5 Things to Consider When Adopting Mobile App Test Automation

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Adopting Mobile App Test Automation

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WHEN ADOPTING
MOBILE TEST
AUTOMATION
5 THINGS
TO CONSIDER
Software failures -- bugs, crashes or other unexpected behavior --
with mobile apps can quickly cost their creators reputation, and
pushthe app down in a search order. Only those 5-star ratings will
keep the app in front of hundreds of millions of downloaders,
and every appcreator should be aware of that.
In this context, the name of the game in
today’s competitive mobile application
landscape is a speed combined with
robustness. The ‘speed’ means a time
how often developers can publish
updates to their applications. And
the ‘robustness’ is the most relevant
factor to popularity -- and will the
app be exposed to hundreds of mil-
lions of users. So, what should app
creators do to get their app quickly
out and more robust?
For starters, test automation can pro-
vide various benefts to its adopters: cover-
age to detect bugs and errors -- early and later
during the development -- and signifcantly to
reduce the cost of failure, save time through its
repeatability and earlier verifcation, and leverage
the improved resource productivity.
As applications under development
constantly change and become
more complex, the feature set in
those keeps growing and need for
tests should increase with the same
tendency. For instance, just one new
critical feature added in your app and all
features should be tested to ensure cor-
rect behavior. Well, manual testing can’t
keep up these sorts of iterations. Auto-
mation -- when built properly and adopt-
ed professionally -- will solve this for de-
velopers.
However, if test automation is not correct-
ly implemented, it is going to be trickier
for testers in a long run. If tests have to
be rewritten each and every time, users
will keep starting over and over instead
of building on prior eforts. Therefore,
it is essential to adopt an approach that
supports maintainability over the PLC of
the application.
Ready to learn 5 things to consider when
automating mobile app testing?
Let’s get started!
Test automation for mobile is already a
critical factor for larger mobile app compa-
nies, but for some reason it is often thought
to be too expensive or difcult to adopt by
smaller companies. This is probably due
to historical reasons: smaller compa-
nies are hesitant to make up-front
investments. However, regardless
of if company selects manual and
test automation, they will need
the following assets and resources
– and those will cost some money:
Time, People, tInfrastructure, Tools,
and Training.
T
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1
Depending on the size of the project
and application it is quite obvious
that test automation will provide a
return on investment  (ROI) – how
big is the ROI entirely depends on
how test automation is adopted
and executed. Acquisition costs are
typically higher in test automation
but those will quickly pay of and
increase the ROI in the long run.
For example, once tests are creat-
ed, those can be executed over and
over again at no additional cost. In
fact, automated testing can reduce
the time to run repetitive tests from
weeks to hours. This is a signifcant
timesvaving that translates directly
into cost-savings.
APP
ROI
T
A
APP
APP
Increasing the efciency and productivity starts with a new mindset. Ev-
ery time source code is modifed tests should be repeated -- during any
phases of the development. For each app build, tests should be executed
on as major set of real devices as possible, with diferent OS versions and
HW confgurations. Manually that would be too costly and time consuming.
Furthermore, humans are not infallible. We’re not – and never will be as
accurate and precise as machines – and generated test cases. Even the
most conscientious tester will do basic mistakes during manual testing. Au-
tomated tests perform the same steps precisely each and every time and
never forget any details.
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2
To get the most out of your testing eforts, the
selection of the most robust and even cross-plat-
form automated testing framework is truly the
best way to ensure maximal test cov-
erage, on time and with great results.
Keep in mind that testing frameworks,
such as Robotium, uiautomator, Sele-
nium, Calabash, Appium, and many
others, are just methods. Some of
those are better suited for native app
testing, some better for web and hy-
brid app testing, but to get the most
out of those frameworks you need
professional testing tools and fully
utilize benefts that those frame-
works have to ofer.

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Also, one essential tool for mo-
bile developers to use in order
to automate their testing efort
is  Jenkins, which is currently the
leading open source continuous
integration (CI) server monitoring
executions of repeated jobs, such
as building a software project or
jobs.
Here are two jobs that the current
Jenkins focuses on:
Monitoring
executions of
externally-run
jobs
Building/testing
software projects
continuously
JENKINS
Lengthy and thorough tests -- that are often not
covered with manual testing -- can run au-
tomatically, and test all aspects of it:
memory contents, data tables, fle
contents, and internal program
states to determine if the product
is behaving as expected. As an au-
tomated tests can easily execute
thousands of diferent complex
test cases during every test ses-
sion, providing the coverage that
is not doable with manual testing.
One important thing to consider
here is that developers and testers
should stick with open standards and
only test cases relying on open, transpar-
ent APIs should be used for testing.  This will
help in reusing tests later on.
T
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4
“Test automation for
mobile apps can
significantly increase
the depth and scope of
tests and improve the
quality.”
In a nutshell, professional test automation can be seen as a
solution to a common business problem:
HOW TO PRODUCE
HIGH-QUALITY, ROBUST
AND RELIABLE APPS WITH
EVER-GROWING COMPLEXITY
WITH TECHNOLOGY UNDER
MASSIVE COMPETITIVE
PRESSURE?
HOW TO
INCREASE TEST
EFFICIENCY?
HOW TO
INCREASE TEST
EFFECTIVENESS?
HOW TO
SHRINK TIME TO
MARKET?
5
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Testing efciency is the average num-
ber of tests you can run for an hour of
tester time. Higher testing efciency
drives down product development
time and costs, improving your
bottom line. Testing efectiveness
is the rate at which your testing
technology reveals bugs before
your systems are released. In-
creased efectiveness reduces
costs through a better product,
improving your bottom line now
and your top line later by building
customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The mobile ecosystem is very dynam-
ic, but also sufers from both software
and hardware fragmentation. As OEMs are launching
new devices with new customizations and new OS versions are
also delivered constantly, it is important deliver constant updates to your application.
To meet the market and device compatibility it is recommended to test you app against
all real devices. In this, test automation has you covered -- you already have those tests
that are reusable -- without any investment costs or manual intervention.
To summarize:
TEST AUTOMATION
REQUIRES KNOWLEDGE,
SKILLS AND NEW MINDSET

BUT IT WILL SURELY PAY
BACK!
INTEGRATING THE TEST
AUTOMATION INTO
OVERALL DEVELOPMENT
LIFECYCLE IS A GREAT WAY
TO START
CREATING AND ADOPTING
TEST AUTOMATION
FOR YOUR MOBILE APP
IS NOT DIFFICULT

TAKE A LOOK AT TESTDROID
CLOUD FOR STARTERS!
TIME SPENT ON
A TEST AUTOMATION
WILL GUARANTEE
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
START AUTOMATING
APP TESTING
Want to learn more on the how to start mobile app test automation?
Sign up for a dedicated free online
live demo from Testdroid.

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