Organizations today rely more and more heavily on mobile apps to drive their business. In fact, many companies are already seeing more than half of their web traffic coming in via mobile devices. In some cases, their mobile app is the only way customers interact with their products.
It’s no surprise, then, that developing, testing, and releasing quality mobile apps quickly and efficiently is a high priority for most organizations—as it should be! Fortunately, mobile development tools are evolving to meet these needs, with modern dev teams having access to better test automation than ever before.
Of course, the effectiveness of a mobile testing process is only as good as the technology behind it. This makes it even more crucial for organizations to know what factors are most important to take into account when choosing or building a robust mobile testing solution. Below, we outline some key things to consider:
Native, Hybrid, and Mobile Web Support
Modern mobile applications come in three different flavors: native, hybrid and web. Native apps are built using the vendor-provided SDKs. Hybrid apps run some or all of their functionality inside a webview embedded in a native app. Finally, mobile web apps are simply mobile-optimized website that users access through their mobile browsers. While there is a growing trend towards mobile web and hybrid applications (rather than native), to ensure maximum flexibility and impact of your QA solution, it’s important that you choose a tool that supports all three kinds of apps.
On-Demand Cloud Testing
With QA teams becoming more and more distributed, it makes sense to ensure that your mobile application testing solution includes a cloud component. Leveraging an automation cloud enables teams to use organize around a single implementation of test architecture, with devices and test result data accessible from anywhere in the world. You can spend your time worrying about your testsuite, not the cost and maintenance headaches associated with keeping up multiple home-grown device grids and architectural patterns.
Automation
When it comes to mobile testing, automation is essential. Choosing the right automation frameworks (Selenium, Appium, etc…) and test tools (languages, test runners, etc…) can be a challenge, and it’s important to think about all the factors involved in getting a solid mobile build process going, relative to the expertise your QA team possesses. What kinds of user flows will you need to automate, and can the automation tool support them? Do you want automation code mixed in with your app code or cleanly separate? Is automation support available for the languages and tools you know best? Think about building a testsuite with the same level of architectural foresight as you would building an app.
Integration with Key Support Systems
It’s also important to consider what level of integration is needed with support systems in your environment – whether it’s a test management system, a CI server, or defect tracking system. A strong solution will be able to easily integrate with all of these other systems, perhaps all the way down to the IDEs your developers are using.
Cross Platform Support
With the majority of applications being developed for iOS and Android, it’s a minimum requirement for your mobile application testing solution to support automation on both platforms. Of course, this will no doubt expand as you consider other devices and operating systems such as Windows, FirefoxOS, etc…, based on your customer base.
Scalability
As the number of device types and operating systems being tested increases, it becomes increasingly important that your test architecture is able to scale automatically based on the number of tests you want to run and the amount of time you want your build to take. Building your automation on a framework like the open source Appium project is a good architectural investment; Appium’s client/server architecture makes it easy to build a testsuite than can automatically utilize a cloud service as your need for more emulators, simulators, and real devices grows.
The proliferation of web and mobile applications across a myriad of devices and operating systems is fueling a demand for faster and faster delivery of software experiences, without any sacrifice of quality. Today’s leading software companies know that successful apps are built on the foundation of their mobile application testing processes and tools. By keeping in mind the key features mentioned above, organizations can work towards building and identifying the best testing solution for them. The QA process should be a breeze, rather than a hassle.
About the Author/Jonathan Lipps
 Jonathan Lipps serves as the director of ecosystem and integrations at Sauce Labs, where he leads a team of developers to ensure that the open source ecosystem surrounding the company’s core products is always maintained. He is a frequent speaker on automated web and mobile app testing, and holds advanced degrees in Linguistics and Philosophy.  Reach Jonathan on twitter.
