The rapid pace of mobile apps demands new approaches to functional testing. To bring high-quality software to market quickly, your organization needs a strategy that moves you beyond the limitations of testing conducted on devices you manage in an internal lab. This paper outlines five strategic steps to get you there today—and move your processes into the era of the app. It’s the era of the app. So what does that mean for functional testing? The explosion of mobile devices creates a new set of challenges for your organization in your quest to develop and deliver robust mobile apps. To be successful, your organization needs to employ effective, efficient, and thorough functional testing throughout the application development lifecycle. And that’s a problem. Conventional, manual testing, which is often the norm for desktop and web applications, simply cannot meet the challenges of testing mobile apps. Mobile apps create new testing challenges The era of the mobile app creates unprecedented challenges for your functional testing teams. These include: Fragmentation—Mobile devices are changing and evolving at a bewildering pace. There are hundreds of new devices introduced every year. With new screen sizes, form factors, and operating system variations, these changes often cause problems for apps. Urgency—To keep pace with a dynamic competitive landscape, mobile development must be fast—very fast. Mobile teams need to design, build, test, and release software in very short intervals. Conventional manual testing simply cannot keep pace with the agile world of the mobile app. Risk—Poor app quality can damage the reputation of your enterprise and its brands. Because users provide ratings and public reviews of apps, it’s impossible to not face public scrutiny if you deploy a bad app—and the impact of bad reviews and a low-rated app can be catastrophic. Complexity—As mobile apps become more complex and depend on new technologies—such as location-based, near-field communication (NFC), real-time events, and pop-ups—testing becomes more complex, both manually and automatically. Localization—If your enterprise offshores testing and app build services, your test teams need the ability to run remote tests that validate functionality over local devices and carriers. Otherwise, the experience for local users could be quite different from that of the test cases. These challenges that arose with mobile devices and apps drive a new set of requirements for functional test teams. Deliver better software in less time with these five steps While the era of the app brings big challenges, it also brings big opportunities for companies armed with the right tools. Here are five strategic steps to move your functional testing processes into the era of the mobile app, along with a look at the HP tools that enable your transformation. 1. Test mobile apps on real devices. To gain a realistic view of the actual user experience, you have to test on real devices. Device emulators and simulators can be useful early on in the development and test process, but they don’t show you the actual user experience on devices with unique features. allows you to use a wide variety of real user devices in your testing environment. The software enables accurate, reliable, and repeatable testing on diverse mobile devices and operating platforms. 2. Use the cloud to host your testing reference devices. This is an essential requirement for an enterprise solution. A cloud-based service allows you to avoid the complexity of procuring, managing, maintaining, and updating your own testing reference devices. And it enables your testers to securely test and monitor your apps on real devices connected to live networks. HP UFT Mobile enables access to a fully managed private cloud of dedicated mobile devices, hosted and powered by Perfecto Mobile. This integration gives you access to real devices, including different types of phones and tablets, located around the world. You also can access hundreds of devices in the Perfecto Mobile public cloud. 3. Automate mobile app testing. Manual testing on individual devices doesn’t scale. To keep pace with agile development processes and the demands of a fast-moving business, your test teams need automated tools that allow you to write a test once and run many tests on a wide range of devices in a short amount of time. HP Unified Functional Testing software, which provides the foundation for HP UFT Mobile, provides automated functional testing for many platforms and technologies, including mobile. Leveraging the Perfecto ScriptOnce™ technology, you can extend scripts across many different platforms and devices. HP UFT Mobile extends this foundation to enable automated and manual testing of mobile apps on real devices based in the cloud. 4. Test mobile apps under different network conditions. The behavior of an app can depend heavily on network variables. This means you need to understand and control network conditions when you test apps. You should use a service that tests devices operating in live cellular networks, not just HP UFT Mobile allows you to test apps on real devices connected to real networks with live network conditions. To enable an even broader range of testing, you can use network simulation tools, such as those from Shunra, a leader in network virtualization for software testing. 5. Leverage your existing processes and tools. Mobile apps should leverage your substantial investments in software quality processes, tools, teams, and policies. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find the best way to extend your existing software development lifecycle processes and leverage your current assets to encompass your mobile apps.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:28:26 +0000
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