Quality assurance (QA) is critical to delivering brilliant customer experiences. However, with a plethora of testing types and methods, testing a mobile application for release can be overwhelming.
We’ve outlined the essential mobile application testing process below to get you through it.
According to an Atlassian survey, 80-90% of DevOps teams today use Agile methods, significantly impacting QA.
Agile development demands faster and more frequent testing from QA teams. Due to the typical 10-day sprint cycle, mobile app testing is integrated throughout the development lifecycle.
QA teams must prepare test cases concurrently with development, ensuring testing can be executed quickly at the end of the sprint.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) further influence application testing, allowing QA to test code in smaller, continuous updates rather than all at once.
This iterative approach enables testing portions of features within a sprint and performing end-to-end testing before a release.
These trends necessitate faster and more efficient mobile application testing, emphasizing the need for a strategic testing process to maintain pace and quality.
Here are the steps to test mobile applications:
Begin by determining the specific features and functionality to be tested. Define the testing scope, including functional, usability, compatibility, performance, and security testing.
Key areas to focus on include:
Additionally, consider app interactions, type (Native, Mobile-web, Hybrid), front-end vs. back-end testing, and network compatibility.
For applications with a global user base, localization testing is essential. This ensures the app functions correctly in various locations and languages, beyond basic translation, avoiding common cultural and language issues.
Determine the devices and operating systems for testing. Leading companies often test over 24 device-OS combinations before a release. Consider:
Develop a detailed action plan for testing, specifying who will execute the tests and on what timeline. Prepare test suites by writing test cases or automated test scripts.
Integrate both automated and manual testing, as each has distinct advantages. Automated testing is effective for repetitive tasks and stable code, while manual testing is crucial for real-world scenarios.
Create manual test cases and automated test scripts, either in-house or with a QA partner.
Decide between in-house testing and using a crowdsourced QA company. Crowdsourced testing can provide scalable, high-quality testing with testers who resemble your end users.
Execute the test cases and scripts according to your test scope and release schedule. For example, using continuous integration (CI), nightly builds can be sent to a device farm for automated tests and to a QA platform for manual testing by real users.
Post-test run, manage and prioritize defects effectively:
Ready to test? Our dedicated testing professionals are here to help. Schedule a call to learn more about Testlio’s world-class managed app testing services.