The Story of Our Big Android App Rewrite
Article Summary
Gojek's driver app serves 2 million+ partners who depend on it for their daily income. When the app goes down for even an hour, drivers lose significant earnings—so a rewrite was high stakes.
Gojek's Driver Platform team faced a critical challenge: their driver SuperApp had outdated design, cluttered legacy code, and struggled on low-end devices used 10-12 hours daily. They needed a complete overhaul without halting feature development or jeopardizing business.
Key Takeaways
- Rejected big-bang rewrite; chose progressive reconstruction with 50% resources on rewrite
- Adopted Clean Architecture with RxJava, component-based UI, and exhaustive testing requirements
- Missed first deadline—held blameless retrospective to improve estimation and planning process
- Used feature toggles for gradual rollout and real-time monitoring across user segments
- Drivers loved the redesign; new architecture scaled for growing team and complex features
Critical Insight
Gojek successfully rewrote their mission-critical driver app incrementally over months, delivering modern design and robust architecture while continuing to ship new features.
