For your organization to grow its market share, your mobile apps must run faster and better than those of your competitors. That means Ops has a major role to play in the mobile revolution. But if you want to be successful, get involved long before it’s time to start monitoring.
Don’t wait for mobile applications to be dropped into your lap. Collaborate with the Apps team from the outset to make monitoring easier—and start by asking these six questions.
Discussion Points for Better Collaboration
For every application your organization wants to create, sit down with the developers and have a planning discussion guided by the best practices that will serve each team—and your customers. Here’s what to cover:
What kind of app will it be?
Native or browser-based? Will you offer both and let customers choose? These application types require different monitoring techniques. When monitoring browser-based apps, you should consider how the user experiences the service from a native application and from the browser. If accessed from a browser, does the entire page render? How long does it take? Does it perform differently from one device to another?
What platforms will native apps run on?
Applications can be platform-agnostic or come in multiple versions for different operating systems. You’ll need to know what kinds of devices you’ll be monitoring so you can prepare to slice and dice performance data accordingly.
Will the app enable users to move through a single process using multiple devices?
For example, will users be able to place items in their shopping carts in the native iPhone app and then complete the transaction on the website via their laptops? You must be prepared to monitor processes not only on mobile devices but also as they cross devices, websites and servers.
What network types will the apps run over?
You need to be able to effectively emulate various bandwidth rates, since your end users may be using the varying bandwidths of 3G, 4G, EDGE and Wi-Fi connections.
How will the Apps team get feedback about the application in production?
Mobile applications frequently are updated and patched to address issues encountered by end users. Make sure you and the applications team understand how you will get feedback about the application.
Will performance testing account for the end user experience?
Your team will end up monitoring the end user experience, so you need to know that the app was working properly before it was deployed. Talk about reusing performance testing scripts in monitoring production apps.
Aruna Ravichandran is Vice President, Product and Solution Marketing, Application Performance Management and DevOps, CA Technologies.