Scaling Mobile at REA
Over the last 9 years, REA's native mobile development has grown from a small team off to the side to an important company-wide channel. In a world where almost every new product needs a presence in our mobile apps, we've been making changes to allow us to build for mobile at scale.
REA has effectively scaled technology through practices like microservices, micro frontends and continuous delivery. While these all look different for mobile apps, there are elements of each that we have adapted and applied with good effect. We are applying a software architecture, as well as building out mobile platform capability to help us effectively deliver new mobile experiences weekly with many independent teams involved.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
Scaling technology at REA
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REA's technology capability has grown to over 500 people across 50 teams, while it's mobile development capability was largely centralised
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We'll look at what worked on this journey and how it applies to mobile, and where the same principles do not apply
Bringing mobile into the fold
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Initiatives we've put in place to make mobile a normal part of all software development at REA
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A focus on mobile training, mobile tooling and mobile architecture
Applying a mobile platform approach
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Make building and releasing apps as easy as clicking a button
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Free mobile developers to focus on building great features
A microservice mindset for mobile development
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Use shared mobile libraries to solve common problems once
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Build flexible integrations with remote config and web views
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Using a plugin architecture to allow different teams to own their content
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Integrating components and releasing weekly
Scaled mobile development
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We've gone from a single team building one app to many teams contributing to 3 main apps
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Using a federated delivery model to allow these teams to work together
Learning Outcome
You'll learn about the unique challenges in scaling mobile development, as well the mistakes we made along the way, including areas like:
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Applying a microservice mindset to mobile apps
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Useful approaches to maintain flexibility in shared components
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An understanding of continuous integration in a walled app store world
Target Audience
Developers, Tech Leads, Engineering Managers
Prerequisites for Attendees
This talk focused on mobile app patterns and solutions at an architectural and organisation level, but does not require any specific knowledge of iOS or Android development. The examples are general and approachable to developers as well as non-technical roles.
Links
Scaling mobile app development at REA (YOW CTO Summit, 2018), https://yowconference.com/talks/stewart-gleadow/yow-cto-summit-2018-melbourne/scaling-mobile-app-development-at-rea-8068
Apps and APIs: Best friends forever (Agile Australia, 2016), http://www.agileaustralia.com.au/2016/topics/#apps-and-apis-best-friends-forever
No App Is An Island (YOW Perth, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVfRftnOBqQ
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