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Automating Mobile App testing

Posted on November 3, 2022November 4, 2022 by bhargavi

With more than 10.97 billion mobile connections worldwide, there is an increasing need for sophisticated, high-performance B2B and B2C mobile apps. The worldwide mobile app industry has been expanding at a rate of over 11.5% per year, with a market value of over $154.06 billion. The COVID-19 shift to remote work and the increase in online time usage have further driven this growth.

Expectations are high in this mobile-first environment, and there is zero tolerance for bugs or performance difficulties in mobile apps, whether they be SaaS products, loyalty apps, or e-Commerce apps.

The best ways to test mobile apps, including the best test cases to automate and how to choose the best framework for mobile automation testing, will be discussed in this article.

Why should you be Automating Mobile App Testing?

Testing mobile apps more quickly and comprehensively across platforms and test scenarios requires automation. Even though automating mobile app testing is notoriously difficult, most test cases can be done in this way.

Setup Mobile Automation Testing Goals

Let’s study manual mobile app testing vs Automated Mobile App Testing.

Manual Mobile App Testing	Automated Mobile App Testing
Human performs the tests step by step, without test scripts	Executed automatically via test automation frameworks, along with other tools and software
Testing is time-consuming	Testing is time-saving
Entirely manual tasks	Most tasks can be automated, including real user simulations
Difficult to ensure sufficient test coverage	Easy to ensure greater test coverage

Automation aims to improve the effectiveness, in terms of both time and expense, and quality of your mobile app testing. Always keep in mind these two primary objectives while determining which test case types are eligible for automation:

Can I save time by automating this test case?
Will automating this test case improve my app’s functionality or quality?

Planning Test Cases

Unit tests, functional tests, and integration tests are the types of mobile app test cases that are automated frequently.

Here are the 3 types of test cases to automate:

Unit Testing

The fastest testing method is unit testing. These tests are usually inexpensive to correct, highly reusable, and simpler to troubleshoot.

Integration Testing

Integration testing ensures that all modules and interfaces function as intended. When these tests are automated, the testing process is sped up and feedback is received more rapidly.

Functional Testing

Functional testing is another testing category that should be given priority for automation. You can evaluate how well your app works across different devices, operating systems, and other differences by automating functional UI testing.

Selecting a Test Automation Framework

Once you’ve decided which test cases you want to automate, the following step is to choose the ideal automation framework or integrated system which establishes the automation guidelines for your test. Consider the test automation framework to be the best method for writing and evaluating your tests. Below are the top six frameworks for automated mobile app testing.

Mobile Automation Frameworks

Linear Automation Framework
Modular-Based Testing Framework
Library Architecture Testing Framework
Data-Driven Framework
Keyword-Driven Framework
Hybrid Testing Framework

Mobile Application Testing Checklist

The factors you can consider when selecting a mobile app testing tool are:

OS support (iOS/ Android/ Windows)
Type of tests supported (unit tests, regression tests, functional tests, etc.)
Easy-to-use, which includes script-less test creation, simple tutorials, clear reporting
Integration with existing CI/CD tools
Cost and scalability

Selecting the Right Automation Testing Tool

We can write test scripts using one or more of the above test automation frameworks with the use of mobile automation testing tools. A basic awareness of the frameworks will assist to ensure you acquire the proper tool for the job at hand, even though it is not required to fully comprehend them to select the best mobile testing tool.

Top Mobile Testing Tools to Choose

Appium

A versatile, open-source tool called Appium is highly suited for black box testing of native iOS, Android, or Windows apps, as well as hybrid and mobile web apps since it uses numerous languages and frameworks. Although Appium makes it simple to reuse test cases across platforms, testing may be slower or less accurate when using Appium.

Google Espresso

Espresso is designed particularly for Android, Java, and white box testing and UI tests. It is made by Google.

3.XCTest & XCUITest

Swift/Objective C, Apple’s XCTest, and XCUITest leverage libraries for iOS testing, and it is suited for white box testing.

4. Robotium

Robotium is an open-source application which is designed specifically for Android. It supports grey and black box testing. Since this testing offers advantages but has stalled in recent years.

Executing Your Mobile App Tests

You’ll need to make a few choices once you’ve chosen a framework and are prepared to run your tests.

The first has to do with the kinds of testing platforms you’ll use. Will you run your tests on actual hardware or simulated hardware like emulators and simulators? Or you will combine the two?

Virtual Devices vs Real Devices

Both the hardware and the operating system will be subjected to extensive mobile app testing. However, testing mobile devices is impossible due to the wide range of mobile device types and setups. Let’s take Apple for example – while it may be great to test on actual mobile devices, testing on several generations of smartphones, with several models in each generation may practically prove to be very difficult.

Best practices advise testing on at least one of each target device to be realistic, with the remaining testing being done on virtual devices (known as simulators or emulators). With a little reduction in accuracy, virtual devices may emulate many features of actual devices more quickly and cost-effectively.

Testing Infrastructure

Your next consideration for test execution is whether to execute tests in the cloud or on the premises. It is recommended to test in a cloud-based environment for several reasons. It offers the team more flexibility and other benefits.

Accessible from anywhere for globally dispersed teams
24/7 availability
Clouds are easier to scale
Help you extend test coverage
Faster way to access new releases
More secure than on-prem solutions

Conclusion

You may start creating your test cases even before you start working on your mobile app. With this strategy in mind, you can start testing your mobile app early and frequently to shorten the time it takes to market and boost performance overall. You may integrate comments and work on developing your app faster if your mobile app testing is more focused and structured.

What is the future of manual testing?

Posted on September 19, 2022September 22, 2022 by supriya

The software testing community is not new to controversial questions like whether manual testing is dying. If you are a manual tester, we can understand how such speculative queries trigger panic. Mass adoption by companies doesn’t help the cause and makes you feel like automatic testing is the next big thing.

Pause for a moment and think about it:

Is it possible to create a reliable, 100% automated testing environment?

Is it wise for a company to phase out manual testing?

And, above all, is it wise for software testers to start giving up their skills as a tester to adopt automatic tools?

The answer is no for all the above queries. Manual testing provides a tremendous amount of value to software development.

In this article, we explore the future of manual testing.

Understanding manual testing

Manual testing is the preliminary testing phase that’s closest to software development. It evaluates the behavior of the website or application developed through a step-by-step assessment based on the requirement specification analysis record. The core objective of manual testing is to ensure that the product works as per the requirement specification documents and that no bugs or functional defects exist.

Reasons why manual testing will always be needed

Manual testing is a preferred choice in several scenarios. Let’s look at areas where automation is not an option, and manual testers are better suited.

Smaller projects: Constructing and deploying automated testing systems is resource intensive. The overhead of automated testing is much higher than manual testing. Therefore, manual testing is the only economically feasible option for smaller projects.
Automation is expensive: We already covered how automated testing is not feasible for smaller projects, but for small organizations with budget constraints, it might not be an option even for larger projects. Manual testing offers an alternative to escape automated test methods’ high expenses and maintenance costs.
User experience: A machine can never fully emulate human behavior. This is why for user experience testing; we need manual testers who can imitate such behaviors and analyze the software product according to the needs and requirements of the end users. Manual testing will always be needed for higher UX. Unless we invest in a highly trained AI solution, such a level of user experience testing is impossible with automation.
Comprehensive and detailed testing: In automated testing, we have fixed and predetermined procedures that evaluate the software’s functioning and behavior according to preset rules. While the process is much quicker, the absence of any customization can result in minute defects getting ignored. As an additional layer of security, manual testing is required to remove any such bugs.

What does the future hold?

The modification and operational developments in manual testing are bringing it closer to software development. The future holds promising outcomes for manual testers, provided they keep improving their skills and learning new technologies.

Many companies and start-ups are asking QA questions to developers during interviews. A new expectation is rising within the industry where developers are expected to know a few things about manual testing. As agile becomes standard practice, the partition between developer and QA roles is blurring, and manual testers should understand development concepts like sorting algorithms. At the same time, developers who are familiar with the unit and functional testing are preferred.

Hence, manual testers will always be needed because it is impossible to release bug-free software without the intervention of human eyes. Once teams start to scale, the model of zero testers starts failing, throwing light on the fact that 100% automation of software testing is not possible for sustainability.

Automation can augment manual testing

Some aspects of manual testing are augmented with automation to improve the efficiency of testing large applications. Foremost, any repetitive steps within the testing process that does not require manual expertise can be automated. It saves human resources, time, and energy. Aiding manual testers with artificial intelligence helps reduce human errors. Adding automation can help manual testers become more reliable. Another segment where automation can augment manual testing is when evaluating complex code. Manual testers may not be as effective and efficient in such scenarios as reliably scripted automated test cases.

Conclusion

Manual testing offers the needed accuracy, intuitiveness, and micro control over every aspect of software testing. Quoting manual testing has no future will be an uninformed assertion. Both manual testing and automated testing have merits. Without a doubt, manual testing can never be replaced, and for maximum ROI, QA testers must balance manual and automated testing.

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Automation testing trends to look out for in 2022

Posted on April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 by temp

According to MarketsandMarkets, the automation testing market size is expected to grow to USD 49.9 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 19.2% during the forecast period.

Although software testing has been one of the most crucial and professional career fields in the past few years, it has now become an even more challenging job for automation testers in this digital transformation era. With the help of numerous trends, tools, and technologies that are now available in the industry, the quality of the product is now being checked at its best. However, when it comes to selecting the right tools – automation testing specialists have to acquire a lot of knowledge and practice to master each tool effectively.

Workplace automation is present in almost all businesses today, irrespective of size. The software we use for streamlining business operations is an example of automation that has improved the workplace environment. An increasing number of software engineers are handling automation testing mandates that fall outside the purview of conventional “functional” testing, as the pandemic has called for it. That’s why software testers are required to keep themselves updated with these latest trends.

Here are some of the best automation testing trends in 2022.

1. Performance Testing

The pandemic has completely shaken up the way organizations work and interact, and testing has not been excluded from this list. In 2021, big organizations like Tricentis acquired Neotys, Grafana Labs acquired load-testing startup K6, and Perfecto acquiring BlazeMeter acquired performance testing tool companies to include in their offerings. This is a trend and it’s calling for attention. This goes to show that companies are looking to move beyond just functional testing and are focused on including performance, accessibility, and security testing in their offerings. If organizations have not focused on performance testing until now, they might be forced to do so in 2022.

2. Cloud-Native Testing

For some time now, cloud-native testing has been one of the most trending topics in software development. Some developers call it the future of software development primarily because it has already changed the way we think about developing, deploying, and operating software products. The world witnessed as AWS infrastructure outage wreaked havoc on companies like Netflix, Hulu, and Twitch. These kinds of incidents increase the demand for cloud-native testing to plan and be prepared. Lastly, the dependency on external cloud applications requires companies to do more rigorous testing of the cloud infrastructure they use.

3. API Security Testing

API security testing is the process of checking for vulnerabilities in the organization’s APIs, ultimately surfacing any potential security gaps for the engineering team to fix. As workplaces get more distributed there is an increased need for the integration of tools and software for collaboration and data sharing. This is where APIs come into the picture, enabling software development. As cloud and cloud microservices adoption is on the rise, in 2022 we will witness an API-first world.

In such a world, there will be a requirement for API tools and techniques that allow developers to do API testing beyond conventional functional testing. Teams are now running API security tests as part of the DevOps pipeline, ensuring that security issues are caught early in the development lifecycle. To build a more secure IT infrastructure, companies will depend on API security testing. This will further push the rise of API functional and “non-functional” testing in 2022.

4. AI- assisted automation

Have you looked into GitHub Copilot that converts comments to code?

This tool is an excellent example of what AI-assisted automation will look like in 2022. This year organizations will witness a rise in the use of AI-assisted automation tools that will help developers and testers define more concise test cases. The advantage of AI-assisted automation lies in its ability to help developers enable automation irrespective of the language or framework they are using. It also enables multi-tasking and eases the workload for existing resources.

If you are wondering how this tech can help with functional automation testing, here is how Applitools is using GitHub Copilot to automate tests. Finally, there have been rapid advances in automation and AI technologies over the last few years. While it can augment the productivity of some supply chain workers, automation and AI technologies can replace the work done by others and will likely transform almost all work to some degree.

5. Resilience Testing

Software resilience testing is a method of software testing that focuses on ensuring that applications will perform well in real-life or chaotic conditions. In other words, it tests an application’s resilience, or ability to withstand stressful or challenging factors.

When building applications, developers define test cases to see how their applications will respond to various load profiles. Usually, they perform soak tests or stress tests, yet, there is no way to introduce a failure in this type of testing. However, with resilience testing, it is possible to inject failure modes or introduce faults to understand how applications will respond in such a scenario. Resilience testing moves beyond requests and response timings measure, and helps organizations understand how an application acts when certain conditions within the application are changed. This furthers our understanding of how stress and load affect any application.

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Helping your workforce upskill amid the automation revolution

Posted on April 1, 2022April 1, 2022 by temp

As we continue to innovate and find new ways to leverage technology, displacement of some kind is inevitable. On the subject of workplace automation, which has been trending for a few years now, the opinions of the masses and experts are divided. Some believe that the fourth industrial revolution will take away jobs, and it will, but there is data to suggest that not everything is as bleak as it might seem. Reports like the Future of Jobs published by the World Economic Forum state that while around 75 million jobs will be displaced, around 133 million new jobs will emerge as well.

So, what does this mean for the future displaced workforce? Simply put, it reiterates the need for reskilling or upskilling to best align with the changing times. Corporations and enterprises must take the lead here as machines will soon take over menial and administrative tasks. In 2018, machines did 29% of the work, and this number is slated to rise to 52% by 2025.

A McKinsey report published in 2021 corroborates this and goes on to state that 1 in 16 employees will need to find a new job by 2030. This is where a workforce proficient at non-routine analytical tasks, technical familiarity, and critical thinking will need to take the reins.

Preparing now seems to be the best way to get ahead of the revolution brought on by accelerated technology adoption. While 31% of organizations are worried about displacement within their workforce, and rightly so, be a part of the remainder that has done the needful to brave it while minimizing losses. To know how to do just that and build a workforce for the future, consider the following strategies.

Assess and conquer

Before putting in any money or effort into initiatives, it is important to form a baseline. Companies should take the time to figure out the digital literacy levels across all employees. These skills vary with employees and not all responsibilities require as much digital literacy as others. This is where assessment comes in handy, and it helps companies determine what they are willing to accept as a bare minimum going forward.

Once the early assessment stages are clear, conquering the shortcomings can begin. The road to creating a workforce that can align with the new division of labor is one built through a systematic approach. Without a baseline, it is possible that significant resources may go to waste. During the assessment stages, companies must also determine whether the goal is to upskill or reskill. These vary greatly from each other and are in no way synonymous as many may believe.

In order to reposition effectively, companies can either:

Upskill employees to be better at their existing jobs by advancing their practical knowledge to accommodate newer technologies or practices.
Reskill employees to develop newer, more relevant skills that will help them take on a new position within the organization.

Develop or borrow from an efficient digital training framework

To build a truly resilient workforce equipped to brave the storms brought on by the fourth industrial revolution, a proper training framework must be in place. These should categorize skills that are essential for work and those that are simply good to have. Based on existing models already in use across industries, here are a few skills that should be assessed and primed for development through such frameworks.

Basic digital tools
Occupation-specific tools
Data ethics
Problem-solving using technology
Data safety and security
Digital devices and their interactions
Data manipulation
Data analytics

A combination of these categories should form the roadmap as they target core areas for holistic development, be it reskilling or upskilling.

Invest in training and continuous learning across the board

Companies looking to uplift their workforce through training and learning must utilize all avenues available for it. Interactive experiences are now not only possible but so much more engaging than training programs of the past. Today, companies have options such as:

Online training courses
Certificate courses
Mobile learning
Personalized learning solutions

Each has its own merits and these can serve as incentives to better integrate learning and self-growth into the company culture. Remember, for any company, the goal should be to autotomize the learning experience, without making it a mandate that gets done because it has to. Digital experiences, especially from leading L&D companies, add value to both employee and company. As such, investing in the best is likely to deliver desired results that could very well lead to the success of the program.

Institute a mentorship program

The mentor-mentee relationship is one that has immense potential. Here, companies can either have an in-house program that drives growth and culture or opt to outsource for their mentorship needs. In either way, employees get hands-on training and learn to be practical. Mentors are a trove of knowledge and for many new to the digital landscape, a mentor’s experience could be the difference between a healthy transition and one brought on through need alone.

Digitize the experience

Much like other experiences employees enjoy today, where convenience is a given, training for industry 4.0 should offer no less. Building familiarity is much easier this way, and showcases the true potential of modern technology. What’s more, digitized learning can make people-led solutions a lot more feasible. Where online courses and seminars lack, personalized portals and digital labs excel – offering customizability and potential for hands-on innovation.

Developing a digital learning lab also benefits the company as it can be tuned to gather insights. By understanding how employees learn, what modes work best, and which formats are the go-to, enterprises can spend their training dollars in a more effective and meaningful way.

Whether the objective is to reskill or upskill, remember that either of the options is only a means to best utilize the company’s resources. It is not a substitute for hiring but can make the undertaking a lot more cost-effective. For many companies, hiring will continue to be a business-critical process. Technology companies could feature among these as they stand to benefit from a technically-proficient workforce. With remote working slowly becoming the standard, finding talent that suits the budget and can align with company objectives is easy, especially if you partner with Talent500.

With access to over 200,000 pre-vetted professionals, harnessing the power of global teams is within reach. Our AI-powered tools promise a smooth hiring experience, for both ends, and can serve as an efficient solution for scaling goals. Schedule a consultation today and be part of the global remote revolution that’s leveraging talent in the best way possible.