Mobile release cadence: the questions we get asked most

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. The questions about mobile release cadence that come up most often on our calls.

You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Do we need to care about this?

Users on old versions are your compatibility floor. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped.

How do we know it is working?

Force-upgrade prompts should be a last resort. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The short version

Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Three things worth confirming about mobile release cadence before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Force-upgrade prompts should be a last resort — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.