A Winning Mobile Testing Strategy: The Way to Go

Mobile Application testing can be quite a daunting task sometimes, what with the number of mobile devices being used these days and also the various operating systems. You need to achieve maximum accuracy and efficiency out of an application, and you need to ensure that through testing. Hence, the testing process can definitely be said to be the most essential and critical part of mobile application development. You need to have a perfectly thought out testing process and be extremely careful and particular about each step in it. Previously, we had discussed the various challenges involved in testing on our blog Mobile Application Testing: Challenges and the Solution.

Let us now see the different steps that need to be followed for a winning mobile testing strategy:

A winning mobile application testing strategy

To state an example, one of our clients in the retail sector, needed an application for carrying out their operations. Here are the steps that we followed in testing and delivering a perfect solution for them;

• Identification of the types of testing – The application was one that needed to work on a range of devices, like tablets and notes and was handled by a number of agents. Hence, the testing process had to be quite diverse. We decided to carry out a combination of manual testing, automation testing and also testing on the cloud.
• Selection of mobile devices – This involves two basic decisions: selecting the gadget or device model, and whether to use an emulator, a simulation device or other such devices. In our case, we decided to use a simulation device, called Device Anywhere. You can select from a range of devices like MobiReady, ResponsivePX, ScreenFly etc. The choice can be made based on the costs involved and the scope of the application.
• Manual and Automation testing – We normally use the SCRUM process of project development and testing. Hence, we used this approach here too, with sprints lasting up to two weeks. After the completion of two weeks, a particular logically completed module was given to the testing team or Quality Assurance team to run the tests. This was where regression proved to be kind of difficult, as every two weeks, with the delivery of a new module to the testing team, they also had to make sure that the previously tested modules were still functioning as intended. For this purpose, we used a set of automated tasks that could run smoothly and used it on each of the built modules, which helped in saving a good amount of time. And for tracking defects we also used JIRA.
  Quality Assurance Support – As required by the SCRUM system of project development, the development team constantly provided the necessary support to the QA team throughout the process of testing. This contributed a huge deal in timely delivery of the project.
  Beta testing – This is where the application gets tested on real world users, real devices, an actual network connection and a wider geographic area. This is conducted for the purpose of user acceptance testing, that is, to see whether the app is accepted by actual users. We used a set of field agents for this, and had them go through every part of the application to ensure that every single bug was fixed and that it had all the necessary features and functionality.
• Cloud testing – The cloud provides a web-based environment in which we can test, deploy and manage mobile applications. There are many advantages associated with cloud-based testing, like reduced costs setting up real-world test conditions, elimination of unstable test conditions, wider scalability, and real-time results. For our application, we carried out cloud-based testing as well to ensure accuracy.
• Performance testing – This is where the functionalities and the performance of the application is tested. This involves testing the responsiveness, the stability, the features, and the resource usage of the application and its comparison with set standards. For our application, these tests were thoroughly carried out for each completed module.
• Device testing – After all the previous tests, the application was tested in multiple versions of the Operating System required. This was to ensure proper functioning of the app even in the older versions. The Device Anywhere simulation tool was used for this purpose again.
• Test summary – At the end of the process, a test summary was created which had the details of all the important information received from the testing, like the performance details of the testing equipments used, quality of the testing process steps, statistics derived in various stages etc. It also includes details about the kinds of testing conducted and the duration of time required to complete the process. This report is also helpful in analyzing whether the testing equipments meet the performance standards and whether they are fit for further use.

These steps helped us deliver an efficient mobile application to our client and solved the problems in their business.
An ideal testing strategy will have all the above-mentioned steps, as we believe that ‘thorough testing’ means testing the application in all possible scenarios and conditions. This strategy has always helped us achieve excellence in all projects that we deliver.