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As a leader of a software engineering team, you’ve likely witnessed the growing complexity firsthand. What began as relatively straightforward development has evolved into an intricate system of tools, frameworks, and processes that can significantly impact your team’s productivity. You’re not alone in facing this challenge.

The good news is that there’s a proven solution: building a dedicated Developer Experience (DevEx) team. Let’s explore why these teams are essential and how to construct one effectively.

In the fast-paced world of mobile development, efficiency is key. As your iOS app grows and your team scales, managing continuous integration (CI) processes can become increasingly complex. Enter the humble Makefile – a powerful tool that can revolutionize your CI workflow. In this article, we’ll explore how platform teams can leverage Makefiles to streamline iOS CI, boost productivity, and maintain consistency across large-scale projects.

The CI Conundrum in iOS Development

Before we dive into the solution, let’s address the elephant in the room: iOS CI can be a pain. As your codebase expands and your team grows, you might find yourself grappling with:

Swift Package Manager is a powerful solution for managing dependencies and creating modular apps. Over the years, Xcode support for SwiftPM has gradually improved, streamlining the development workflow. In Xcode 13, discovering and managing third-party Swift packages became a little easier with the introduction of Swift Package Collections.

A Package Collection is a JSON file that describes a curated list of packages that can be shared directly or online. It can also be signed to prevent tampering. Collections can be a great way to share dependencies across an organization or make frequently used packages more accessible.

One of the things I love about software development is that there is always more to learn. This is especially true as a Swift developer with Apple releasing new versions of tools and frameworks every year, in addition to an endless number of open-source projects.

Fortunately, the Swift community is also good about sharing this knowledge and experience to help each other grow. As a result, there is a lot of great content to choose from to improve your Swift development skills. These are a few of my favorite picks.