Presented at Canterbury Software Cluster Meetup Nov 2014. Testing mobile apps is a time consuming exercise – it is tedious to switch between devices and defect tracker and to capture screens and steps to recreate defects. Plus, the quality of mobile apps is more than just functional testing – it includes ensuring usability of the mobile application. How do we simplify this entire process of ensuring quality of your mobile application? Alan Kan will take you through common issues from mobile QA teams, and IBM’s latest technologies to streamline the mobile QA process.

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Streamlining QA process for Mobile Apps:
Strategies and Technologies
Continuously deliver high quality mobile app
Alan Kan
alankan@nz1.ibm.com
@alankannet

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Mobile?

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Mobile?
Challenges to assure quality?

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So many combinations, so little time

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Slow manual process to log a defect for an app

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Integrations not available delays testing
Web Services
integration
Mainframe
integration
3rd
party
integration
Database
integration
Front-end
app

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Performance testing sometimes skipped

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Do not receive end users feedback in time (or at all)

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Some common ways of mobile apps QA leading to these issues
Manual testing of mobile apps
Separate automation tools for testing different
OS/configurations
Use a PC based defect tracker
When integration not available, delay test, or write stubs
manually
No perf test tool or no reuse
Difficult for users to submit feedback or feedback is not
monitored/analysed

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Strategies and Technologies

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Mobile Test Automation across Platforms
Mobile Test Automation
 Capture and Playback including multi-touch events
 Object recognition
 Visual Test Editing
Cross platform
• Web tests run across mobile devices and desktop
• Support native and hybrid apps on Android and iOS
Mobile performance:
 Reuse functional tests for performance testing
 Monitor device resource utilisation counters for Android and iOS
 Capture response time measurements for Android applications
End to end mobile testing
 Testing of middle-tier and back-end services
 Performance testing of integration infrastructure

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IBM Rational Test Workbench
Recording
Playback
Authoring
Reporting

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Deliver feedback from test to development
Testers send bug reports from “in app”
Apps report their own crashes, and send
logs
Developers diagnose and fix context rich
bugs / crashes
Owners prioritize and direct resolution of
bugs / crashes
Dev
Owner
User
Test
Crashes
Bugreports
Logging
Enables testers to submit bug reports directly from their phone
In-app bug reporting

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Build user feedback into the app and analyse feedback quickly
Deliver feedback from users to
development
Users send feedback “in app”
Apps report their own crashes, and send
logs
Owners assess feedback and direct
development
Developers diagnose and fix crashes
Dev
Owner
User
Test
Crashes
Feedback reports
Logging
Enables developers to connect with users

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Tester End UsersDeveloper
Over the air build distribution1 In app bug reporting2
Crash log reporting
4
In app user feedback3
LOB/Digital Marketer
User Sentiment5
Builds
User Feedback
Crash logs
Bugs
Bugs vs. Crashes
IBM MobileFirst Quality Assurance

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 Simulate the mobile middle tier and back
office systems
 Reuse integration tests to verify
scalability of middleware and services
infrastructure
 Virtualise app services to enable
continuous testing and reduce
application integration risk
 Test mobile and non-mobile components
of your infrastructure using same intuitive
environment
Continuous testing through Service Virtualization
IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server
Client Tier
Middle Tier
Backend Data
and Services
Virtual
component
or service

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Alan Kan
alankan@nz1.ibm.com
@alankannet
Streamline mobile app QA process with
• Cross Platform mobile test automation
• In-app bug reporting and sentiment analysis
• Service virtualisation