Mobile apps have completely changed the way we live our lives. With the touch of a button, I can find a restaurant, get hotel reviews, get directions, or order a cab. Long gone are the days when I printed out my MapQuest directions and studied them whenever I needed to go somewhere new. While I enjoy how easily information is available to me now through my smartphone, I know it would not be possible if businesses didn’t keep up. Thankfully they are!
Businesses are realizing more and more that mobile apps are the best way to reach the highest number of customers. As more apps make their way into the market, the need for QA and testing also increases. With multiple platforms and ever progressing features, this isn’t such an easy task. That’s why we recommend QA automation! I don’t expect you to take my word for it without any facts to back it up so let’s dive in.
Why automate QA and testing?
Mobile app testing is often very repetitive, tedious, and time-consuming. With automation, you can simplify your process by defining a test once that can be executed multiple times. This reduces your time investment, cost, and error margin while increasing your productivity and test coverage. It also enables you to create a more stable application by making it easier to run tests after every minor change to the code. Essentially, automation will increase your productivity, ensure an agile development team, and reduce overall costs.
This is all very nice but the world is unfortunately not so black and white. While the need for mobile app QA is significant, there are many common problems that QA teams encounter that can disrupt and limit the efficient testing of enterprise apps. Some of the problems that enterprise testers come across are:
- Mobile app testing is not thorough – or not done at all
- Lags in development can lead to shorter testing time
- Lack of requirements can inhibit QA capabilities
To read more about the problems QA folk come across, check out this article: Three Common Problems in the Mobile APP QA Process
I am not going to answer the above question as there is not right answer but hope to have a conversation that will help answer for those asking. With the smartphone revolution upon us and the multitude of applications being released on a daily basis there is an increasing need for tools and automation to test all of these mobile applications. We are partnering and continuously vetting out tools for our customers. One thing I can see now after 8 years in this space is that there is not one tool that is perfect or that can be called the best. This is because it highly depends on the application.