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Banking on Efficiency: Ziraat Teknoloji Achieves a Seamless and Fully Optimized Mobile App Pipeline with Appcircle
Discover Ziraat Teknoloji's mobile app development transformation with Appcircle and the efficiency and security gains from DevOps principles
Overview
Ziraat Teknoloji, one of the largest IT companies in Turkey, serves Turkey’s leading bank Ziraat Bank and 15 different subsidiaries within Ziraat Finance Group in 18 different countries with more than 1200 employees with the principle of “Technology for More”.
Always seeking to provide the best customer experience for all Ziraat Finance Group subsidiaries, Ziraat Teknoloji continuously invests in innovation and technology. It develops various mobile applications for different subsidiaries, most notably Ziraat Bank Mobile Banking Application. Ziraat Mobile, the flagship of mobile banking, has over 50 million downloads and ranks first in the finance category with tens of millions of active users.
Witnessing the transformative impact of our mobile app development journey with Appcircle has been nothing short of remarkable for us. Embracing DevOps principles has not only streamlined our processes but has fundamentally elevated the efficiency and security of our mobile app pipeline.
The integration of a fully-automated best-practice pipeline, enriched with DevOps wisdom, has enabled us to push the boundaries of innovation while maintaining the stability and compatibility demanded by our vast user base. The gains from this strategic partnership with Appcircle are beyond quantitative -they represent a paradigm shift in how we approach mobile development.
SĂĽleyman YĂĽksel
DevOps Manager
Challenges
As a leader in many fields, Ziraat Teknoloji committed to maintaining maximum stability and compatibility for its wide user base with the mobile applications and services it develops.
Ziraat Teknoloji’s mobile apps serve to tens of millions of users, demanding a deliberate balance between innovation and stability. Operating on such a colossal scale comes with its own set of challenges for Ziraat Teknoloji.
Previously, Ziraat Teknoloji’s mobile development team encountered significant challenges in the mobile app pipeline. For instance, they could only push and build one or two release items each day due to the complex processes of building and testing the app.
DevOps Team-Mobile Know-How, Mobile Team-DevOps Know-How Dilemma
Just like many enterprises, the DevOps team is highly specialized and adept in the CI/CD processes of vast backend systems. However, the implementation of mobile DevOps requires a totally different set of knowledge and perspective, which can unintentionally lead to the mobile development team taking on additional tasks.
Similarly, the mobile team, with limited knowledge and experience in DevOps, made suboptimal decisions while setting up and maintaining the mobile app pipelines. This dilemma highlighted the need for a cohesive approach and expertise bridging the gap between “Mobile” and “DevOps”.
Testing and Release Complexities
The applications needed to be tested across three backend environments without incurring any regressions or compatibility issues. The build pipeline was not seamless and experienced interruptions, necessitating manual interventions. Multiple quality control checkpoints additionally extended the testing process, worsening delays each time an issue emerged.
Adding to the complexity were prioritization conflicts among release requests. Feature requests from various departments and critical app fixes with varying levels of urgency were overlapping, leading to sudden replacements in the pipeline. A feature in progress might be superseded by another or a high-priority fix, prompting a complete reset of the release and testing process with a new codebase.
The testing of distribution created challenges as it required manual app deployments and depended on an independent and external authentication system, which in turn posed a higher risk of unauthorized distribution of pre-release versions.
Hardware Maintenance for High-Volume Build Machines
In the past, managing a high number of build machines, especially those running macOS, posed a considerable challenge for the Mobile team at Ziraat Teknoloji. The complexity of maintaining and managing hardware resources for numerous build jobs was a constant struggle. The complexities of macOS systems, in particular, added an extra layer of difficulty, consuming valuable time and resources.
Pipeline Governance
Ziraat Teknoloji grappled with the challenge of maintaining governance over numerous apps in development and maintenance. These apps were intermingled in a single pipeline, lacking sufficient access control restrictions. At certain points in the pipeline, all apps became accessible in a shared pool.
While this setup did not result in major issues within the team or for the company, it deviated from DevOps best practices and the high standards expected from such a distinguished institution.
Results
Ziraat Teknoloji undertook a transformative journey, establishing a seamless, best-practice pipeline with Appcircle.
Fully Automated Best-Practice Pipeline
The Git flow was fully implemented with best practices at every step in the pipeline, and the automated workflow operates as follows:
- Feature or Fix Push:Â When a feature or fix is pushed, a new branch is created, initiating a workflow designed for automated quality checks for each change:
- Automatic configuration for development environment.
- Automated signing with developer certificates.
- Size change checks to detect unexpected alterations.
- Permission checks to identify unexpected permission requirements.
- Code quality control with SonarQube.
- Pre-Release Build:Â Upon successful completion of all automated checkpoints, the code change is moved to a pre-release branch and automatically built with an internal release-specific workflow:
- Automatic configuration for test environment.
- Automated signing with developer or internal distribution certificates.
- Automated build number increase for version tracking.
- Security checks with Fortify.
- Automated deployment for testing distribution, including auto-generated release notes.
- Release Batch:Â Subsequently, the change is moved to a release branch, possibly alongside other changes, and automatically built with a release batch (sprint) workflow:
- Automatic configuration for pre-production environment.
- Automated signing with internal distribution certificates.
- Automated deployment to the testing automation platform and auto-initiation of tests.
- Automated deployment to testing distribution for select user groups.
- Final Release:Â Upon approval following thorough checks and tests, the change is finally moved to the ultimate release branch for app store deployment:
- Automatic configuration for production environment.
- Automated signing with public distribution certificates.
- Automated deployment to Google Play Dashboard and App Store Connect for store releases or external testing.
Increased Project Isolation and Distribution Security
In addition to establishing best-practice pipelines, Ziraat Teknoloji took significant steps to enhance project isolation and distribution security.
Implementing LDAP login for Testing Distribution marks a crucial improvement. This implementation provides Ziraat Teknoloji with comprehensive control over user access to different releases and tracks who downloaded which -binary. The adoption of LDAP not only fortified security but also introduced flexibility to the release distributions, aligning with the evolving needs of the company.
A parallel improvement was applied to project pipelines. Each project now enjoys a fully independent pipeline featuring separate workflows, build machines, distribution targets, and access groups. This strategic move toward project isolation is instrumental in minimizing security risks and error rates. Apps are no longer intermingled in a shared pipeline, ensuring a more controlled and efficient development and deployment process.
Increased Hardware Efficiency and Reduced Maintenance
With Appcircle’s comprehensive build automation, which also covers the management of build machines for each build job, the need for managing and maintaining a fleet of build machines has been virtually eliminated. Appcircle seamlessly takes over the build jobs, becoming the centralized hub for our entire build process.
This solution especially streamlines the management of macOS systems but also extends to all mobile app build environments. The efficiency gains are remarkable, as Appcircle handles all the complexities of the build process, leaving the hardware resources free from the burden of constant maintenance.
As a result, the DevOps team at Ziraat Teknoloji can now reallocate precious resources that were previously dedicated to hardware maintenance towards more strategic and value-driven tasks.
DevOps-Infused Efficiency Gains
By fully automating the mobile app deployment pipeline, which previously required multiple rebuilds and numerous checks, Ziraat Teknoloji achieved significant resource savings exceeding 36%. This automation also introduced new controls that were previously unavailable due to the manual nature of the pipeline before Appcircle.
The result is a bank operating at the cutting edge of efficiency and quality in mobile app development, thanks to the infusion of DevOps best practices through Appcircle.
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