The short answer
The engineering hands over like any other development work. What catches teams out is the surrounding machinery: developer accounts, signing certificates, provisioning, store review and the fact that you cannot hotfix a release the way you can on the web.
Sort the accounts and signing before day one, in your company's name, and the rest follows normally.
Accounts and signing, in your name
- Developer accounts registered to your company, not to an individual
- Signing certificates and keys held by you, with a documented backup
- Provisioning managed through your account with access granted to developers
- Store listings, screenshots and metadata owned by you
- Analytics and crash reporting in your accounts
Losing a signing key can mean you cannot update your own app. Treat it with the same care as a production database credential, because the consequences are comparable.
Release cadence changes everything
| Web | Mobile |
|---|---|
| Deploy when ready | Release when the store approves |
| Fix forward in minutes | Fix forward in days |
| One environment to support | Many OS versions and devices |
| Users on the current version | Users on versions from two years ago |
| Feature flags optional | Feature flags close to essential |
The bottom row matters most for augmentation. Feature flags let you ship code that is not yet enabled, which decouples release from readiness. Without them, one unfinished feature blocks the whole release.
Supporting old versions
Users do not update promptly, and some cannot. Anything the app talks to has to keep working for versions released months ago, which constrains how your backend can change.
Agree a support window before building: how far back you support, and what happens to users below it. That decision shapes the API design, and retro-fitting it is painful.
Device and OS coverage
- Decide the minimum OS version from your own analytics, not from a general recommendation.
- Pick a small device matrix that covers the range your users actually have.
- Test on real devices for anything involving performance, camera or location.
- Automate what can be automated, accept that some checks stay manual.
- Include the oldest supported device in the matrix, because that is where problems appear.
What to keep internal
Store account ownership, signing keys, and the release decision. Those are the three that cause lasting damage if they leave with an engagement, and none of them costs anything to retain.
Everything else, including the build itself, transfers fine with normal review and documentation.