DEV Community: Claire Mackerras

Step-By-Step Mobile Application Testing Process

Claire Mackerras — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 09:12:28 +0000

Mobile Application usage has upsurged greatly in nearly all the business areas be it Publishers, Healthcare Providers, Pharmaceuticals, Retailers, Universities, Schools, and much more.

This ever-evolving use of mobile applications has led the businesses to focus on developing robust mobile applications and testing it before it is launched in the target market.

Creating a mobile application with all the features embedded into it is not enough, rigorous testing of it is required before introducing it in the market so that the delivered application works smoothly without any glitches. Thus mobile application testing process is crucial to the success of an application.

Steps Involved In Testing A Mobile Application?

Step 1- Planning and Preparation

When you are done with the development stage, you should identify what your app’s objectives are and what are the limitations. This step involves the following activities:

• Choose the target devices on which you are going to test the mobile application.

• Figure out the functional requirements.

• Check out the following requirements:

Does the application work together with other apps?
Do all the features exhibit proper functionality?
Check out whether the app is Native, Hybrid, or Mobile-web?
Whether the app requires front-end as well as back-end testing?
How is the app load controlled?
Does the application is affected by a change in the phone status.
Make sure your testing team is ready to execute the process.

Step 2- Classify Testing Types

In this step, we identify various types of testing to be conducted for a particular mobile application. This includes functional, usability, compatibility, performance, or security testing on the target devices. Also, determine what kind of functional requirements should be tested.

Target devices can be selected by:

Identifying what kind of devices are supported by the application or recognizing the most standard models for the target users. Also, choosing devices with different screen sizes.

Step 3- Preparation of Test Case and Script Design

In this, test cases are crafted for each and every function of the application. Along with preparing functional test cases, some other special cases should also be prepared which includes Battery usage, App speed, Data requirements, and Memory.

Also, you should figure out what combination of automation or manual testing you should execute. Make distinct sets for manual test cases and automated test scripts. Determine any reusable automation scripts and change them according to the requirements of the project. See - How to write test cases effectively and efficiently.

Step 4- Environment Setup for Testing

Download, install and configure the application on the testing device to set up the testing environment. Make sure the test version of the application is established before starting with the actual testing.

Step 5- Manual and Automation Testing

This step involves executing manual test cases and automated test scripts on various devices, emulators or simulators. Now these manual test cases and automated test scripts are run on the fundamental functionalities of the application to ensure that there are no glitches.

Record the faults detected in the defect management tool and follow the life cycle as planned in the project.

Step 6- Usability Testing or Beta Testing

Once the basic functions are tested in the application by the testing team, now the usability of the application should be tested so as to ensure that it offers good user experience.

So, introduce the beta version of the application in the market. This will let the beta testers to begin the usability testing to find any functional, usability, or content issues. Cross-platform matrix is maintained in this stage to make sure that beta testers are able to achieve platform coverage.

Step 7- Performance Testing

Usually, mobile applications have relatively less device memory and power so it is essential that applications must handle themselves proficiently. Thus the app performance can be tested by altering the network from 2G, 3G to WIFI.

Thus, the responsiveness, scalability, and stability are tested in performance testing of an application.

Step 8- Security and Compliance Testing

In this phase, the application is tested to ensure that it is secure and protected and does not do any data leaks. This is done by authenticating SQL injection, data dumps, session hijacking, or packet sniffing.

Step 9- Device Testing

During this phase, all the test cases and test scripts are executed in different devices identified through the cloud. The main objective of this step is to achieve good test coverage pertaining to different devices, operating systems or versions of OS.

Step 10- Test Summary Report

The test summary report includes the following information:

• Chief information revealed by the tests conducted
• Quality of testing efforts and mobile application
• Information revealed from incident reports
• Types of testing done and time consumed in each one of them

The report should also define whether the application is suitable for use and meets all the expectations of the end user.

Conclusion:

By implementing all the above steps, the management will decide whether to release the app in the market or not. Although testing requires rigorous efforts, executing the testing steps for each app developed will definitely deliver a fully functional and efficient app in the market.

Cloud-Based Performance Testing- Everything You Need To Know About

Claire Mackerras — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:43:56 +0000

Cloud-Based testing is one of the profound fields of software development where we have seen loads of hysterias in a couple of years. With the passing time, the possibilities of the field are only emaculating.

A cloud-based performance testing empowers you with the capability of driving the load to your mobile or web application in the cloud environment. With such features, you can get rapid from your performance test scenarios.

As per the trends, we all want our business applications to be fast and high performing which makes performance testing vital. And as the paradigm is shifting towards cloud computing, the demand for cloud-based performance testing is also trending.

In this post, you will learn about the terminological differences in performance testing, how you can build an effective cloud performance testing strategy, and the three B’s associated with cloud load testing (Load testing is also a part of performance testing).

So, are you ready? Let’s get you started:

Terminology Difference in Performance Testing

• The Environment

The Environment in a Cloud-based performance test is similar to that environment which you might refer to “that tool out west”. Both the terms are the web application. An environment in Cloud Test performs the task of taking control of the virtual users for the test scenario. It requires a username and a password which enable you to access the management of performance center which in return helps you to maintain the scenarios.

• Maestro in Cloud Test

Maestro and load generator has the similar function. The load server can be any local machine or as per the trend, it can be the cloud. The deployment of load generator in the cloud is highly cost-effective and can kindle heavy traffic from the variant location on the internet. It is very easy to deploy both the load generator and the controller in the cloud.

• The Performance Analysis

You can check the analytics dashboards which will give the entire analysis of the performance of your web or mobile application in extreme condition. With performance testing tools, it is very easy to speculate the load amount and check the sustainability of your application is an extreme load.

Build a Strategy that is Effective in Cloud Performance Testing

In this section of the post, you will learn how you can leverage the cloud performance testing by building a robust strategy around which you will invoke CLT (Cloud-based testing). So, without any further ado, let’s get you started,

• Get the Stats on the Load

When you start the testing procedure, you must get all the necessary information from your cloud provider on the load stats from those who are sharing the cloud. That’ll provide you an estimate of response time you’ll get as there are other applications hosted in the cloud. You must conduct the test when the load is at its zenith, it will help you test the threshold of the application you are testing.

One more thing you must mark important here. You need to conduct these types of tests on a regular basis to keep the performance on the check. It will help you in keeping the track of the response time of your application.

• Conduct Stress test

This test is also very identical to the load test. It will help you to comprehend the pressure points of your application. When you conduct this test in a public cloud, you have multiple users to cater to. With this test, you can easily check the breakpoint of your application which will help you in speculating the pressure point of your application.

• Monitoring the Memory

With memory monitoring, you can conduct volume tests where you can monitor the virtual memory. It will help you in understanding the scalability and the capacity of the virtual environment for the environmental testing.

• Check for Pliability & Scalability

Pliability testing is one of the most important tests in order to check whether the application’s performance is under the compliance rule defined by SLA and can easily be scaled up to the expected level. When you are working in a cloud-based system, it gives you perfect environment to stress out the scalability of your application. It gives you perfect situation test the threshold of your application in high load.

Important Read: How Cloud-Based Device Lab Helps In Accelerating Time to Market and ROI

In Conclusion

Cost-effectiveness is the major tenet in the cloud-based performance testing. People are using cloud environment to get better speed, agility, and efficiency of their mobile and web-based applications. Performance testing based on the cloud is a tedious task which is fruitful when you have to test the performance of your application in case of heightened traffic and load.

The results you get will help you in many ways that will decide the success of your web and mobile application. So, what do you think about cloud-based performance testing?

Did I miss something? Why don’t you leave a comment and let me know about it? Till then, have a great day ahead. Adios!!!