Runway Publishes 2026 Decision Guide on Mobile Release Management
83% of mobile EMs say fixing release management would accelerate their roadmap, according to our 2026 survey of 300 engineering managers. Among EMs who run releases themselves, it climbs to 94%. The role closest to release work is the same role most convi
87% of mobile teams can't see release status in a single place. When someone asks "where's the release?", the answer gets stitched together from tools, chats and people, every time.
44% of senior engineers who run releases finish less than half their planned sprint work during release cycles. Most teams still route releases through their most senior mobile engineers, which means the release load is eating product work at the most exp
Among 300 engineering managers, 83% say fixing release management would speed up their roadmap, yet only 13% can see release status in one place.
The central finding: 83% of mobile engineering managers said fixing release management would accelerate their product roadmap. Among the EMs who run releases themselves, that figure climbed to 94%, with 40% calling the potential improvement significant. Additionally:
- 65% rank releases as a top-three source of team frustration.
- 94% spend three or more hours per release cycle on status updates and stakeholder coordination; 28% spend six or more.
- 87% of EMs can’t determine current release status from a single place.
- 76% see at least a quarter of their releases deviate from the planned timeline.
- 75% rank quality risk as a top-three release concern.
- 51% say leadership perceives mobile engineering as higher-risk than web or backend.
- 84% are likely to invest in release process or tooling in the next 12 months.
The guide frames the discipline of mobile release management around five decisions that can either break or reinforce the bottleneck around releases. Teams tend to resolve them in order, starting with the cheapest to address:
- Where release status lives. 87% of teams can’t find release status in a single place, leaving them to stitch the information together from tools, chats and people every time someone asks.
- Who runs the release. 47% of teams run releases through senior mobile engineers, who complete a fraction of their planned sprint work during release cycles. Knowledge centralization is the single best predictor of release cadence in the survey.
- How leadership’s perception of mobile risk gets shaped. With 51% of EMs reporting that leadership already views mobile as the higher-risk part of the stack, the guide argues that perception is set in the silences between releases.
- What the policy is for AI-touched code. 86% of teams treat AI-generated code differently from the rest of their codebase, including 44% who route it through a senior reviewer's sign-off, 31% who require extra validation and testing, and 10% who restrict it to low-risk areas of the app. Nearly all of that governance is manual, creating one more job the release layer now has to absorb.
- Whether to invest in process work or platform work. 84% of teams plan to invest in the next 12 months. The guide’s data shows that process improvement without platform investment plateaus.
Additionally, Runway designed a five-stage maturity curve, from Ad Hoc to Platformed, across each of the five decisions. The current center of gravity is Stage 3, Coordinated, where intent to invest is highest and the platform conversation begins. The report identifies the Stage 3 to Stage 4 transition, from coordinated to automated, as the hardest and most under-invested jump on the curve, and the one teams most often attempt with process improvement alone before plateauing. A 15-item evaluation rubric lets an EM score their team and prioritize their next move.
The 2026 Decision Guide: Modern Mobile Release Management for Engineering Managers is available for free here.
About Runway
Runway is a mobile release management platform purpose-built by former mobile engineers who have lived through the pain of chaotic releases. By automating tedious tasks, unifying fragmented tools and enhancing visibility, Runway helps mobile teams save hours per release, reduce risk, and improve collaboration and app quality. Trusted by leading mobile teams at DoorDash, Skyscanner, SoFi, Kickstarter and Gusto, Runway makes releases transparent, repeatable and hands-free, so engineers can focus on building features instead of fighting fires.
Riley Maguire
Runway
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