Business is going mobile, and it seems like more and more critical business processes rely on mobile applications every day. As developers rush to bring new innovations to market and take advantage of mobile business opportunities, production times and release schedules are being slowed down by test cycles. Not to mention the increased risk introduced with new variations of hand-held device software and hardware.
Part of the complexity of testing mobile business applications is identifying how many test cases need to be created to ensure high quality user experience. With variations in devices, operating systems, web browsers, applications, and more, QA teams face a daunting challenge. Factor in the frequency of updates that come with all of these devices; ensuring your mobile business processes are fully tested is simply not possible with manual testing.
So how can you protect your business from unforeseen failures caused by the complex mobile application landscape? Using automated testing tools for mobile applications is the only way.
To get started testing mobile applications in your enterprise, you need to address three key parts:
- Designate Primary and Secondary mobile devices and operating systems.
- Identify the number of test cases needed to prevent failures.
- Build automation for continuous testing of business processes across your mobile applications.
Designate Mobile Devices and Operating Systems to Test
Perfecto Mobile, a leader in mobile app testing, has a great example on their blog of how to identify the number of tests needed for testing primary and secondary devices. In their example, they create lists of primary devices consisting of the most popular iOS devices (5) and top Android devices (4). They also include a secondary device list with 3 additional iOS models and 4 more Android devices, bringing the total number to 16. That’s before accounting for the releases of the new iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy Note 7 – both expected later this year. Depending on the time allotted for a complete QA cycle, the total number of devices needed to complete full parallel regression testing can easily grow by 4x or more.
Identify Test Cases Needed to Prevent Failures
Now that you have selected your mobile devices, you will need to evaluate and prioritize business processes for testing. In the Perfecto example, a total of 400 processes are identified and categorized as either critical path tests, high priority, or low priority tests.
- Critical path tests – Critical path tests involve the interactions in your mobile apps that are absolutely required for core functionality. (Think: “Without it, is your app able to…?”)
- High priority tests – These are designed to validate important processes, variations, and integrations.
- Low priority tests – Low priority tests focus on non-critical design/UX elements and those features and interactions not essential to basic application functionality.
This process can be extremely time consuming and costly. Fortunately, using an intelligent automation platform such as the latest version of Worksoft Certify®, mobile business processes can be captured in real-time to create test cases.
With traditional discovery and documentation methods, the business would have analysts take time away from business users’ normal tasks to conduct interviews to help uncover each business process from end-to-end. Worksoft automates this discovery process with the “Capture” function. When a user is ready to complete a task, they simply start the Capture and then perform the process as usual from end-to-end. Worksoft will capture each step in a business process, even if the process involves utilizing multiple platforms. These Captures are later used to create testing libraries, process documentation, and process analysis. The biggest benefit of Worksoft’s Capture function is that it records processes in real-time, without taking time away from business analysts or automation engineers to create the tests your QA team needs to ensure the highest quality.
Build Automation for Continuous Testing of Mobile Business Processes
Worksoft Certify offers a “scriptless” approach to functional and business process testing, providing analysts and business users with the ability to automatically capture and define tests through an intuitive menu-driven interface using natural language narratives. The test cases and full test libraries are built using the Captures previously mentioned. This allows users to build test cases without complex programming knowledge – and without disrupting normal business activities. Utilizing these functions allows the business to save significant time and resources both in discovering processes, and in creating extensive automation test libraries.
These business process tests can be run continuously, allowing for ongoing and “lights out” test coverage across mobile business applications. This provides a new level of daily coverage that is simply not possible without intelligent automation.
When a new device is released, or a new version of a mobile OS is released, automated testing will discover risks and failures before a manual tester ever could. As businesses become more reliant on mobile apps, this type of continuous test coverage becomes more crucial.
To learn more about mobile testing, be sure to visit our mobile application testing page.