How to Do Mobile Application Testing Right

The breakneck speed of the mobile world shows no signs of slowing down. Quite the opposite – it’s accelerating.

What You Should Know About Mobile Application Testing

Companies have no choice but to develop faster and more efficient ways to ensure their products are tested and proofed so they can hit the market quickly and bug-free. The demand for speed means that there’s never been more of an onus on a company to get mobile application testing done right.

There’s quite a few strategies that will ensure that your mobile application testing will go smoothly, but before we get to those, let’s look at where a few of the complications will set in.

First, the mobile space is vast and only getting bigger. A huge potential obstacle is the difference in operating systems. Between Android and iOS, you have the two dominant mobile operating systems that at times have made transition for apps between the two frameworks difficult. And those two are only the beginning. New operating systems are in development for mobile, and as we all saw with BlackBerry, an OS can spark into existence just as quickly as it can fade out, making this aspect of the technology hardly stable from a development and testing point of view. Add in the constant updates and changes, and you have what amounts to a rather large hurdle to making sure your application is tested in every situation and cleansed of glitches before launch.

Adding on to the already difficult starting position when it comes to cross-compatibility, you have the sheer variety of devices and how they can at times be rather particular.

Some devices are easier to program for than others, while different smartphones have their own quibbles that companies need to cut through if they want their application to be as functional as possible at launch. This again raises the stakes, necessitating that a solid mobile app testing strategy is developed. After all, nothing can soil an app unveiling more than a shoddy final product.

So with two major potential roadblocks laid out, let’s now move on to how you can avoid stumbling through the use of several effective mobile application testing strategies.

Automated Testing

While manual testing usually allows for the most thorough results, the field is simply growing too big to make the idea of manual testing viable for much longer. Between the glut of smartphone models and operating systems, you have what would be a herculean task for any set of developers.

That’s why something like automated testing can really lessen the testing burden. After all, there’s enough out there that you already should be worried about. Testing, by comparison, should be smoother.

While again having its own set of drawbacks, the end result is often better than the one achieved if you decide to forgo automated testing. That’s because this method allows you to get the most results from the most situations in as timely a manner as possible.

This is also key boon for other areas of the mobile applications development like scaling and when you’re trying to cut down on costs. In both cases, automated testing will be a huge benefit and allow you to not only have your business ready for when your app is going to take the next step in terms of scale, but also avoid breaking the bank in the process.

Crowdsourcing

There are a great many benefits that you could glean from a crowdsourced, concentrated effort to test your application before launch.

One of the newer forms of testing available, crowdsourcing offers much of the benefits of the automated method with far fewer drawbacks. What you get with crowdsourcing is hundreds and thousands of human users futzing around with your application, looking to see how it’ll react to their poking around and where the holes are.

Crowdsourcing is about as close you can get to a simulated launch, with all the benefits of having users trying your app out as regular consumers would and leading to find issues that otherwise may not have been discovered until post-launch.

So if crowdsourcing is so great, why doesn’t everyone use it? Well, as I mentioned earlier that it is a newer form of testing and one that has to develop a comprehensive offering for businesses yet, or at least not on a wide scale. Right now availability is the main drawback to crowdsourcing testing.

Use an Emulator

An emulator provides a tonne of answers to your company about the reliability of your app without breaking the bank or becoming overly time-intensive. Emulated devices are a great way to test all manner of different aspects of the application, from networks to scripting language.

Emulators are great, but they are not all created equal.

Some key things to note when searching out the right emulator for you application is to find ones with the proper diagnostics to isolate any problems that you may encounter. You’ll also want to find an emulator with a lot of flexibility in network stacks in order to test different network options.

Basically, you want the most comprehensive emulator you can find so you can arrange for the application to be tested under a variety of conditions and in as many different ways as possible.

Mobile Application Testing Done Right

There are a great many tools out there to help you make sure that your mobile app is ready for the big leagues. From emulators to automated testing to crowdsourcing, those are just three strategies that can help you find out where your app has holes and proceed to plug them.

While testing your application can be a long, tiring and arduous process, it is one of the most important stages of development for your app. After all, any corners cut at this stage will hit hard when the application does eventually release, again making this process so important for companies to do right.

With that in mind, take these strategies with you and good luck on getting your application up and ready to be released. Well tested, I’m sure it’ll be great.