"An in-house software developer of a company created two separate applications for two different purposes: User Acceptance Test (UAT) and a Production version. They need to publish the UAT version to a separate group of people within the organization, and there is no requirement for them to test the UAT and production version at the same time/side-by-side in the same device. They uploaded both applications in managed Google Play so their users can choose/install the version that they want. Do you think this is the best approach to test and publish applications in Managed Google Play?"

The developer's current approach is inefficient and not best practice. Uploading two separate applications, even with different package names, for UAT and production creates unnecessary overhead in managed Google Play. The correct approach is to utilize the closed testing track feature within managed Google Play. This allows the developer to publish the UAT version to a specific group of testers without it being visible to general production users. Once UAT is complete, the tested version can then be promoted to the production track. This streamlines the release process and ensures that only the stable production version is widely available, while still providing a controlled environment for pre-release testing.