Learn, Grow and DO THE NEW

Introduction to DevOps

Have you ever experienced a production issue at 2 AM, only to find out that it was resolved by someone last month without being documented? That’s the impact of poor knowledge-sharing in DevOps. This scenario plays out far too often in DevOps teams where knowledge is tribal, not institutional. DevOps isn’t just about automation, CI/CD pipelines, or cloud-native tools. It’s fundamentally about people, processes, and a culture of continuous improvement. DevOps has evolved from agile development and software engineering practices, with agile teams playing a significant role in shaping its collaborative and iterative culture.

However, with time, the team size grows, and due to project deadlines and daily tasks, knowledge sharing falls behind, and so does the continuous improvement. Without a clear path to share knowledge, teams might waste hours solving the same problems repeatedly. Understanding DevOps as a practice of structured learning and mentorship, rooted in software engineering best practices for knowledge-sharing, is key to long-term success. Real-world knowledge can get stuck with only a few people, and fixing issues may take longer than necessary. But here comes the role of senior management and their experience.

In this article, we will see the importance of knowledge-sharing, key challenges the team faces, and what strategy they can follow to overcome and build a learning and growing culture.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a modern software development practice that brings together development and operations teams to streamline the entire software delivery process. At its core, DevOps is about breaking down the traditional silos between development and operations teams, enabling them to collaborate more closely throughout the software development lifecycle. This collaborative approach helps organizations deliver high quality software faster, more reliably, and with greater efficiency.

The DevOps approach is built on a foundation of continuous improvement, automation, and shared responsibility. By adopting DevOps practices, teams can automate tasks such as integrating code, running automated tests, and deploying code changes, which reduces manual effort and minimizes errors. Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are central to DevOps, allowing teams to integrate code changes frequently and automate the deployment process, ensuring that new features and fixes reach users quickly and safely.

DevOps teams rely on a variety of DevOps tools and automation tools to support these practices. Tools for version control, automated testing, and infrastructure management help teams manage infrastructure as code, automate repetitive operational tasks, and maintain consistent environments across development, testing, and production. This not only improves code quality but also enables teams to respond rapidly to changing business needs.

One of the key benefits of DevOps is the improvement in software quality and operational performance. By integrating automated testing and continuous monitoring into the development lifecycle, teams can catch issues early, reduce downtime, and deliver a better user experience. The focus on collaboration and shared ownership also means that problems are identified and resolved more quickly, leading to more reliable software delivery.

Adopting DevOps practices gives organizations a competitive advantage by accelerating the software release process, reducing costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. Whether you’re managing complex systems or scaling to meet growing demand, DevOps enables teams to deliver software that meets the highest standards of quality and reliability.

In summary, DevOps is more than just a set of tools or processes—it’s a cultural shift that empowers development and operations teams to work together, automate the software delivery process, and continuously improve. By embracing DevOps, organizations can manage infrastructure more effectively, improve software quality, and achieve rapid, reliable software delivery in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

Why is knowledge-sharing important for development and operations teams in DevOps?

Before exploring “how,” let’s try to understand the “why” first. So, why is knowledge-sharing so important in Devops or, in fact, in the IT world? A strong knowledge-sharing culture ensures that:

1. Learn from past experiences: Teams avoid repeating the same mistakes as past outages are documented and are easily accessible.
2. Quick resolutions: We all know that troubleshooting becomes easy with open forum discussions.
3. DevOps isn’t just about tools: Right communication skills and mentorship become just as important as CI/CD pipelines. Freshers often lack these skills, which leaves a bad impression in client meetings.
4. Stay up to date: Sharing and learning new technologies, tools, scripts, and best practices improves creativity and knowledge.
5. Smooth onboarding: A well-documented knowledge base significantly improves the onboarding experience for clients.

A strong DevOps knowledge-sharing culture improves cross-functional communication, strengthens team ownership, and accelerates DevOps delivery by making expertise easily accessible. Project management plays a key role in organizing knowledge-sharing initiatives and ensuring smooth onboarding by structuring workflows and responsibilities within the team.

Common challenges in DevOps practices knowledge sharing

So, we understand why knowledge sharing matters. But what’s standing in the way? Even with the right approach and best intentions, teams often face challenges in building a DevOps knowledge-sharing culture:

1. Time management: Devops is sometimes all about quick late-night fixes. Devops engineers often prioritize immediate fixes over documentation or mentoring.
2. Isolated knowledge: Instead of sharing knowledge openly, knowledge often stays with a few people, such as systems administrators or within specific software development teams, rather than being shared across all development teams. This leads to silos where critical information and best practices are not accessible to everyone.
3. Fear of judgement: Freshers and Junior Engineers often feel this fear to ask questions confidently and publicly, which hampers their growth and development.
4. Less engagement: Lack of a structured agenda and presentations results in less participation in knowledge-sharing sessions.
5. Unstructured learning: Informal Knowledge Transfer (KT) sessions often make it difficult to track the learning progress.

6. Busy schedules: Meetings, meetings, and meetings. With so many meetings, engineers feel overwhelmed and avoid taking part in learning initiatives.

A Strategic Framework to Build DevOps Knowledge Culture

Here’s a structured, actionable roadmap to embed knowledge-sharing into your DevOps culture: Effective DevOps practice and successful DevOps implementations depend on well-defined DevOps workflows and a continuous DevOps lifecycle, which together foster ongoing learning, collaboration, and improvement.

1. Operationalize regular Knowledge Sharing Sessions (KSS)

A well-structured Knowledge Sharing Session (KSS) program makes sure that learning is a regular part of DevOps teams’ work. It invites more team members to participate and also sets realistic expectations. This level of preparation and communication shows how structured learning programs may increase engagement and turn knowledge sharing into a habit.

• Make it interactive: Try to deliver short, user-friendly, and interactive presentations instead of text-heavy and never-ending presentations.
• Keep it simple: Basic theory, hands-on demonstrations, followed by Q&A and quizzes make the session interactive and interesting.

Providing self service capabilities for accessing and contributing to knowledge resources empowers team members to independently find and share information, which can significantly boost developer productivity and engagement.

We at TO THE NEW have scheduled weekly KSS sessions and monthly Knowledge Meets where team members from different projects share recent learnings, debugging experiences, cloud services, technologies, or new tools. This increases the engagement within the organization, increases knowledge at the same time and DevOps best practices.

2. Centralized knowledge base

• Having a centralized knowledge base repository like GitHub, Confluence, or Google Docs, or Confluence is important for easy and quick navigation and helps teams build a strong DevOps documentation best practices framework.

• Team members should be encouraged to document the issue and solution for future reference.

3. Build mentorship and appreciation into your DevOps DNA

• Assigning mentors to everyone helps both the mentor and mentee in their growth.
• Pair Programming (a software development technique where two programmers work together at one workstation, with one person (the “driver”) writing code while the other (the “navigator”) reviews it in real time, and they switch roles frequently) gives benefits like faster debugging, improved code quality, and knowledge sharing. Platform engineering, by providing standardized tools and consistent environments, further facilitates effective mentorship and knowledge transfer during pair programming.
• Give recognition where it is due - time to time, recognition and correct feedback are the keys for successful teams.

• Appreciations for knowledge sharing and mentorship should be done publicly to encourage participation.

4. Reward knowledge-sharing

• Develop a points-based system where contributing to documentation, leading KSS, or answering forum questions earns points, especially for contributions to important DevOps practices such as automation and process improvement.

• Let these earn points toward badges, certificates, or shoutouts during team syncups and townhalls.

5. Organize hackathons & open forums

• We organize Geek Combat (our annual hackathon event), where engineers and even non-technical people build and solve real-world problems. Hackathons encourage collaboration among multiple developers, who often leverage automated tools to streamline their solutions and address challenges efficiently. This improves engagement and a healthy relationship within the organization and bring DevOps collaboration to life through gamified problem-solving and live debugging sessions.
• Providing open forums to teams where anyone can propose topics for improvement.

• Motivate team members to showcase their solutions company-wide.

6. Keep team chat groups alive

• Start using a communication channel like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Discord for knowledge-sharing and open discussion. Encourage participation from security teams to discuss and share security practices within these channels.

• Assign moderators to groups to ensure that all queries are answered. Encourage team members to ask questions without hesitation.

7. Making Learning and Continuous Improvement Part of Your Career Growth

• What if helping others learn was part of how you grow in your role? It should be. We should start paying attention to how often someone contributes to team documentation, mentors others, or writes helpful blog posts.

• Promotions are generally considered about individual performance, but they should be about team growth as well. Evaluations, promotions, and reviews should be done by keeping knowledge sharing as one of the key factors. In fields like site reliability engineering, ongoing learning and sharing knowledge are essential for professional growth and maintaining high system reliability.

How to measure knowledge-sharing effectiveness in DevOps teams

With so many initiatives going on, tracking the effectiveness of knowledge sharing becomes important. Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative KPIs to track impact:

• Growth in Contribution: Increase in active contributors to documentation and Knowledge sharing initiatives.
• More engagement in team chat groups and meetings.
• Higher onboarding efficiency for new hires.
• Regular and positive feedback from retrospectives and clients is a good indicator of progress.
• Faster problem resolution for repetitive issues.
• Result-oriented approach while solving the problem.

• Improvements in the devops pipeline, such as increased automation and reliability, and the use of monitoring tools to measure the effectiveness of the development process.

Conclusion

Devops isn’t only about fancy tools, it’s a culture. Investing in knowledge-sharing helps organizations in long-term team success, quick problem solving, and improves team performance and strengthens your DevOps culture. Effective knowledge-sharing empowers the devops team and site reliability engineers to collaborate across the entire application lifecycle, enabling rapid delivery and rapid deployment, supporting secure software through integrated security measures and security tools, leveraging cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, working seamlessly with diverse operating systems like Linux, and driving integration and continuous delivery for greater agility and reliability.

At TO THE NEW, we focus on building a learning culture by conducting regular knowledge sharing sessions, providing mentorship to all employees, and motivating engagement from all team members. We believe that transforming DevOps from a methodology into a learning culture requires continuous learning and improvement.

It’s time we moved beyond "just fix it" to "document it, share it, grow from it."

How GenAI Is changing healthcare

“AI won’t replace your doctor—but it helps them be better.”

In the past few years, it's become clear that getting a doctor’s appointment is now a difficult and time-consuming process. And even when you do get one, the doctor usually spends very little time with you. Doctors and hospital support staff are often buried in paperwork and digital systems. GenAI is helping in many ways:

• Less typing, more healing: Tools like Suki AI write up doctor notes and summarize them automatically.
• Smarter diagnosis: AI reads X-rays and test results, often better than humans. Eg. DeepMind’s AI Model, MedPalm2 from Google.
• Custom treatments: GenAI looks at patient data to suggest preliminary personalized care.

Real-life example: Mayo Clinic teamed up with Abridge to reduce doctors' paperwork using AI.

Key takeaway: In healthcare, GenAI enhances Digital Transformation services by giving clinicians more time to care, not more paperwork.

Can GenAI transform financial services?

“Gone are the days when finance data was limited to excel and spreadsheets. Algorithms have taken a better position to assist financial users”

Banks and financial companies use GenAI to improve services and security:

• Customer help on autopilot: Virtual Assistants like Bank of America’s Erica or HDFC Bank’s Eva talk to customers like real people.
• Fraud Detection: Real-Time anomaly detection using AI & GenAI models helps reduce fraud and enhance security.
• Smarter investing: With the advent of MCP, some companies use GenAI to scan news and predict market moves.

Key takeaway: AI in finance is like a silent partner, making things faster, safer, and smarter through next-gen Digital Transformation services.

What about manufacturing?

“Factories are becoming smarter—with a brain powered by AI.”

Machines and sensors were already part of modern factories using Industry 4.0 standards. Now GenAI is making them even more efficient:

• Predictive maintenance: AI watches machine data and warns if something’s about to fail. GenAI adds an explainability layer to investigate the causes of failure.
• Supply Chain Optimization: AI agents predict what parts or products are needed, when and at what location.
• Smarter tools: Wearables and AR glasses give workers step-by-step help using AI.

Key takeaway: GenAI is accelerating Digital Transformation services by helping machines think ahead, not just operate

Can GenAI empower education and learning?

“Education is becoming personalized, scalable, and 24/7—with AI as the tutor.”

AI’s impact on learning is perhaps the most visible:

• Adaptive learning platforms like Squirrel AI tailor content to each student’s learning curve. AI Agents curate personalized learning paths.
• Language practice: AI helps students speak and understand new languages with instant feedback.
• Teacher tools: Teachers use GenAI to quickly create quizzes and lessons.

HolonIQ predicts: Most school content will be AI-made or AI-assisted by 2030.

Key takeaway: GenAI is accelerating Digital Transformation services by helping machines think ahead, not just operate

How are media and entertainment evolving with GenAI?

AI has been a core element of the Media and Entertainment industry. Right from recommendation engines to subtitling, AI has been playing a pivotal role in shaping the Media industry. Generative AI in particular is disrupting how we create, distribute, and consume content:

• Scriptwriting and ideation: Tools like Sudowrite or ChatGPT help writers beat blocks and brainstorm story arcs.
• Visual design: Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL·E are being used for concept art, marketing visuals, and even storyboarding.
• Voice and video generation: AI can now generate synthetic voices, clone actors, and even create short films.

Media organizations are increasingly integrating Generative AI services into their content workflows to reduce production time while increasing output quality.

Key takeaway: GenAI doesn’t kill creativity. It fast-tracks it

What are the risks?

Let’s be honest and not sugarcoat: It’s not all sunshine. With the opportunity, there also come risks:

• Job displacement: Repetitive roles - from call centers to back-office ops—are increasingly vulnerable.
• AI still makes mistakes, especially if it gets bad data. There has been evidence of bias and hallucinations all around.
• IP and privacy risks: Who owns AI-generated content? What about customer data in AI models?

That’s why companies need governance frameworks, explainable AI policies, and human-in-the-loop systems.

Key takeaway: Transformation without ethics is disruption without direction.

Read more: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): How AI is Shaping the Future of SEO

Curious where to move ahead?

We’re just getting started.

• AI isn’t replacing humans—it’s redefining what humans do best.
• Digital transformation isn’t a tech project. It’s a mindset shift.

The organizations leading the charge? They’re not asking if GenAI will change their business—they’re already building with it.

So, what’s your next move? Get Started

Final thought: The future is AI with humans

GenAI is not your competitor. It’s your co-pilot.

The real magic happens when we combine AI’s speed with human judgment, Whether you're in logistics or law, education or energy, this much is clear:

The future isn’t AI vs humans. It’s AI with humans—transforming industries, together.

Introduction: The New Imperative for Project Managers

In today’s fast-paced business environment, project management has become the backbone of successful organizations. Effective project management is no longer just about keeping projects on schedule or within budget—it’s about driving business operations forward, achieving strategic objectives, and delivering real value to clients and stakeholders. As a project manager, you’re expected to wear many hats: strategist, communicator, problem-solver, and increasingly, a technically savvy leader.

The demand for project management specialists is on the rise, with organizations across industries seeking professionals who can manage complex projects from start to finish. To stand out in this competitive field, it’s essential to develop a robust set of skills that blend technical know-how, business acumen, and strong interpersonal abilities. Certifications like the Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI) are becoming industry standards, signaling your commitment to effective project management and your readiness to tackle the challenges of modern business operations. Whether you’re managing a small project or leading a global initiative, your ability to adapt, learn, and apply new knowledge will set you apart and drive your organization’s success.

In today’s digital-first world, project managers are expected to do more than manage timelines and meetings; they’re expected to have a good level of technical know-how to lead complex projects. Does that mean they need to know how to write code? Let’s dive in to find out!

“I am a PM, not a coder!” - said no successful project manager!

Look, I get it. Jenkins pipelines and Jira live in totally different universes. My calendar is filled with daily team meetings, stakeholder check-ins, and coffee-powered retros. Project management software now plays a crucial role in enabling team collaboration and supporting remote workers by providing cloud-based access for distributed teams.

I don’t want to debug anyone’s null pointer exception at 2 AM and thankfully no one wants me to. But here’s the thing: in today’s times, projects are woven together with tech. If you can’t see the threads, you’ll trip over them. Imagine managing a product rollout without understanding API limitations, database migrations, or scalability concerns.That’s like driving without looking at the dashboard. You don’t know if you’re out of fuel, overspeeding, or seconds away from a breakdown.That’s what managing a tech project without understanding the basics feels like. I don’t need to build the engine myself. But I do need to know the cause when something doesn’t add up.

Effective project management is no longer just about keeping projects on schedule or within budget—it’s about driving business operations forward, achieving strategic objectives, and delivering real value to clients and stakeholders. Businesses increasingly rely on project management software to meet client needs and adapt to remote work trends.

Technical literacy ≠ Coding proficiency

Technical literacy doesn’t mean I need to memorize syntax, rather it helps me ask the right questions, catch red flags early, and avoid blank stares when a developer explains why something “just can’t be done before the week ends.” It’s about speaking enough of the language to:

• Decode dev talk: When a backend developer says, “ The API is throttling at 200 req/sec,” you should hear, “Our current design won’t scale for the rollout day.”
• Ask sharper questions - “How long will this take?” becomes “Which microservice is the bottleneck, and what’s our fallback if it fails?”
• Communication|Translating geek‑speak for executives (and vice‑versa) cuts meeting time, and sighs, in half. Clear communication is essential for ensuring all team members understand their responsibilities and project requirements.

Spot the risk early: If someone proposes a new database engine two weeks before the go-live, that’s your cue to flag a risk.

[You may like reading: Creating self organised teams]

How tech literacy elevates project management?

Here are a few areas where tech literacy turbocharges our PM skills:

Project management methodologies, such as agile methodology, rely on well-defined processes and effective project lifecycle management to ensure quality management, budgeting, and support for the entire project. Monitoring progress, tracking time, and managing tasks are essential for completing each phase and ensuring all deliverables are completed on schedule. Project documentation and clear processes contribute to the project's success and support continuous improvement in business processes. Many of these methodologies and tools were developed to address the challenges of managing complex projects, ensuring all responsibilities are clearly defined and managed.

Data Driven Decision Making in Project Management

Gone are the days when gut feelings and guesswork could steer a project to completion. In the era of digital transformation, data-driven decision making is a game-changer for project managers. By harnessing the power of data analytics and project management software, you can track progress in real time, spot potential risks before they escalate, and make smarter choices about resource allocation. This approach not only helps you keep projects on track and within budget, but also empowers your team to collaborate more effectively and communicate with greater clarity.

With data-driven insights, project managers can identify bottlenecks, adjust project plans proactively, and ensure that every decision is backed by solid evidence. This minimizes costly errors, reduces project costs, and boosts stakeholder confidence. As project management continues to evolve, developing your skills in data-driven decision making will be essential for delivering successful projects and staying ahead in a competitive landscape.

Kanban Boards and Gantt Charts: Essential Tools for the Tech-Literate PM

For the modern project manager, mastering the right tools is half the battle. Kanban boards and Gantt charts have become indispensable for visualizing and managing project progress. Kanban boards offer a flexible, real-time view of tasks as they move through different stages, making it easy to spot bottlenecks and keep the team focused on priorities. Gantt charts, on the other hand, provide a structured timeline of tasks, dependencies, and milestones, helping you schedule resources and manage deadlines with precision.

By integrating Kanban boards and Gantt charts into your project plan, you create a comprehensive roadmap that keeps everyone aligned and accountable. Popular project management software like Asana, Trello, and Jira make it simple to combine these tools, allowing you to track progress, manage tasks, and collaborate seamlessly with your team. Staying up-to-date with these essential tools and methodologies is key for any project manager looking to deliver projects successfully in today’s tech-driven world.

Quick ways to build technical literacy (without a CS degree)

You don't need fancy certificates or a computer science degree. You just need curiosity and the will to explore one layer deeper than the project plan. Here's how:

• Ask devs to walk you through something (they often love it).
• Read beginner tech blogs, they are gold mines.
• Watch YouTube explainer videos - these are great to get the overview, and can explain architecture in minutes.
• Follow tech-savvy PMs - Twitter, LinkedIn, random Slack communities, and your org project community and steal their nuggets.
• Read the README, most repos have simple architecture explanations.
• Play in the sandbox - spin up a tiny cloud instance or write a “Hello, World!”.
• Join retrospectives and listen actively - Listening to what went wrong (and right) teaches you the vocabulary of pain over time.

What you don’t need:

• A background in computer science
• The ability to optimize SQL joins
• Tech-heavy LinkedIn certifications

What you do need:

• The confidence to go beyond the Gantt chart
• Curiosity to learn how systems really work
• Empathy for your technical team’s constraints

[You may like reading: How excessive use of ‘Why’ hurts productivity and team integrity]

Project Management in Different Industries: The Varying Role of Technical Literacy

Project management is a universal discipline, but the role of technical literacy can look very different depending on the industry. In software development, for example, project managers need a deep understanding of agile project management, sprint planning, and the technical challenges their teams face. This technical literacy enables them to communicate effectively with developers, anticipate roadblocks, and adapt quickly to changes.

In industries like construction, the focus shifts to knowledge of building codes, safety regulations, and project scheduling, while in finance, understanding compliance and data security becomes paramount. No matter the industry, effective project management relies on a blend of technical, business, and interpersonal skills. As industries evolve and technology becomes more integrated into every aspect of business, project managers who continuously develop their technical literacy will be better equipped to lead, innovate, and drive project success across various industries.

Project Management and Risk Management: Navigating Technical Uncertainty

Every project comes with its share of uncertainties, but technical risks can be especially challenging to navigate. That’s where risk management becomes a cornerstone of effective project management. Project managers must be proactive in identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential risks—especially those tied to complex software development or large-scale construction projects.

Developing a solid risk management plan means outlining potential risks, evaluating their likelihood and impact, and prioritizing them accordingly. Tools like risk matrices and decision trees can help you visualize and address these risks systematically. Regularly monitoring project progress and maintaining open lines of communication with your team ensures that emerging risks are caught early, allowing you to take swift action to keep the project on track. By combining strong project management practices with robust risk management strategies, organizations can minimize surprises, control project costs, and increase the likelihood of successful project completion.

Real-world example: Technical literacy in action

In my current project, we had just finished upgrading the MongoDB in production, and the next step was to do the same for the lower environments. This required us to come up with a strategy, and I got involved in discussions with the technical leads about how to minimize risks. We had a major release coming up that month, and clients were actively testing in the UAT environment, so it was crucial to get it right. Given my experience as an ex-software engineer, I could really understand the challenges the devs were facing and contributed to the solution discussions.

Another example was during the upgrade, one of our client's major end users needed to perform a reconciliation, but since the MongoDB upgrade was being applied at the account level in UAT, we had to create a parallel infrastructure for the end user to carry out the reconciliation. When the technical lead was on leave, I took charge of explaining the implementation plan to the stakeholders and securing their agreement. These stakeholders included both technical and functional teams, so I needed to address their concerns effectively. My technical background really came handy here.

Final Thoughts

Think like a coder, even if you're not one.

Technical literacy is like night vision goggles: you can navigate the project jungle without them, but why risk face-planting into the nearest scope creep pit? You will build tighter timelines and earn genuine respect from the devs if you come to the table with curiosity, humility, and a working knowledge of what they do. You're golden.

Tech knowledge is a project manager's superpower. You can absolutely succeed without writing a single line of code but only if you understand how the tech stack works under the hood. So go ahead, crack open that beginner's tutorial, hang around in your team's #engineering Slack channel, and ask the “why” behind every architecture decision. You don't need to be the smartest person in the room. Just be the PM who gets it enough to help them shine.

The historical context: from fixed to fluid

The web started out as a desktop-focused medium. Back in the early 2000s, designers could confidently take for granted that their audience was consuming websites on 1024x768 desktop displays. Fixed-width 960-pixel layouts were the norm, and sites were basically digital brochures tweaked for one view environment. Early web pages were structured using HTML, which provided the foundation for organizing content and integrating with CSS and JavaScript as web technologies evolved.

The cracks in this strategy began to show in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. Suddenly users were trying to use desktop-optimized websites on 3.5-inch screens, and the result was annoying experiences of pinching, zooming, and horizontal scrolling. Early attempts at solutions saw the rise of dedicated mobile websites (those dreadful “m.” subdomains), but this strategy gave rise to maintenance nightmares and broken user experiences. The shift from fixed to fluid layouts was guided by essential design principles such as usability, accessibility, and visual hierarchy, ensuring better user experiences across devices.

The Marcotte revolution

When Ethan Marcotte wrote his influential article "Responsive Web Design" for A List Apart in May 2010, he laid out three essential principles that would revolutionize the web:

1. Fluid grids based on relative units rather than fixed pixels

2. Flexible images that resize with their containers

3. CSS media queries that apply alternative styles dependent on device qualities

These principles are implemented using HTML and CSS, which allow designers to create layouts that adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices.

Below, we introduce examples of how these principles are applied in modern responsive web design.

This wasn’t purely a technical fix but more of a philosophical move toward building flexible, future-proof websites that could deal with whatever devices users might send their way.

The current mobile-dominated landscape

The statistics for 2025 paint a picture of a fundamentally mobile-first world. Let's examine the key metrics that demonstrate just how critical responsive design has become:

These numbers tell a compelling story. Mobile devices aren’t just one option among many now, they’re the primary way people interact with the digital world. For anyone offering small business website design or ecommerce website design, the importance of mobile-optimized, responsive interfaces is paramount. There are a variety of website designs available that cater to different business requirements, ensuring both optimal performance and user experience across devices.

When 62% of companies report increased sales after implementing responsive design, we’re also talking about measurable business transformation, not just improved user experience (UX design).

Fundamentals of Web Development for Responsive Design

At the heart of modern web development lies the principle of responsive web design—a methodology that ensures web pages render beautifully and functionally across all screen sizes and devices. Whether users are browsing on mobile devices, tablets, or desktop computers, responsive design guarantees that every web page adapts fluidly to the available space, delivering a consistent and engaging experience.

To achieve this adaptability, web developers rely on a combination of techniques. Media queries are a cornerstone, allowing style sheets to respond dynamically to changes in browser window width or viewport width. This means that as a user resizes their browser window or switches devices, the web page layout can shift seamlessly to fit the new dimensions.

Flexible grids are another essential tool, enabling layouts that scale proportionally rather than sticking to rigid, fixed widths. By using relative units like percentages, ems, or rems, developers ensure that elements on the page adjust in relation to their parent containers or the overall viewport. This approach makes it possible for web pages to look and function well on everything from compact mobile screens to expansive desktop monitors.

The use of relative units and media queries empowers developers to create web pages that are not only visually flexible but also maintain usability and readability across different devices. As web development continues to evolve, mastering these fundamentals is key to building layouts that stand the test of time and technology, ensuring that every user enjoys a seamless experience—no matter how or where they access your site.

The evolving definition of "Responsive" in 2025

Responsive design in 2025 has come a long, long way from Marcotte’s initial three pillars. Responsive designs now encompass a wide range of techniques and technologies, allowing websites to adapt seamlessly to different devices and screen sizes using CSS, HTML, and media queries. Responsive experiences today include various types of responsive solutions that have emerged to address the diverse needs of users:

Advanced Layout Systems

New responsive design makes use of CSS Grid and Flexbox to build complex layouts that were previously unimaginable with the float-based approach. These advancements provide:

1. Intelligent reflowing complex responsive grids, ensuring content is displayed optimally across all devices and viewports

2. Improved content prioritization between screen sizes

3. Enhanced vertical rhythm and spacing

Container queries: The next evolution

In contrast to conventional media queries, which act in response to viewport width, container queries adjust elements according to their container’s width. Media queries typically respond to browser width, while container queries respond to the container’s width. This allows for fully modular responsive components that can function in any environment, a game-changer for component-oriented design systems.

Variable fonts and responsive typography

Typography in 2025 employs variable fonts which allow for dynamic adjustment of weight, width, and style. Coupled with viewport-based units (vw, vh), text now resizes proportionally with screen size, resulting in more harmonious reading experiences across devices. Font size can be dynamically adjusted using units like rem and vw, as well as media queries, to ensure optimal readability and scaling on various devices.

SEO and discoverability: The google factor

Google’s mobile-first indexing strategy has revolutionized the way web pages are found and ranked, and responsive design has become a necessity for search visibility. The search engine now predominantly uses the mobile version of websites to index and rank them, so non-responsive sites incur serious penalties in the search results, irrespective of the quality of their desktop experience. In the broader context of SEO, search engines play a crucial role in ranking and discovering responsive websites, making it essential for businesses to optimize for these platforms.

This change has far-reaching consequences for business visibility on the web. With 68% of web experiences beginning with a search engine and first-page Google websites receiving 95% of web traffic, responsive design is not about user experience, it’s about being found, period. Businesses that do not effectively execute responsive design leave themselves out of visibility for the overwhelming majority of prospective customers who find businesses through search.

[You may like reading: Creating a seamless user experience: Responsive design with Drupal]

Performance becomes more and more important to both user experience and search rankings. Responsive sites generally load quicker than standalone mobile sites because they avoid the redirect process and can take advantage of sophisticated caching techniques. As Google’s Core Web Vitals starts as a ranking signal, the performance advantages of responsive design, implemented correctly, give both user experience and SEO benefits.

Technical evolution: Beyond simple responsiveness

The technical environment enabling responsive design has changed radically, with Progressive Web Apps being one of the most important innovations. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) integrate the ubiquity of responsive sites with native app capabilities, providing offline capability, push support, and installability onto the home screen while keeping the cross-platform flexibility of web technology. Creating a responsive page that adapts its layout and functionality to different screen sizes and devices is now a standard practice in modern web app development.

Today’s web application development focuses not just on rendering but also on accessibility. Responsive and accessible design go hand-in-hand, including:

• 44px touch targets
• Color contrast optimization
• Screen reader compatibility
• Keyboard navigation

A key technical requirement for a responsive web app is the use of the viewport meta tag, which ensures proper scaling and layout rendering on mobile devices.

Performance optimization has grown ever more advanced, with methods such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) cutting load times by as much as 85% for content-rich websites. Device-feature-based adaptive image serving ensures that users are supplied with proportionally suited images for their screen and network environments, while code splitting and lazy loading strategies cut down initial render times on every device.

Industry-specific considerations

E-commerce is likely the most important use of responsive design concepts, with 58% of all e-commerce sales currently occurring on mobile devices. The stakes are high in this industry, as poor mobile experiences immediately convert to lost business. Winning e-commerce responsive design involves touch-optimized product browsers that are fun to navigate on small screens, simplified mobile checkouts that reduce form fields and steps, and responsive payment interfaces that are optimized to work with mobile payment systems. It is crucial to ensure the checkout process is fully optimized for the user's device, providing a seamless experience regardless of screen size or platform.

Content and media sites have their own set of responsive challenges, specifically with regard to typography and media consumption. They need to provide readable typography on any screen size while adhering to visual hierarchy, embed responsive ads that do not interfere with the user experience, offer touch-friendly video players that function well on touch devices, and design touch-friendly navigation systems that enable content discovery to be straightforward. Ensuring that media consumption is optimized for any mobile device is essential for maintaining user engagement and accessibility.

Building a Responsive Website in 2025: A Practical Guide

Creating a responsive website in 2025 is both an art and a science, requiring a solid grasp of web development fundamentals and a keen awareness of the latest tools and techniques. The process begins with thoughtful planning: understanding your target audience and the various devices they’ll use to access your site is crucial for shaping both the layout and the user experience.

The technical foundation starts with selecting the right stack. Developers typically choose a server-side scripting language—such as PHP or Python—to handle dynamic content, paired with a programming language like JavaScript for interactive features. Structuring content with a standard markup language like HTML5 ensures semantic clarity, while a progressive JavaScript framework such as React or Angular brings dynamic, app-like functionality to the front end.

Responsive design is brought to life through the strategic use of media queries, which apply different styles based on browser window width. For example, the max width property can be used to set boundaries for elements, ensuring they don’t exceed a certain size on larger screens, while min width ensures usability on smaller devices. Relative units like percentages and ems allow layouts to scale gracefully, adapting to the viewport width and maintaining visual harmony across different devices.

Optimizing images and other media is another critical step. By choosing the right image format and leveraging responsive image techniques, developers can ensure fast load times and crisp visuals, regardless of device or browser size. Testing is equally important—responsive sites must be checked on a variety of devices and browsers to guarantee that every user enjoys a seamless, high-quality experience.

A typical workflow for building a responsive site in 2025 might look like this:

1. Plan the layout and design with your target audience and their devices in mind.

2. Select a server-side scripting language and a programming language to create dynamic web pages and web applications.

3. Use a standard markup language like HTML5 for structure, and a progressive JavaScript framework for interactivity.

4. Implement media queries and relative units to ensure layouts adapt to browser window width and viewport width.

5. Optimize images and media for fast loading and flexible display on all devices.

6. Test thoroughly across different devices and browsers to ensure a responsive, user-friendly experience.

Behind the scenes, traditional relational databases and NoSQL databases can be used to store data efficiently, supporting both static websites and dynamic web applications. Front end developers leverage JavaScript libraries and CSS frameworks to craft responsive layouts and engaging visual effects, while back end developers use server-side scripting languages to power dynamic features and manage data.

By combining these best practices and tools, web developers in 2025 can create websites that not only look great but also work seamlessly for every user, on every device. This holistic approach to web development ensures that your own website remains accessible, flexible, and ready to meet the ever-evolving expectations of today’s digital audience.

Cost-effectiveness: The economic argument

Perhaps the most persuasive case for responsive design is economic efficiency. Rather than having to support dual mobile and desktop sites, responsive design needs only a single codebase, significantly cutting development costs and long-term maintenance overhead. With a single codebase, the amount of coding required is reduced compared to maintaining separate sites, streamlining the development process. One approach simplifies content management, too, as updates need to be done once only, not across multiple iterations of a site.

The optimization and analytics advantages are also important. Companies can monitor user activity on all devices in a single system with a single responsive website, allowing for better identification of opportunities for optimization and better measurement of changes. This single approach to collecting and analyzing data yields more precise insights into user activity and more accurate business outcome attribution to design decisions.

For companies with lean budgets, responsive design provides greatest reach at minimal investment of resources. The alternative, having separate mobile and desktop experiences, entails duplicative development work, independent quality assurance steps, and constant synchronization between multiple codebases. These hidden expenses frequently render responsive design the sole economically feasible choice for small organizations.

If you’re wondering how to make a website responsive or how to create responsive website architecture from scratch, start by embracing a mobile-first design approach, leveraging CSS frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind, implementing fluid grids, and rigorously testing your site across multiple real devices and browsers.

Future-proofing: preparing for tomorrow's devices

The responsive design guidelines laid out in 2010 have turned out to be incredibly visionary, perfectly serving device advances that were hardly conceived when Marcotte originally outlined his vision. As fresh devices keep coming along, foldable phones with adjustable screen ratios, smart TVs with large displays but restricted interaction patterns, wearables with very limited screen space, and voice-first interfaces that continue to require visual fallbacks, responsive websites just fit right in on these new shapes. Evolving programming languages, such as PHP, Java, and Python frameworks, play a crucial role in enabling support for innovative device features and dynamic content across these platforms.

This flexibility is one of the highest virtues of responsive design. Instead of needing full redesigns for every new device type, responsive principles offer a set of guidelines that will allow adaptation to innovation while still ensuring consistency and usability. The infrastructure needed to future-proof websites also relies on robust servers, which deliver content efficiently to a wide range of devices and manage backend processes essential for seamless user experiences. This ability to future-proof lends itself not only to being a best practice today but also an investment in long-term digital sustainability.

Common misconceptions about responsive design in 2025

Despite its widespread adoption, several misconceptions about responsive design persist in 2025. Many assume that mobile apps have replaced mobile websites entirely, but research shows that 50% of users prefer visiting a company’s mobile website over downloading their app. Responsive websites remain the most accessible way to reach broad audiences without installation barriers, particularly for infrequent interactions or discovery scenarios.

Another widespread myth is that responsive design is all about screen size adjustment. Responsive design today takes into account the complete context of device use, such as touch vs. mouse interaction patterns, network speed and data limitations, battery life and performance optimization, and use context, fundamentals for delivering successful digital transformation services. A web developer is responsible for ensuring that responsive design is implemented correctly across all devices, making sure the website functions seamlessly for every user.

Implementation best practices for 2025

Effective responsive design implementation in 2025 calls for a mobile first strategy that begins with designing for the smallest screen and proceeds upward. This way, mobile users receive the optimal experience while desktop users enjoy richer layouts that are built upon the stable mobile foundation.

Performance budgets have become essential, with different targets for different device categories. Mobile users typically expect sub-3-second load times, tablet users expect sub-2-second performance, and desktop users increasingly expect sub-1-second load times. These performance expectations require careful optimization and testing across real devices with varying network conditions and performance capabilities. This is essential for delivering top-tier website design services in a competitive digital environment.

Testing approaches need to move beyond developer tool browsers to incorporate actual device testing on various network conditions. While development emulators are useful for early development, nothing can substitute for actual device use with real-world limitations and performance characteristics. Additionally, managing user access and implementing robust security measures—such as authentication and authorization—are crucial during responsive design implementation to ensure that data access is properly controlled and secured.

The road ahead: responsive design's continued evolution

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, responsive design continues to go in fascinating new directions. Initial experimentation with AI-based layout optimization holds out hope for developing interfaces that learn to respond to users’ unique patterns of behavior, and context-aware interfaces that shift in response to location, time, and usage patterns are the future direction of personalized responsive experience. Back end development plays a crucial role in managing the server-side logic and databases required to support these advanced features, ensuring efficient data processing and seamless user experiences.

[You may like reading: AI-powered UX: A new era of design innovation]

New technologies such as biometric-responsive design that responds to user stress levels and attention, and environmental adaptation based on ambient light, motion, and noise, indicate that responsive design will grow ever more advanced and personalized. The adoption of modern JavaScript library solutions enables developers to implement these advanced responsive behaviors efficiently. These advances are based on the solid foundations of existing responsive principles but take them to new levels of user experience optimization.

Conclusion

Responsive web design in 2025 is more than just getting websites to function on smartphones, it's about developing adaptive, smart experiences that reach users wherever they happen to be, however they're viewing your content. The numbers make it plain: with more than 63% of web traffic originating from mobile and 83% of users anticipating smooth cross-device experiences, responsive design is no longer a competitive edge but a digital necessity. From mobile-first indexing to AI driven SEO, businesses can no longer afford to view responsive design as optional.

The progression from Marcotte's initial three principles to the advanced, AI-based responsive systems of today demonstrates the fundamental philosophy is still valid: create flexible, dynamic experiences that can adapt to whatever the future holds. Responsive design gives sustainable digital success its foundation in a reality where user expectations keep growing and new devices arrive on a regular basis.

For designers and businesses in 2025, the question is not whether to use responsive design, but how advanced and forward-thinking your responsive strategy can be. The sites that will succeed will not only respond to varied screen sizes, but also think for themselves in adapting to user requirements, context, and behavior in an increasingly diverse set of digital touchpoints.

The responsive web is not only still here in 2025, it's more critical than ever as the basis for substantial digital relationships in our world of multiple devices.

Introduction

With access to cutting edge technologies such as Generative AI (GenAI) becoming democratised, GenAI is no longer just a buzzword but a powerful tool that has the potential to transform how content is created, distributed, and monetized. According to a recent industry survey, AI initiatives are now the second most frequently budgeted technology initiative across the global media sector, with more than 30% of media companies allocating budgets for AI implementations in the next 12-18 months. In this article, we discuss the new possibilities, examining key trends and use cases of GenAI Generative AI in media and entertainment solutions, and the challenges that industry players must navigate as they embrace this revolutionary technology.

GenAI is impacting every step of the media value chain

1. Supercharging content creation

Generative AI content creation is revolutionizing creative workflows by enabling faster, smarter, and more cost-effective content creation. From creating high-quality pre-visualization sequences in real-time to suggesting plot improvements to creating photorealistic scenes and advanced visual effects, GenAI tools are empowering content creators to take their storytelling game to the next level.

2. Hyper-personalization to captivate audiences

In a world of content abundance, attention is currency. As competition for viewer attention intensifies, global entertainment companies are using GenAI to generate multiple variants from existing assets and create personalized recommendations to enhance user experience. AI-driven engines are powering generative engine optimization, delivering highly customized content experiences.

3. Unlocking hidden value in content archives with AI

Traditional media companies are leveraging AI to generate advanced metadata for legacy content, making them searchable and usable to launch new, device and platform optimized content assets.

4. AI-driven monetization strategies

From the ability to create localized advertisements for linear TV broadcasts to delivering user-targeted ads on web, mobile, and other connected devices, content distributors have been leveraging AI capabilities to drive higher return on investment for their advertisers across platforms. These strategies are made possible by scalable cloud services and intelligent analytics.

[You may like reading: Various monetization models for OTT platforms]

5. Real-time audience insights and creative decision-making

Beyond creation, GenAI tools are providing real-time analytics to inform creative choices. These insights help media teams determine which storyline resonates, which characters generate traction, and which formats are likely to succeed, before investing in full-scale production. This type of AI-powered video editing and forecasting is redefining content workflows.

6. GenAI in live sports

Broadcasters are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to deliver real-time enhancements such as automatically generated highlight reels, instant match summaries, and visually rich overlays including player statistics, sentiment analysis, and audience engagement data. Moreover, LLMs (Large Language Models) can power real-time multilingual captioning and dubbing, making global sports events more inclusive and accessible.

Industry pulse: Key shifts in the media landscape driven by AI

1. Shift from Capex to Opex

With GenAI tools increasingly becoming available as subscription-based services, media companies are shifting to OpEx-heavy strategies. With key workloads moving to consumption based expenditure models such as public cloud infrastructure as well as AI tools via SaaS offerings, media companies are having to review their budgeting and ROI strategy.

2. The rise of AI-savvy media organizations and partners

Media companies are reconsidering how they organize their technology, content, and business stakeholders to accelerate AI adoption, while also revisiting their partner strategy to pick more agile and specialized partners to align with their constantly evolving goals. Organizations are realigning tech and content teams while working with specialized cloud migration service providers and digital engineering partners who can integrate GenAI into agile media strategies.

3. Exploring the potential of AI-native content

Beyond enhancing traditional content, entirely new formats such as micro-dramas, that leverage AI capabilities, are emerging, making it possible to even create interactive narratives that adapt in real-time to viewer preferences.

[You may like reading: AI in delivery excellence: Transforming governance, customer experience, product management and collaboration]

The challenges and the road ahead

Despite its promise, the GenAI adoption journey comes with its set of inherent challenges that need careful consideration:

1. Talent and skills gap

The shortage of professionals skilled in GenAI, especially combined with domain knowledge of media workflows, is one of the biggest barriers to adoption. Media companies need to cultivate a culture of constant learning and upskilling - which is now more urgent than ever.

2. Legacy infrastructure and cloud readiness

While the early cloud adopters were quick to start experimenting with GenAI, there’re still many media organizations who are now starting to migrate their vast content libraries and production workloads to cloud. Without a cloud-first foundation, the full potential of GenAI cannot be realized.

3. Governance, ethics, and ROI clarity

As the capabilities and the costs associated with GenAI are constantly changing, media executives need to come up with a governance framework of continuous evaluation that ensures a balance between innovation and business justification.

Looking ahead: What’s next for GenAI in media?

Deeper integration with new technologies and more sophisticated forms of interaction will be part of the next stage of GenAI's influence on media and entertainment. In the creator economy, AI-generated virtual influencers and co-creators are already becoming popular and creating new opportunities for audience engagement. In the meantime, immersive content experiences that react dynamically to viewer inputs will be made possible by the convergence of GenAI with augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and extended reality (XR).

Furthermore, GenAI is predicted to develop into real-time, audience-responsive storytelling, moving beyond post-production and generating completely new kinds of content. Agility, experimentation, and a dedication to responsible innovation will be necessary for media companies to stay ahead in this fast-evolving landscape.

Conclusion

The question for media executives is no longer whether to adopt GenAI, but how quickly and effectively they can integrate these transformative technologies into their operations and creative processes. The future belongs to the leaders who will continue to pursue, boldly and responsibly, the phenomenal opportunity that this technology represents.

The GenAI revolution is not a distant possibility, it’s already reshaping how we produce, personalize, and profit from content. As this technology matures and the scope of adoption widens, the media and entertainment industry will likely move towards co-creating with AI, where human creativity and machine intelligence come together to shape storytelling like never before.

The future of entertainment is here - and it’s generative.

What is web development?

When it comes to web application development, you’re essentially constructing a website where the user is not merely observing – but participating in – it and where they’re taking away a product with them. Whenever we write an application that’s looks like website and serves a particular requirement it will be considered as a website or to be more precise web application.

A web application is generally based on the client-server architecture. The requestor (client, usually a browser) sends a request and the server returns data or content. On the front end or client side of things, we work with technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build the visual interface. On the backend, APIs and server-side logic enable dynamic features like login, fetching data, and so forth.

Whether you're working on a new custom website development service or an enterprise-level platform, your web application needs to be fast, secure, and scalable.

A website is hosted on a cloud server or CDNs for better performance and served through the HTTP protocol, which means it loads and works when users request it through a browser. That's why it's one of the most common and reliable types of applications used today.

Website application development plays a critical role in ensuring these applications meet customer expectations and deliver value.

The importance of web application development

Not only is website application development very important but it’s also the first platform to highlight business use cases and solve customer problems in the easiest and most effective way. It enables companies to reach more people and provide services anywhere, anytime.

Modern businesses, from mobile app development solutions to full-stack web platforms, are increasingly dependent on digital tools to stay connected with their customers and remain efficient in their operations.

Creating and scaling a business in the online space becomes much easier and more cost-effective when we develop a web app that reduces the need for physical presence, allows automation of processes, and improves overall efficiency. That’s why it plays such an important role in modern-day business growth and customer engagement.

Key technology involved:

When it comes to developing web applications, choosing the right technologies is very important. Web development mainly involves two parts: the frontend, which is what users see and interact with, and the backend, which handles behind-the-scenes logic and data management.

Along with these, designers use specific tools to create user experiences, and cloud platforms help host and run the applications smoothly. In this section, we’ll look at some of the main technologies used in each area to give a clear picture of what goes into web application development.

UX: Figma, Photoshop / XD, Sketch, Invision, and many more

Frontend: HTML, CSS, Tailwind CSS / Bootstrap, JavaScript - TypeScript, React / Next JS, Angular, Vue JS

Backend: Java, Python, Node JS - Express, PHP, Ruby on Rails, .Net, and many more

Cloud: AWS, Azure, GCP

Choosing the right framework / library

As mentioned above, there are plenty of technologies available, and choosing the right one for the right use case plays a significant role in developing a web application effectively. Different technologies solve different problems and each comes with its own pros and cons. We should always understand our use case clearly and map it with the technology that best suits it.

When selecting a framework or library, it’s important to consider the following factors:

• Popularity and community support
• Adoption across the industry
• Performance
• Development complexity
• Scalability and future maintenance

A simple example of choosing the right frontend framework for different use cases is defined in the table below.

Choosing the right library/framework helps in faster development, reduces technical debt, and ensures long-term stability.

Web development workflow

At a high level, there are 7 to 8 major stages involved in web application development, and these stages may vary based on the type or size of the application. This web application development workflow helps answer the most asked questions like how to develop a web application:

1. Requirement gathering phase

• Work with stakeholders to document detailed business goals, user personas, and functional/non-functional requirements.
• This helps align the team and avoid misunderstandings later.

2. UX / Design & discovery Phase

• Understand the product requirements, business problems, and customer expectations.
• Identify key features needed to solve the problem.
• Apply design thinking and create wireframes using design tools.

3. Frontend development

• Convert the UX design into actual code that browsers can render, this forms the visual part of the web application.

4. Backend development

• Add dynamic functionality to the application through API integrations and database connections.
• This includes key flows like user authentication, login, registration, and other business logic.

5. Testing phase

• Includes unit testing, integration testing, E2E testing, manual, and automated testing.
• Accessibility testing and performance audits based on requirements.

6. Security and compliance checks

• Security reviews, data protection compliance like GDPR, VAPT & Penetration Testing.

7. Hosting the application

• Once the application is ready, deploy it on the cloud.
• Map the domain and make sure users can easily access the application.

8. Maintenance, monitoring & continuous improvement

• Use tools like New Relic, Datadog, or Google Analytics to track usage, errors, and performance.
• Set up feedback loops to gather user input and improve over time.
• Bug fixes, performance enhancements, content updates, and scaling decisions are part of the long-term workflow.

Integrating quality engineering services throughout the workflow is critical to identifying potential issues early and ensuring robust performance across all user environments.

Best practices:

Following web design good practices during web application development ensures the product is user-friendly, secure, scalable, maintainable, compliant, and performs optimally.

Here are some of the best practices that we can follow:

Performance Optimization

• Lazy loading for images and components
• Caching strategies for faster load times
• Asset management and bundling
• Code minification and compression
• Dynamic loading and code splitting

SEO

• Clean, readable URLs
• Structured metadata and meta tags
• Meaningful heading tags (e.g., H1, H2)
• Use of content-rich text over image-based content
• Crawlable and indexable content

Accessibility

• Ensure your application is usable by people of all abilities
• Follow accessibility guidelines like WCAG
• Use semantic HTML and ARIA labels
• Enable full keyboard navigation and screen reader support

Responsive Design

• Mobile-first approach
• Fluid layouts that adapt to various devices

Scalability & Maintainability

• Modular and reusable code
• Use of design patterns and well-defined architecture
• Easy-to-read and well-documented codebase
• Load balancing and performance scaling

Security considerations

• Data encryption
• Proper authentication and authorization
• Protection against vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, SQL Injection)
• Regular dependency updates and security audits

Testing

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• End-to-end testing
• Manual testing
• Automation testing
• Accessibility testing for inclusiveness

DevOps & Deployment

• CI/CD pipelines for seamless releases
• Logging and monitoring
• Error tracking and alert systems
• Regular backups and recovery strategies

These practices are essential whether you’re building a new custom website development service or enhancing an existing digital product.

Case Study: Web application development in the Insurance domain

Let’s walk through a real-world project in the Insurance domain using the development phases discussed earlier:

1. Understanding the business & requirement gathering

We started by having continuous discussions with stakeholders to understand the business problem, expectations, and objectives. All the requirements were properly documented on JIRA and Docs. We brainstormed different ideas and implementation strategies to align with the core business goals.

2. Design discovery & UX/Wireframe implementation

We began the design phase using tools like Figma. The aim was to capture maximum business needs and customer expectations through clean and functional wireframes. After several feedback loops and iterations, the final UX design was approved.

3. Project implementation

Based on the finalized documentation and designs, we kick-started the development. Choosing the right library like Next.js for frontend and Java for backend, ensuring scalability, performance, and maintainability. For CMS integration, we explored Drupal development services due to its flexibility in managing dynamic content and permissions. We built the first version of the application and deployed it to the UAT environment for testing and feedback.

4. Testing & continuous feedback

Once the UAT was ready, we entered the testing phase. Multiple testing approaches were applied: Integration tests, manual tests, and automation tests. All feedback was logged and incorporated, resulting in a fully functional, stable, and user-friendly application.

5. Deployment & cloud hosting

Post completion of the testing phase, we hosted the application on AWS. We implemented a CI/CD pipeline using tools like Jenkins to streamline the release process. Domain mapping and environment setup were finalized for a smooth go-live.

6. Best practices considered

Throughout the project, we followed best practices such as:

• Scalable architecture
• Clean code with reusable components
• Strong SEO and accessibility adherence
• Load balancing and caching strategies
• Logging and monitoring
• Compliance with IS & EA audits and VAPT

7. Common challenges faced

• Aligning business expectations with tech feasibility
• Generating the static files for web pages at build time
• Cloudfront label caching and cache clearing strategies
• Solving the longer build time
• Generating the business rules through CMS
• Security challenges of running CMS in Runtime

Conclusion

Developing a web application is not just about writing code and deploying it. It involves a complete workflow and strategic planning. Following the proper web application development workflow helps to deliver highly scalable, maintainable, and user-friendly web applications that meet business needs and provide great user experiences.

Why enterprises prefer Flutter for app development?

Enterprises typically operate across multiple platforms - web, iOS, Android, desktop - and need consistent, seamless user experiences across all. Traditional approaches often involve maintaining separate codebases for each platform, leading to increased costs and longer development cycles.

Flutter solves these challenges with a unified approach:

1. Faster time-to-market

A single codebase and hot reload significantly reduce development and QA cycles, enabling faster launches.

2. Cross-platform consistency

Single UI and logic layer across iOS and Android ensures visual and functional uniformity, reducing design and testing effort.

3. Cost efficiency

Maintaining one codebase and one team brings down both development and maintenance expenses significantly helping control Flutter app development cost. These cost savings can directly increase profit and contribute to higher profits for the company, strengthening its financial position and supporting long-term business growth.

4. Robust ecosystem

Flutter integrates easily with services like Firebase, payment gateways, analytics, and has support for native modules via plugins or platform channels.

5. Future-ready backing from Google

Flutter is supported by Google with regular updates. With Flutter 3+, it supports mobile, web, and desktop apps, and is a great choice for progressive web apps (PWAs) and embedded solutions. Google’s long-term roadmap ensures Flutter remains future-proof. Unlike some frameworks that rely on the backing of just one company, Flutter benefits from Google's strong and consistent support, which adds confidence for developers considering long-term projects.

Setting up the Flutter development environment for enterprises

Establishing a robust Flutter development environment is a foundational step for enterprises aiming to deliver high-quality, scalable cross platform applications. For companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, where customer satisfaction and operational efficiency are paramount, the right setup can make all the difference in the development process and final product.

The journey begins with selecting a suitable development environment. Tools such as Android Studio and Visual Studio Code are popular choices, offering seamless support for Flutter development through dedicated plugins and extensions. These environments empower developers to manage code efficiently and leverage features like hot reload, which allows instant preview of changes—accelerating iteration and boosting productivity.

Next, installing the Flutter SDK is essential. The SDK includes Flutter’s powerful rendering engine, a comprehensive library of widgets, and all the components needed to build and deploy apps across mobile, web, and desktop platforms. Flutter’s programming language, Dart, is designed for ease of use and rapid development, making it accessible for teams looking to learn Flutter or scale up quickly.

For enterprise companies, structuring the development process is critical. Automated testing should be integrated from the outset to ensure every Flutter app meets rigorous quality standards. Flutter’s testing tools support everything from unit tests to full integration tests, helping businesses catch issues early and maintain a reliable user experience across different operating systems.

A key advantage of Flutter is the ability to create own custom widgets, enabling companies to craft unique user interfaces that reflect their brand and meet specific business needs. This flexibility is especially valuable in the car rental industry, where companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car must differentiate their digital offerings and provide intuitive, engaging experiences for users in different regions.

Seamless integration with Google services, such as Google Ads and Google Pay, further enhances the value of Flutter for enterprise rent and car sales businesses. These integrations can streamline payment processes, boost marketing efforts, and support executive leasing company operations—all from a single codebase.

Enterprise culture also plays a vital role in the success of app development. By fostering collaboration among employees, prioritizing customer feedback, and aligning technical decisions with business goals, companies can ensure their Flutter apps deliver a positive impact for both users and the organization.

In summary, setting up a Flutter development environment for enterprises involves more than just technical configuration—it’s about building a foundation that supports innovation, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. With the right tools, processes, and mindset, companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car can leverage Flutter’s open source framework to develop cross platform applications that drive business success and set new standards in the car rental industry.

Addressing enterprise concerns with Flutter

Enterprises often face concerns related to security, scalability, long-term support, and access to platform-specific functionality. Fortunately, most of these challenges can be mitigated with the right architecture, DevOps strategy, and experienced development partners.

Proper management of app state is also crucial in enterprise Flutter applications. Effective app state management techniques help ensure scalability and maintainability, making it easier to handle complex data flows and UI updates as the application grows.

1. Security

Flutter supports code obfuscation, encrypted storage, and secure API communication. Packages like flutter_secure_storage and integration with biometric authentication APIs help meet enterprise-grade security standards.

2. Scalability

Flutter encourages scalable development through modular architecture patterns like BLoC, MVVM, or Clean Architecture. Combined with comprehensive widget testing and integration testing support, it helps maintain performance and manage complexity in large codebases.

3. Long-term maintenance

Being backed by Google, Flutter enjoys a robust roadmap, active community, and regular updates. With over 700,000 apps already built, Flutter has moved well beyond experimental use and is now considered a stable choice for long-term projects.

4. Platform specific features

Through Platform Channels, Flutter allows communication between Dart and platform-native code (Kotlin, Swift, etc.), ensuring that developers can access device-specific APIs when needed without compromising the cross-platform nature of the app.

Best practices for enterprise Flutter app development

To get the most from Flutter in an enterprise setting, consider these best practices:

1. Scalable Architecture: Use patterns like BLoC, MVVM, or Clean Architecture for long-term project health.

2. CI/CD Automation: Leverage tools like Fastlane, GitHub Actions, or Codemagic for build automation and deployment.

3. Platform Channels: Keep native code minimal and channel interactions clean.

4. Monitoring: Use Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry, and New Relic for performance and error tracking.

5. Project File Management: Organize and maintain key files such as main.dart, pubspec.yaml, and analysis_options.yaml to ensure maintainable code and smooth implementation of features like hot reload and dependency management.

6. Accessibility: Ensure your app supports screen readers to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, making sure UI elements are properly interpreted and pronounced.

Flutter app development cost: What to expect

The cost of Flutter app development can vary based on:

1. App complexity (features, backend, integrations)
2. UI/UX design requirements
3. Location and expertise of the development team

However, compared to building separate native apps, Flutter significantly reduces overall cost by sharing code and streamlining maintenance. Many businesses choose to hire Flutter app developers through experienced partners to ensure efficiency and ROI.

These cost savings can be passed on to customers, allowing businesses to offer more competitive pricing or invest in enhanced service quality. By focusing on delivering better service and value, companies can improve customer satisfaction and build stronger relationships with their customers.

Real world example: Flutter + Shorebird for OTA updates

Here are some examples of how Flutter is used in enterprise scenarios, including the following real-world case:

In one enterprise scenario, a company combined Flutter with Shorebird to modernize their OTA (Over-the-Air) update strategy:

1. Android APKs were auto-distributed using Fastlane and Firebase App Distribution.
2. iOS builds were archived via Xcode and distributed through TestFlight.
3. With Shorebird, they enabled hot-patching, allowing real-time bug fixes without re-submitting to app stores.

Results

1. 40% faster release cycles
2. Reduced downtime for production hotfixes
3. Better team collaboration across QA, DevOps, and Engineering

This showcases the value of integrating cloud professional services with Flutter app development.

Is Flutter good for web development?

Yes. Flutter has grown to support website development alongside mobile and desktop. With a single codebase, teams can build responsive, performant web apps - ideal for internal dashboards, PWAs, or B2B portals.

This allows teams to deliver a consistent experience across mobile and web—without duplicating effort.

Conclusion: Flutter is enterprise-ready

Flutter is no longer an emerging trend - it's a mature, future-proof framework that meets the dynamic needs of enterprise app development. It combines speed, scalability, and maintainability, helping businesses launch high-quality apps faster than ever before.

Whether you're building a new product, modernizing legacy systems, or scaling globally, Flutter gives you the flexibility and power to execute at enterprise scale and is undeniably a future-ready choice for enterprise app development.

Ready to scale your enterprise app with Flutter?

If you're looking to modernize your application stack or launch new digital products, now is the time to consider Flutter. We are a leading Flutter app development company that helps global enterprises harness Flutter’s full potential with scalable architecture, full CI/CD automation, native integrations, shorebird OTA solutions, and expert guidance on Flutter app development cost.

Let’s revolutionize your mobile strategy with Flutter - smarter, faster, and future-ready.

Introduction

The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Over 60% of healthcare providers are adopting digital solutions to improve patient care with more people managing chronic conditions, seeking care from home, and expecting services tailored to their needs. Technology is stepping in to make care more personal, accessible, and efficient. Mobile apps play a vital role in leading this change by helping patients to stay on top of their health, giving healthcare providers better tools to support care, and making it easier for everyone to connect and share information when it matters most.

In terms of healthcare application development, iOS is the top choice for healthcare app development - due to its strong data security, reliable performance and seamless user experience which are critical elements when dealing with sensitive medical information. Using trusted iOS app development services, healthcare organizations can build scalable, compliant and intuitive solutions that meet the high standards of modern clinical environments.

Development costs vary based on the app’s complexity, integrations and compliance needs. In this guide, we will explore the most impactful types of healthcare apps for iPhone, highlighting their core features and estimated costs to support more informed software development decisions.

1. Telemedicine apps

Purpose: Deliver secure, real-time virtual consultations.

Core features:

• Remote consultation through HIPAA-compliant video and audio calls
• Real-time chat, image and file sharing
• Appointment booking for in-clinic or online with reminders, doctor’s availability management, and automatic visit reminders
• ePrescriptions (eRx), EHR, clinical notes

Best for: Multi-specialty clinics, hospitals, solo practitioners and telehealth platforms.

Estimated cost: $100,000 – $300,000

2. Fitness & wellness apps

Purpose: Encourage physical health and emotional well-being.

Core features:

• Step/activity tracking and fitness goal setting
• Mindfulness exercises, challenges and leaderboards
• Remote access to coaches/health experts for custom wellness plans

Best for: Wellness brands, fitness centers, fitness trainers.

Estimated cost: $50,000 – $150,000

3. Nutrition & diet tracking apps

Purpose: Help users plan meals and manage nutrition.

Core features:

• Meal logging, calorie, macro and micronutrient tracking
• Personalized diet plans based on health goals, AI-powered food suggestions
• Food, water & medication reminders

Best for: Nutritionists, fitness apps, diabetic care.

Estimated cost: $40,000 – $100,000

4. Health monitoring apps

Purpose: Track vitals and manage chronic conditions.

Core features:

• Sync real-time data from Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc., for effortless health tracking
• Log and track BP, heart rate, glucose, and the oxygen levels via connected devices or manually to manage chronic conditions. Get notified instantly if vitals exceed safe thresholds
• Set dose alerts, medication reminders, track adherence and get refill reminders

Best for: Chronic care programs, elder care, remote monitoring services.

Estimated cost: $80,000 – $200,000

5. Hospital, clinic & care coordination apps

Purpose: Digitize and streamline end-to-end hospital and clinic operations.

Core features:

• Patient onboarding and EMR access: Digital registration, centralized access to lab results, prescriptions and full medical history
• Staff dashboards: Role-specific dashboard for doctors, nurses, and lab technicians to manage tasks, patients and workflows
• Clinical documentation: Track vitals, add progress notes and manage discharge summaries in real time
• Admin and operations: Handle staff scheduling, payroll, HR tasks and manage inventory of drugs, equipment and consumables
• Revenue management: Process billing, insurance claims, invoicing and payment tracking efficiently

Best for: Large hospitals, multi-specialty clinics and diagnostic chains.

Estimated cost: $150,000 – $400,000+

6. Lab Test Booking & Diagnostic Apps

Purpose: Let users book lab tests and access results digitally.

Core features:

• Lab finder, test catalog and appointment booking
• Real-time status updates on samples/tests
• Digital report uploads & doctor access

Best for: Diagnostic labs, aggregators, home test services.

Estimated cost: $40,000 – $90,000

7. Medicine Delivery Apps

Purpose: Order medications directly from mobile devices.

Core features:

• Upload prescription, browse medications, order & delivery tracking
• Real-time stock and pricing availability
• Stock and delivery management for providers

Best for: Pharmacy chains, ePharmacy startups, health platforms.

Estimated cost: $40,000 – $100,000

8. Medical Billing Apps

Purpose: Simplify and automate healthcare billing processes.

Core features:

• Digital invoice generation
• Insurance claims & pre-auth submission with claim status tracking
• Patient payment portals with receipt access and payment history

Best for: Private practices, hospitals, billing service providers.

Estimated cost: $40,000 – $90,000

9. Medical Networking Apps

Purpose: Create a collaborative network for medical professionals.

Core features:

• Doctor-to-doctor messaging
• Referral sharing and clinical case collaboration
• Continuous Medical Education (CME) content, job boards and event calendars

Best for: Hospitals, associations, healthcare networks.

Estimated cost: $25,000 – $65,000

10. Patient Self-Care & Records Apps

Purpose: Help patients store, manage and share their health data.

Core features:

• Upload lab results, prescriptions and reports
• Medication logs, symptom tracking, allergy profiles
• Share files securely with doctors or family

Best for: Chronic illness support, family caregivers, personal health records.

Estimated cost: $30,000 – $75,000

Whether it's a single-purpose app like Remote Health Monitoring or Medical Billing, or a combination of multiple focused apps coming together to form a larger solution like a hospital management system, modular iOS healthcare apps offer the flexibility to start small and scale smart as needs grow.

Note: These estimates are ballpark figures. Costs may vary based on design complexity, integration needs, compliance (HIPAA, GDPR), and custom features.

2025 software development cost breakdown:

Note: These percentages are based on industry averages and can vary depending on project specifics.

[You may like reading: Top 10 tech trends shaping modern healthcare in 2025]

Introduction

Today, everyone expects things to be personalized—shopping, watching movies, or playing games. The lottery industry is no exception. In the past, we would send the same offers and messaging to broad groups of players, because they were a similar age or had the same location. But now, with the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence), we can do better.

We’re already implementing and using smart tools like Adobe Target, Campaign Manager, and Experience Manager (AEM). These help us understand what players like, which games they play often, how much they spend, and when they usually play. Now, AI is helping us make this even more accurate and faster.

Introduction

Cloud has been around for more than one and a half of decades and has become a norm across the industry. From cloud being a disruptor to a new default now, it has become the core engine of digital businesses.

IDC reports that the global cloud spend will surpass $678 billion in 2025, however, there are still 60% of enterprises struggling to realize the full value of their cloud investments.

The Cloud technology itself poses no issues, however there are strategic gaps that are still pulling businesses back to realize the cloud's full potential. By the end of 2025, cloud-first strategy would be adopted by 85% of enterprises but only a fraction of it would be able to get best what cloud has to offer, says Gartner.

The strategy must change in 2025 as the playground has changed now.