Sumayyah Ahmed
Android Tech Lead at Square
Sumayyah has been building Android apps since 2013, and still loves it! She likes digging deep into how Android works, and how to keep production codebases flexible, scalable, and clean. In fact, she spends a lot of time building talks around those exact topics. She currently works at Square, leading engineering teams and thinking about architecture.
Making the Big Kotlin Multiplatform Decision
Why is adopting Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile not an easy decision to make? After all, it can potentially save a business millions of dollars by cutting down duplicate iOS and Android code and saving many developer hours.
But when you have large, complicated codebases and investment in a mobile organization with specific skill sets, it can be an expensive decision to put time and resources into shifting into KMM instead. It can be a hard decision to reverse, and a risky call to make. But it doesn't have to be!
In this talk I’ll lay out a decision-making framework to approach KMM adoption - not just from an engineering perspective, but a leadership one too. We’ll reference case studies and talk about:
- Evaluating KMM for different kinds of projects - standard mobile codebases as well as those in custom frameworks like RIBS and Workflow
- The important factors - build support for Android vs iOS, resourcing KMM expertise, and flexibility, all of which impact long-term risks and outcomes
- Evaluating cultural support - what kind of teams and organizations are best set up for KMM success?
- Finding the right engineering levers to make adoption more successful
At Square, I’ve had to make that call for my team, and I’ve worked with other teams that faced similar decisions. I’ll reference real learnings as we discuss wisely and successfully steering a team into new Kotlin waters.