Mike Vizard summarizes the results of a survey among mobile engineers, revealing key obstacles in release management processes and emphasizing the urgent need for DevOps-driven improvements.

Survey Reveals Major Challenges in Mobile Application Release Management

Author: Mike Vizard

Introduction

Mobile engineers face ongoing challenges in managing application releases, according to a survey of 300 engineers in the US and UK working at medium-to-large organizations. Key pain points include wasting hours on low-value manual tasks, inefficient coordination, and frequent process bottlenecks that reduce engineering productivity.

Survey Highlights

  • Release Inefficiencies: Engineers spend an average of five hours per release on manual and coordination tasks, equating to 130 wasted engineering hours per developer per year.
  • Incident Frequency: 77% of teams experience incidents leading to delays or hotfixes every three to five releases.
  • Firefighting vs. Feature Work: 86% of teams spend significant time resolving issues rather than building features.
  • Perception of Risk: Despite these problems, most participants feel their current processes are unlikely to cause major setbacks, although 17% worry about missed deadlines or delayed features.
  • Efficiency Ratings: Only 11% believe their process is “very efficient,” with most reporting non-productive time occupying much of the release cycle.
  • Centralized Coordination: Two-thirds of participants agree that improved central coordination would positively impact process efficiency.

Commentary and Analysis

According to Runway CEO Gabriel Savit, teams are not keeping pace with the growing demand for mobile app development, mainly due to a lack of automation and observability. Most rely on generic project management and communication tools—Jira/Asana (81%), Slack (68%), CI/CD tools (53%), and even spreadsheets (47%)—to coordinate releases.

Top Frustrations

  • Manual steps (49%)
  • Context switching (42%)
  • Cross-functional coordination (41%)
  • Communication and process gaps contributing to 63% of uncaught issues

Implications for DevOps

As more mobile apps are built—especially with AI-driven development accelerating—release management challenges will become more acute. Organizations need to rethink workflows, invest in automation, and improve visibility to maintain quality while increasing the speed of delivery.

Conclusions

The survey suggests that improving DevOps practices, centralizing release coordination, and automating repetitive tasks are essential next steps for engineering teams. The choice facing organizations is whether to address these issues proactively or wait for more disruptive setbacks as development speeds up.

Original article by Mike Vizard. Survey conducted by Runway.

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