Strategies and Tools for Performing Migrations on Platform
Article Summary
Spotify migrated 2,200+ mobile components and moved their entire iOS/Android codebase to Bazel across 100+ squads. Here's how they survived the chaos.
Spotify's platform team shares hard-won lessons from executing massive mobile migrations while their codebase grew 29-49% annually. They tackled the challenge of rolling out new architecture and build systems across a hyper-growth organization without grinding feature development to a halt.
Key Takeaways
- 2,200 Android and iOS components migrated to isolated build environments
- Four critical challenges: scope definition, scaling, competing priorities, and accountability
- Automation and spike weeks accelerated adoption across 100+ impacted squads
- Start small with proof of concepts, then move through alpha/beta/GA lifecycles
- Dashboards and trend graphs made progress visible and teams accountable
Critical Insight
Large-scale platform migrations are becoming the new normal at scale, but they're survivable with clear scoping, aggressive automation, and relentless stakeholder management.
