Accelerating App Development with Flutter
Article Summary
Larry McKenzie and Corey Sprague from eBay built a full-featured mobile app in under a year with a tiny team. Their secret? Ditching the traditional native approach entirely.
eBay's tech leads share how they built the eBay Motors app for auto enthusiasts using Flutter, Google's cross-platform UI toolkit. Facing an aggressive 12-month deadline and a massive feature scope, they needed a radically different development approach.
Key Takeaways
- Achieved 98.6% code sharing between iOS and Android platforms
- Delivered beta to CEO in just 3 months from initial requirements
- Added 50% more features post-launch while maintaining velocity
- Enforced 100% code coverage with Flutter's testing capabilities
- Unified two separate platform teams into single codebase
Critical Insight
Flutter enabled a small team to build and ship a complex marketplace app in record time by eliminating platform-specific development overhead and unifying iOS and Android codebases.
