The downsides of a shared mobile architecture
In my previous article we talked about all of the benefits I found when my team decided to design a new feature with the same architecture on both Android and iOS. In this article, I will do the opposite and show you all of the downsides of this approach.
Nothing is perfect and it felt right to share with you not only the number of benefits we had using this approach but also the downsides and the problems we faced. As a bonus, I will also try to give you some tips on how to overcome some of these problems.
In this article, I will tell you about the problems we had and we can put them in 2 different categories: People & Processes problems and Technology problems. You might be surprised to see a bigger focus on the first category compared to the second one. This is something that every developer discovers the more senior he/she becomes. People & Processes problems are usually much harder and delicate to solve than Technology problems (I am generalizing a bit here, I’m sure it’s different at NASA).
When deciding to develop something with a unified architecture the first issue that you will face is pushback from others. Why? Because not always people are open to change. it’s almost certain that the new way of doing things will require developers from either one platform or in some cases, both platforms, to do things differently. People in your team will certainly ask you “Why should I do things differently? The way we do things now works just fine”.
