Mobile testing: practical considerations & practices
The mobile software development market is highly dynamic and rapidly changing. More and more enterprises are integrating mobile apps into their corporate strategies each day. Traditional software testing methods often fall short in the mobile app development process. This is due to the variety of mobile platforms and different networks that must be tested.
QA professionals face the challenge of rapid development cycles and need to test software applications on at least three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile. The mobile environment presents unique demands and challenges. Therefore, choosing the right mobile testing tools and automation testing tools is crucial for a successful corporate mobile strategy.
In this article, we will present the most effective practices for mobile software testing. We will cover various aspects, including the mobile app testing process, non-functional testing, regression testing, and testing automation.
Consider Device and Platform Diversity
Mobile phones have long since become something more than just a means of communication, gradually turning into a multifunctional personal gadget. It’s challenging to launch a new mobile product as it should be tested on multiple mobile platforms and across a wide range of devices.
Effective testing on target devices and platforms helps mobile software developers collect appropriate metrics and allows application quality improvement. Certainly, it’s simply impossible to test your software app on all mobile devices and OSes.
The majority of regression and functional tasting will be conducted on these devices. It’s necessary to automate these two testing phases (regression and functional testing) to provide a rapid release of new applications with fresh functionality to the market.
Keep in mind that around 30% of the mobile devices will have to be replaced each quarter to keep pace with new mobile devices introduced to the market.
Automation is Vital
Mobile development cycles are shorter than ever, making it crucial to reduce QA-cycle time as well. Automation in regression testing has become essential, especially with iterative or Agile development methodologies. Automation allows for more tests across different devices and operating systems, significantly reducing application lifecycle management (ALM) efforts.
The benefits of automation include reduced QA expenditures, faster and more reliable problem identification, improved QA processes, and extended coverage. A device-independent testing approach is highly effective because scripts can be written once and used across multiple platforms. Proper script automation should support low-level functions, such as screen and key touches, and logical abstractions for platform-independent actions like user login.
Three types of mobile app test automation mechanisms can be highlighted:
- User Agent-Based Automation: This method uses add-ons for mobile browsers (e.g., Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox) that can be scripted to interact with web pages and applications. Tools like QTP, Selenium, or RFT can automate this functionality.
- Cloud-Based Automation: This supports web-based QA across multiple platforms.
- Lab-Based Automation: This involves setting up tools and testing environments, using physical devices and simulators with automation tools like Selenium.
Tips for Selecting Appropriate Automation Mobile Testing Tools
When selecting automation testing tools it’s important to evaluate how they can be integrated with test management environments and identify reusable scenarios on different platforms. If you’re testing a native app, make sure that automation tests are compatible with multiple browsers and can be re-used on a set of platforms. Here are some tips that will help you set up the best mobile app testing process:
- Select tools that support multiple devices and platforms
- Introduce automation in non-functional areas
- Introduce automation during the early development stages
- Conduct feasibility tests of the tool to adapt to diverse OS/technologies
- Use tools supporting emulators and devices to conduct mixed testing
- Take into consideration platform support before you start writing your testing scripts
- Sometimes you may need more than one tool to implement proper testing automation, but try to avoid creating chains of testing tools
- Look for data-driven automation support, as it’s beneficial to automate test cases with reusable business logic, data-driven tests, functional issues
Conclusions
Nowadays mobile app development and services have become business-critical.
Selecting effective mobile testing solutions/practices is influential for business operations. In mobile app testing, it’s important to successfully adapt to mobile development peculiarities.
There is an increased necessity to introduce automation into mobile app testing to enhance reliability, scale and efficiency and reduce product’s time to market. Try to introduce device-independent automation of the testing process at the early stages of app development, and provide QA professionals with access to a reasonably wide selection of mobile devices.
Non-functional testing that covers security, adaptability and usability issues is also of great importance if you are striving to develop quality mobile applications.
