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Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

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Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#21

Post by gsavit »

an_opabinia wrote: post #20
gsavit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Runway doesn't actually rely on fastlane, we're interacting directly with the App Store Connect API. So, to the extent Apple avoids breaking things on their own API, Runway should remain operational! In terms of config and checkboxes through the submission process, Runway allows you to set defaults so you should be able to set and forget. Of course, Apple does sometimes introduce new requirements and new checkboxes -…

> Of course, Apple does sometimes introduce new requirements and new checkboxes - we plan to help surface those changes to teams. People who got this far in the thread probably thought, "Yeah, but things like the Encryption Export Compliance checkbox, that's such a nuisance, Apple breaks your automation over stuff that is basically never material." Which is sort of the opposite of what's going on in the flows I saw o…

I think it's a good point. Down the road it could be smart to explore an expanded idea of release defaults and the ability to assume away new questions about edge cases that show up in the flow. For now, we're committed to having Runway perform reliably and safely - which to start with means being explicit about options/changes that occur on a third party provider's side.

In general, my opinion (or Runway's!) isn't as important as factors on the customer side - types of apps, industries/verticals, team makeup - which are likely to make a difference in which checkboxes and options are considered important or not. It probably makes sense to include those factors when thinking about how we can further streamline everyone's release process in the future.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#22

Post by mitko »

gsavit wrote: post #4
sanjayio wrote: post #3

We’ve been using Runway at ClassPass for the last several months. The engineers love it, we can create a release in one click, not to mention improved coordination. The possibility of having an automated RC cut is exciting. How’d the team land on savings of $50k/year?

We started with some napkin math, graduated to a complicated spreadsheet, and then tried to distill that into this rough calculator: https://runway.team/release-cost-calculator . General idea was to capture the cost of wasted time spent coordinating and herding cats instead of doing real work! We think there are even more hidden costs not captured here though - e.g. upkeep for in-house tooling or effort spent onboard…

Seems about right ballpark, if not undercounting it.

My team doesn't releases a mobile client but we release desktop client / chrome extensions every week. It takes about a day of work for an engineer to go through the builds, QA, prepare notes, check the status of things in flight that are trying to land in there, fix some related bugs and so on. And that is with a lot of automation we have. It is also a big distraction from other work, so the opportunity cost is quite high too.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#23

Post by goodcjw2 »

gsavit wrote: post #16
goodcjw2 wrote: post #14

Neat! Looks like a great release tool. I'm wondering whether there is a specific reason to mobile apps? Would be nice if all releases (web, mobile, etc) can be going through the same pipeline. After all, those "people-centric" tasks are generally applicable to other projects as well.

Some aspects of mobile (e.g. deploying binary, dealing with app stores) make it a more gated and complicated process. That, coupled with our team's domain experience in mobile, led us to focus there to start with. But you're totally right - there's a lot of overlap with any kind of deployment and we have an eye towards a future where Runway is the single place where teams ship everything they need to ship. Plus, ther…

+1000 to focus on mobile first. Totally understandable :)

That being said, I think "more gated and complicated process" are the key here. Guess it's easy for web/backend developers to hold to the key and deploy as they see needed.

But for mobile, there are typically only a small set of gatekeeper at the entire company had the key to publish a new release to AppStore/PlayStore. Thus the more process is required.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#24

Post by vosper »

> We built Runway to connect all those dots. It pulls in all Jira tickets and code relevant to the release, side-by-side, to surface and resolve any out-of-sync tickets or code. You can set up custom, interactive checklists with item-specific owners to replace the monster Google spreadsheet, and our Slack integration will ping the appropriate people or notify everyone when important milestones happen. Design/marketing can enter ‘What’s New’ release notes directly in Runway for all localizations (with a handy list of new features in the release to reference) without you having to hunt them down. Plus, Runway helps teams maintain good workflow hygiene by automatically tagging releases in GitHub and applying missing labels to Jira tickets.

How do people do all this for plain web-apps, deployed on a cloud? I don't do anything with mobile apps, and this all sounds great - especially the non-code stuff, like Jira integration and checklists.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#25

Post by gsavit »

vosper wrote: post #24

> We built Runway to connect all those dots. It pulls in all Jira tickets and code relevant to the release, side-by-side, to surface and resolve any out-of-sync tickets or code. You can set up custom, interactive checklists with item-specific owners to replace the monster Google spreadsheet, and our Slack integration will ping the appropriate people or notify everyone when important milestones happen. Design/marketin…

We're happy to hear this sounds appealing even in a non-mobile context! While some of the friction and pain points that Runway aims to solve are especially acute for mobile, it's true that releases are often a problem area for web as well, especially in team settings. We definitely have the idea of applying Runway beyond mobile in the back of our mind!

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#26

Post by tomasreimers »

gregdoesit wrote: post #19
goodcjw2 wrote: post #14

Neat! Looks like a great release tool. I'm wondering whether there is a specific reason to mobile apps? Would be nice if all releases (web, mobile, etc) can be going through the same pipeline. After all, those "people-centric" tasks are generally applicable to other projects as well.

In my experience, mobile is a completely different beast compared to web thanks to things like: - You ship a binary that you cannot revert. Mistakes are very expensive: which is not the case for web. - The App Store review process. - Localization often being shipped with the binary (and you can’t fix it once shipped) - The business impact for mobile apps can be large: your highest value customers often use the native…

++ to this. Mobile is impossible to revert and hotfixes are orders of magnitude slower than web.

There are tactics to try and get it to look more similar (such as using RN, or making heavy use of feature flags), but ultimately app store review makes it a different beast.

This is why we built Screenplay (https://screenplay.dev/): to make mobile reversible and try to get releases to look more like web.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#27

Post by trekirkman »

danpalmer wrote: post #5

This looks great for medium-large size teams, but I've often found these sorts of tools to not have the same impact in smaller teams where communication and processes are a bit leaner and requirements simpler. Is this a market you're aiming for, and how do you think Runway suits small teams? Related, I often find pricing doesn't scale down well for smaller teams (for understandable reasons!). What sort of ballpark ar…

Fwiw we're on the smaller side (~17 people, 3 mobile eng) and have been loving Runway for months. I definitely expect the impact will scale with our team size, but it's already been a no-brainer win for us.

When we started, we had a 100% founder-led development/releases process, and the Runway team was pretty hands on in helping us level up. Spending less founder time/thought on releases has been extremely high leverage.

Two other top of mind benefits so far have been a) increased visibility with our ops team (we're very ops/field heavy), and b) improved QA consistency with the release checklist feature.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#28

Post by ditn »

This is very very cool and I'm excited to eventually get access to it. I'd love to see a Crashlytics integration so that we can also use Runway to monitor post-release health in one place - looks like maybe you thought about this as I can see Firebase support is coming.

Anyway good luck with this and I look forward to giving it a spin.

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#29

Post by gsavit »

ditn wrote: post #28

This is very very cool and I'm excited to eventually get access to it. I'd love to see a Crashlytics integration so that we can also use Runway to monitor post-release health in one place - looks like maybe you thought about this as I can see Firebase support is coming. Anyway good luck with this and I look forward to giving it a spin.

Post-release monitoring and metrics is definitely an area of big interest for us as well! We’re excited to flesh out that part of the platform. Also the idea of release-to-release intelligence, so your team can see how things track over time and make sure your release practice and performance trend in a good direction.

Do reach out so we can get you set up with access :)

Re: Launch HN: Runway (YC W21) – Easier iOS and Android app releases for teams

#30

Post by ditn »

gsavit wrote: post #29
ditn wrote: post #28

This is very very cool and I'm excited to eventually get access to it. I'd love to see a Crashlytics integration so that we can also use Runway to monitor post-release health in one place - looks like maybe you thought about this as I can see Firebase support is coming. Anyway good luck with this and I look forward to giving it a spin.

Post-release monitoring and metrics is definitely an area of big interest for us as well! We’re excited to flesh out that part of the platform. Also the idea of release-to-release intelligence, so your team can see how things track over time and make sure your release practice and performance trend in a good direction. Do reach out so we can get you set up with access :)

That sounds brilliant. I've signed up for access and will wait patiently.
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