What is a 12-Factor App Methodology for Mobile App Development?

The 12-factor App Methodology is a guideline for creating portable, robust, and scalable SaaS apps. Businesses can create apps that provide a positive user experience by using virtual environments to increase availability. These 12 factors can be applied to your SaaS business. Learn how they work and what you need to do.

The global SaaS industry is estimated to have a value of 195.1 million by 2023. This growth has been more than 61% over the past three years.

Many founders are now coming up with new SaaS business concepts or tweaking existing ones to reflect this shift. But, coming up with a SaaS idea and starting your SaaS company are two completely different things.

Your SaaS development team must understand the 12-factor app methodology. Otherwise, it will be difficult to build a successful SaaS company.

The 12-factor App method is the best product design technique to use to create a SaaS model.

These 12 factors are important and can they impact a SaaS company? This blog will answer all your questions. Let’s dive deep into it.

What is the 12-Factor App Methodology (or 12-Factor App Methodology)?

The 12-factor app methodology, also known as the 12-factor microservice design principle or the 12-factor principles microservices, is a set of 12 principles that can be used to build reliable and resilient SaaS apps.

Here are the 12 factors that go into building SaaS apps:

Heroku developers created the Twelve-factor app method in 2012 to build scalable SaaS applications. This rule book was created by programmers with the following goals:

• Software erosion can be avoided by taking precautions
• Controlling the organic growth dynamics of an app over time
• To improve collaboration among developers working on the same codebase for an app
• To raise awareness about the systemic issues that modern app development causes

These principles can be used by every SaaS-driven business to improve processes and workflow.

Why should we use the 12-factor App Methodology?

The most popular reason to use the 12-factor microservice principles for app development is that it can greatly enhance the process and reduce costs. These are just a few reasons to use this approach.

• These 12-factor principles allow you to create code that is easy to release, scale quickly, and maintain consistently.
• Enterprises can use 12-factor microservice principles to create applications that use a declarative format to set up automation. This reduces the time and costs for new developers.
• This 12-factor approach will help you create apps that can be quickly deployed on modern cloud platforms without the need to manage servers or system administration.
• You can quickly create microservices applications using the 12-factor principles of microservices. This is possible without making significant changes to your architecture, technology stack, or development practices.

Understanding the Principles of the 12-Factor App Methodology for Mobile App Development

Twelve principles are the basis of the Twelve-Factor App method. They serve as a foundation for building and deploying SaaS apps. These are:

1. CodeBase

One Code Repository that is unifying and single for many deployments

First, every application’s source code must be kept in one repository. It is recommended that you keep all code fragments in Github starting early.

Developers maintain the individual code blocks on their system. However, they can be deployed to different environments such as live production and testing servers.

2. Dependencies

Declare and isolate dependents explicitly

This principle states that the app must explicitly state all dependencies and the correct versions.

Twelve-Factor Applications do not depend on system-wide packages’ implicit existence. They declare all dependencies using a dependency declaration manifestation. It also uses a dependency isolation tool to make sure that there are no implicit dependencies within the system.

If you are using Python, for example, use Pip to declare and VirtualENV to isolate. No matter which tool or tech stack you are using, dependency declaration must be used in conjunction with isolation to meet the 12-Factor App Principles.

A simplified setup for new app developers is one of the 12 Factor App’s benefits. Installing the dependency manager and language runtime on their computers will allow them to check the codebase of the app.

Read more about 12-Factor App Methodology for Mobile App Development