Scaling Mobile Development at Microsoft: Mental Model
Article Summary
Microsoft's mobile teams were drowning in duplicate code. Every app rebuilt the same file picker, calendar, and sharing experiences from scratch.
Anand Nath from Microsoft Teams Mobile shares how they architected a reusable component system across Microsoft's mobile app portfolio. The solution tackles size bloat, monitoring blindspots, and integration chaos when sharing UI components between apps.
Key Takeaways
- Common API layer eliminates duplicate libraries like Volley vs Retrofit across apps
- Orchestrator proxies intercept HVC calls to log telemetry and enforce policies automatically
- IHvc contract standardizes initialization so every component integrates the same way
- Apps gain visibility into resource consumption and crashes without writing monitoring code
- Future vision: assemble new apps from proven libraries instead of rebuilding everything
Critical Insight
Microsoft created a three layer architecture (ApiService, IHvc contracts, Orchestrator) that lets apps share high value components while maintaining control over size, performance, and monitoring.
