When I think of Mobile App Testers, my mind races back to the tightrope walkers who set our pulses racing, with our hearts in our mouth, till they reached the safety of the other pole. Indeed they were well-practiced skillful people who not just dexterously negotiated their way across taut aerial tightropes, but even added daring feats like carrying a child on their shoulders or balancing additional items in their hands while in the act!
Mobile app testers are today in a similar space, carefully negotiating the ‘Quality-Speed’ tightrope of mobile app testing. One wrong move and the app can either come crashing down, or be so delayed that it reaches the bottom of the ‘Go-to-Market’ race, making it tough to survive in the competitive mobile app world!
Speed, Accuracy and Security are three non-negotiable, yet dichotomous pillars of mobile app testing that require QA professionals to skillfully navigate this delicate balancing act. The intense competition in the mobile app space requires the app and its frequent updates to be ready in the fastest possible time, in order to reap the first mover advantage. But then, sacrificing accuracy and security at the altar of speed, can spell disaster. Thankfully digital innovation has kept up with the challenges, and progressively presented QA professionals with solutions to skillfully and successfully walk the Mobile App ‘Quality-Speed’ Testing Tightrope.
So let’s explore the technologies and methodologies that help testers succeed in this delicate balancing act, in the face of rapidly changing customer preferences, compressed testing time, emphasis on superior user experience, and the need to get to the market before competitors.
- Test Automation
Modern challenges require modern solutions and therefore any app that wants to thrive in today’s competitive app world, must necessarily opt for newer testing technologies, of which Test Automation is the corner stone. Quality assurance done manually comes with limitations of human fatigue, boredom etc., and testers also need time for rest and rejuvenation. Therefore, the speed at which testing needs to be done today is not humanly achievable by even the best of manual testers. Hence opting for the right automated testing tools is the first step towards successfully walking this tightrope. A word of caution: There are few areas where human perception is important, and for these, manual testing scores better. However, the large majority of testing can, and must come under the umbrella of automation, in order to achieve speed, quality, and security in testing.
- Devops and Agile Methodologies
Devops and Agile methodologies go a long way in early detection of bugs and thus greatly aid the Go-to-Market race. Devops encourages Development, Operations and Testing teams to work together throughout the SDLC. Thus, it provides the right environment for unit code testing in the initial phases itself, and this helps subvert costly and critical damage that can arise from late detection of bugs.
The Agile methodology is yet another boon to testers, as it divides the project into several phases with multiple deliverables. This makes it easier to monitor and meet targets that are so important, given the tight schedules that drive app development and testing today.
Together, these two methodologies encourage a collaborative approach and emphasize continuous development and testing, to promote continuous improvement and early detection and fixing of bugs, thus balance quality and speed.
- Continuous Testing (CI/CD)
Continuous Testing is another solution that helps developers and testers successfully navigate the Quality-Speed tightrope. By promoting automation of code testing at every stage of the SDLC, CI/CD i.e. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment permits the commitment of new code modules as they get generated. This speeds up the testing process considerably. CI/CD also enables developers to test features and functionalities as they develop, since their updates go through test automation and continuous integration, to ensure that the new codes do not negatively impact existing approved functions. This ensures continuous quality check throughout the SDLC, and promotes simultaneous and continuous development and testing, thus offering the dual advantages of quality and speed.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI & ML)
AI and ML have greatly enhanced speed, accuracy and security; and have additionally brought independence, increased test coverage, self-testing, self-healing and risk mitigation to the testing process – tremendously boosting testing quality and speed. Another boon is the speed and efficiency AI brings to test case maintenance. AI-driven automation testing brings faster releases and far better risk analysis to QA teams, thus helping testers to perfect their Quality-Speed tightrope walk.
- Parallel Testing and Parallel Environments
The complexities of the mobile app tester’s balancing act go up several notches with multiple browsers and devices on which testing needs to be done. Mobile devices come with differing screen sizes, screen resolution, battery power etc. Added to this are the diverse mobile Operating Systems (OS), the major among them being iOS, Android, Blackberry OS, and Windows Phone. Furthermore there are regular version updates on these operating systems. All this increases quality testing complexities manifold and can greatly hamper the speed of testing if tests are run separately for each device and browser. However Parallel Testing permits simultaneous execution of multiple tests across different environments, thus fostering wider test coverage in quicker timeframes. Parallel Testing can be done on multiple physical devices at Device Labs or Device Farms; or through Cloud Testing.
If you are looking for a one stop, value-for-money, time-tested, automation platform for Mobile App Testing that will perfect your Quality-Speed balancing act, visit botmtesting.com.
BOTm is an AI & ML driven, 100% script-less automated Mobile App Testing Platform, that supports Deveops and Agile methodologies, and enhances the CI/CD process. BOTm is the accelerator BOT for automated and manual testing of mobile apps, developed for both Android and iOS devices.
Parallel Testing is greatly facilitated through BOTm’s real time cloud access to multiple mobile devices that you can choose from, and even access remotely. Furthermore, BOTm is a great cross browser testing tool that helps you test across new and old versions of Internet Explorer, Edge, Safari, Chrome and Firefox on Windows and Mac OS. BOTm’s constantly updated personal cloud of browsers is instantly accessible anytime you need it. Furthermore, you can choose from our deployment options: Dedicated On-cloud option, or On-premise option.
Avail of our Free Trial at botmtesting.com, and verify the power of our AI and ML driven platform’s error-free mobile app testing, which is the result of our in-built state-of-the-art app testing technologies. Check out our advanced facilities that include audio interaction with Alexa; and our Appium Converter feature which enables you to convert Appium Script Logs into BOTm Script format. With BOTm you are assured of futuristic world class testing solutions to secure your mobile apps, with error-free testing across spectrum.