Signs it is time to revisit native and cross-platform mobile

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. A few signals that native and cross-platform mobile is due some attention.

The version of the app your customers are running is rarely the one you just shipped. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Cross-platform is a team decision as much as a technical one
• Heavy device integration still favours native

Where to start

Shipping one codebase badly is worse than two well. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The short version

You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. Three things worth confirming about native and cross-platform mobile before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Shipping one codebase badly is worse than two well — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.