Is your app ready for the future? We’re talking about scalability, which refers to your app’s ability to handle the increasing demands of a growing user-base and integrate the new features and updates it will need to stay relevant.
Test the Limits, Find the Bottleneck and Fix
What is your app’s breaking point? Being ready for the demand spikes, which ensue from user growth is incredibly important. The only way to determine what your app can handle under increased demand is to load test it.
Load testing puts demand on an app and measures response times, network/memory usage, throughput rates, resource consumption and crashes during is various functional stages to identify its breaking points, their reasons and how to overcome them.
The methodology is simple; increase load until measurable breakdown. Make a software or hardware/virtual resource change while keeping the rest of your app’s components the same and continue with load-test elimination until you find the bottleneck.
As you can imagine, scalability testing is not an inexpensive proposition. Make sure you negotiate its inclusion into your developer agreements, including its completion pre-launch.
Is Your App Ready for Updates and Expanded Features?
App scalability also references its ability to be expanded to incorporate new features, integrate with third-party applications and implement updates. Ensure your developer codes your app to accommodate these inevitable changes and improvements.
Why it Matters
Aside from achieving an optimal build in advance, scalability becomes crucial when it matters most – i.e. if your app finally begins to succeed, dealing with the increased influx of traffic and being able to pivot or add features becomes more important than ever.
Closing Remarks
When scalable, your app can accommodate growth while continuing to ensure a good user experience throughout. Do not wait until success happens; you may not get another chance.
