Key reasons why your Mobile Test Automation strategy must transform now?

The multitasking ability of a mobile phone especially in the fast evolving digital landscape with an interface to advanced technologies has made it a convenient, cost effective and yet powerful tool. Businesses releasing a plethora of mobile apps aim at achieving commercial viability. To meet this objective, businesses race with one another to develop and deploy apps those are quick to load, easy to navigate, possess multiple features/functionalities, and most importantly, are secure. In addition to these, businesses root for apps that can run flawlessly across operating systems, devices and networks, besides providing a seamless personal user experience.

To ensure this, companies go for mobile application testing covering the functional and non- functional aspects. However, the presence of multiple operating systems, devices and networks puts any mobile application testing strategy under stress. Hence, the challenges before the testers are to increase the test coverage area and to bring about uniformity in the mobile application testing strategy. And the best way to address these is by carrying out mobile test automation.

Mobile test automation, in addition to ensuring scalability and accelerating the time to market, reduces redundancies/rework and significantly improves the quality of an app. The QA testing process generates suitable metrics upon which the strategy for mobile application testing can be further improved. The success of mobile test automation depends on the ability of the app to function seamlessly across platforms, operating systems, devices, and networks. The QA strategy should aim at shortening the release lifecycle of mobile apps as well as providing updates with Continuous Integration.

With rapid technological advances and the release of numerous versions of operating systems, the mobile app testing strategy should undergo a transformation as well.

Below listed are the key reasons that can influence the mobile test automation strategy.

The proliferation of newer devices

Mobile vendors are flooding the market with newer devices. These devices come with different configurations, dimensions, and operating systems making the testing process even more complex. Thus, the key challenges for testers would be to choose the right framework and methodology to ensure the app’s seamless functioning and security. Moreover, continuous testing is needed to detect glitches and eliminate them in the early phases of the app’s life cycle.

Focus on security

The exponential growth in the cyber security related incidents has necessitated the mobile QA automation strategy to strengthen the end points or interfaces of the apps. The strategy should aim at increasing the security and penetration testing to check the vulnerabilities. The QA testing should ensure the compliance of the app with security protocols.

Big data

Most businesses use big data and analytics to draw actionable insights from the patterns of changing customer behaviour or preferences. The use of big data is needed to make crucial business decisions that can impact not only the company, but also other stakeholders including the end customers. Thus, the success of any enterprise mobile app (native or hybrid) would depend on its ability to process big data. Any mobile app test automation strategy should ensure that the app is able to process big data, flawlessly and quickly.

Quicker release schedules

The intense competition is leading to the release of numerous mobile applications across the industry verticals. To add to that, there are several updates taking place from time to time keeping the QA team on tenterhooks. Going forward, the pressure of quick releases would be felt by the QA teams. In other words, there would be less time to write robust test scripts let alone testing them comprehensively. This would call for suitably transforming the mobile app test automation strategy to ensure better test outcomes.

Better test coverage area

The greater integration of mobile apps with technologies such as Cloud, AI (in the form of chatbots,) big data, virtual reality and IoT has made the apps even more complex. The challenge before the QA teams would be to cover the test area with better frameworks and test automation platforms. The test should be able to validate the app’s functionality and performance across the digital ecosystem.

Conclusion

The diversity of mobile applications has increased their complexity. Any QA test automation strategy should take into account the technologies, platforms, devices and networks to ensure better test outcomes.

This Article is originally published at Medium.com Key reasons why your Mobile Test Automation strategy must transform now?

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, Global Leaders in Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at Cmmi-Svc v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also Iso 9001:2015 & Iso 27001:2013 certified.