app development services, focusing on seamless integration, continuous testing, and rapid deployment. With our expertise in agile development and commitment to innovation, Kellton can be your trusted partner for delivering high-quality mobile applications efficiently.

At Kellton, our team has helped Asia's largest passenger airline enhance user experience and navigate sluggish UI/UX performance. By delivering a holistic solution powered by a new payment gateway and updated architectural frameworks like Model-view-view-model (MVVM), Kellton helped this company reduce the application's crash rate to less than 0.2% and generate revenue from the mobile app from 3% to over 6% while addressing complexities like delayed payments, downtime, and user experience issues.

Book your consultation session with our expert today and discover how Kellton can streamline your mobile development and boost your app’s success.