Best Practices for Mobile App Testing

Any application software developed for mobile should be tested for its correct functioning, user friendly approach and consistency. Testing could be either manual or automated. Ever since smart phones came in to use, more than 2 million Apps have become available for downloading. We have Apps for music, games, financial transactions, ticket booking, ordering food, social networking and so many more categories, and the number is still growing. As these apps are invading into our personal and professional lives, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that these Apps are trustworthy, useful, easy to use and well developed by following certain techniques and best practices to test any mobile application.

A comprehensive testing strategy with specified guidelines for all testers should be devised so as to bring uniformity in testing. Once an App is designed and developed, it should be tested on real devices once it has been tested on emulator and simulator. Testing on real devices ensures realistic results and also the tester can understand the look and feel of the App with its general usability. The App should be tested at different stages of the development. This helps in identifying issues at an early stage, if any. With so many services, networks and operating systems available easily, it becomes an exhausting task to test an app that can meet all the criterion. It is essential to determine the devices and operating systems that the App caters to, and then perform tests on them. At any time, automated testing is better than manual testing as it saves time and can be used repeatedly. As an app gets more complex, repeatedly testing them for bugs becomes difficult. Hence certain software have been developed that take care of the testing. Software such as Monkey runner and Robotium automate the entire testing process.

One of the biggest challenges in the world of mobile app users is the high user expectations. It is better to know target groups and their expectations. Once user preferences have been identified, it becomes easier to decide the testing devices. To achieve this, we can conduct market research, use mobile app statistics and interview customers. Based on this information, different groups can be created based on the priorities. One group may require latest testing devices and another may require fewer. The functioning of mobile apps in various types of data networks should be tested. The app should be able to work with different network speeds and handle network transitions. For example, 3G or Wi-Fi is comparatively faster than a data network like EDGE. The app should be capable of a smooth transition from 3G to EDGE, depending on the availability.

It is advisable to start testing during the development stage itself as it reduces the cost of fixing it. Early detection and fixing of bugs ensures that the problem does not magnify later. And testing should be carried out often because with every small development in the app, it is essential to ensure that everything works as expected according to the new changes.

The app must also be tested for various languages across the globe along with popular social networking sites and markets because they can significantly impact the layout. Hence it must be addressed at the beginning of the development process. Most of the modern phones are equipped with different hardware and sensors. The app should function against sensor specific scenarios and hardware. For example, if the mobile app takes a picture, it should handle picture resolutions, sizes and uploading photos to the server. It is important to check how much battery is consumed by the app. Chances of an app that consumes more battery getting deleted is higher.

It is necessary to test the app’s installation and update processes. During install and uninstall tests, app testers have to look for crashes or any other problems that might occur. After uninstalling an app, the phone storage should be checked to ensure that all app data has been removed. The usability of an app has to be constantly tested. All UI elements must be easy to use and understand. The app must provide clear explanatory text and error messages. In case of an error situation, the app should guide the user how to resolve the problem in the app. During development and testing phase, app testers need to verify that the app uses only permissions that the app requires. Mobile users who are sensitive about private data are unlikely to install any app that is unclear about permission requirements.

In conclusion, for any mobile app to be successful, it must undergo complete and accurate testing. It has to rise above the challenges and deliver high performance under varying conditions of usage.

Mobile application manual testing Process in real time:

• App should be tested on all types of mobile networks (ex:2G,3G,4G,LTE,and Wifi)
• App should be tested on different OS environments like iOS (iPhone and iTab), Android (mobiles &Tab) and Windows OS enabled mobile.
• Automatic updates suggestions/Alerts should be available whenever there is new features/updates done on App.
• Tester needs to uninstall the old version of app and install new version of App on mobile to test new version
• Make sure that app screen should be auto fit to any size screens of mobile device (3 inches to latest 5.5 inches screen)
• Make sure that GUI is as per the requirement specification .It should be user friendly.

Mobile application automation testing Process in real time:

Pre-requisite for automation: App must be tested manually and should be stable.

• All the above scenarios can be tested using automation except for the GUI testing.
• Monkey talk, Selendriod plug-inns are used to test Android apps along with Selenium tool.
• Appium plug-inns are used to test iOS apps along with Selenium tool.
• Automation tool should capture all the gestures available from smart phones like tapping ,pinching, scroll-down ,scroll-up etc.,
• Tool should have capabilities to automate functional testing and non functional testing for the App.
• Different tools like HP UFT, Telerik test Studio Complete, Selenium etc., are available in the market to automate Mobile apps.

Big Data’s Relationship with Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing – Big Data Roundup

1. Big Data’s Relationship with Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

It seems like you can’t pick up a technical magazine without reading about how big data is changing the world—and the untold implications of this technology. But what the heck is big data? And didn’t we already solve this thing with business intelligence and data warehousing?

Big data, or BD, is the collection of transaction-level detail for analysis. The data is kept close to the transactional detail so it can be examined for hidden trends only seen when you analyze the individual transactions. The data can come from different sources but is analyzed in a common pool. This is most often a feed (or copy) of the transactions as they occur; they are streamed to the BD solution. Often, the value of the data is very time-dependent; the sooner the information is available, the more valuable it is.

There are four key terms used when talking about BD:
[Continue Reading…]

2. Visualizing Big Data with augmented and virtual reality: challenges and research agenda

This paper provides a multi-disciplinary overview of the research issues and achievements in the field of Big Data and its visualization techniques and tools. The main aim is to summarize challenges in visualization methods for existing Big Data, as well as to offer novel solutions for issues related to the current state of Big Data Visualization. This paper provides a classification of existing data types, analytical methods, visualization techniques and tools, with a particular emphasis placed on surveying the evolution of visualization methodology over the past years. Based on the results, we reveal disadvantages of existing visualization methods. Despite the technological development of the modern world, human involvement (interaction), judgment and logical thinking are necessary while working with Big Data. Therefore, the role of human perceptional limitations involving large amounts of information is evaluated. Based on the results, a non-traditional approach is proposed: we discuss how the capabilities of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality could be applied to the field of Big Data Visualization. We discuss the promising utility of Mixed Reality technology integration with applications in Big Data Visualization. Placing the most essential data in the central area of the human visual field in Mixed Reality would allow one to obtain the presented information in a short period of time without significant data losses due to human perceptual issues. Furthermore, we discuss the impacts of new technologies, such as Virtual Reality displays and Augmented Reality helmets on the Big Data visualization as well as to the classification of the main challenges of integrating the technology.
[Continue Reading…]

3. A Successful Approach to the Big Data Adoption Journey

Randy Bean recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Big Data represents a business adoption paradox: It promises speed, but successful business adoption takes time. When I advise executives or speak to business groups, I encourage organizations to view business transforming initiatives like Big Data as a journey. Success ultimately depends upon organizational alignment, process change, and people. Organizations need to develop a long-term plan and destination with many checkpoints along the way. True there are opportunities for “quick wins”– to ensure credibility, build organizational support, establish momentum, and secure funding—but for the most part, patience and persistence are essential.”
[Continue Reading…]

4. Why your next big database decision may be a graph

NoSQL databases are clearly on the rise, but not all NoSQL is created equal.

After all, 451 Research recently discontinued its longstanding tracking of NoSQL database popularity, arguing that since “none of the top 10 look like changing places any time soon, and none of the players outside stand any chance of breaking into the top 10, the time has come to retire the NoSQL LinkedIn Skills Index.”
[Continue Reading…]

3 HR Trends That Are Becoming Best Practices – Staffing Roundup

1. 3 HR Trends That Are Becoming Best Practices

In today’s business world, the only constant is change — especially when it comes to HR. The human resources department of yesterday, largely focused on mitigating compliance and employee-related issues, is long gone.

Jason Averbrook, CEO of the Marcus Buckingham Company, explains here:

“A hundred years later, a lot of organizations are still running HR that same way; focusing on risk, focusing on compliance, focusing on the transactional side of it, but there’s a whole new era, and things like unions and pensions and transparency of the workplace have changed.” [Continue Reading…]

2. 8 Hot Tech Jobs Getting Big Salary Bumps In 2016

Although the nation’s professional workforce is expected to post an average of a 4.1% base pay increase in 2016, technology workers overall are expected to fare better with a 5.3% increase. Thanks to an increasing focus on digital strategy among businesses, several “creative” positions are set to cash in as well, according to the 2016 Salary Guide from staffing firm Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group.

Wireless network engineers in particular will be rolling in the dough, with an anticipated base pay increase approaching double-digit growth next year. Meanwhile, creative jobs like multimedia designers and content strategists are expected to post higher gains than the overall national bump and the tech sector. [Continue Reading…]

3. Getting Employees Excited About a New Direction

When your company is in trouble — a new competitor or technology threatens your business model, your cost structure changes, the economy tanks — you have one job as a leader: to get the company back on track. The crisis provides compelling reason for change and, if companies can weather it, they can emerge stronger. But no company today can rest on its laurels. Disruptors can come from anywhere, any time. Leaders — especially those in large, successful organizations — must create an environment where people thrive on passion and purpose, and are as agile and innovative as their potential disruptors. How do you take a successful company — one already highly regarded by employees, customers, and shareholders alike — and reignite people’s passion? How do you energize and galvanize them around a new course? [Continue Reading…]

4. What makes your staffing company different or great?

When people ask about what makes your staffing company different – or great – how do you answer it? Because you put customers first? What does that mean exactly? And is there a difference between responding to the needs of your customers and being truly customer-centric? [Continue Reading…]

Computing Everywhere

Modern communication has changed the way people work on their laptops, tablets, smartphones, and even the wearable devices. People work at their own pace and convenience, and office is no longer the place where people congregate to work. The latest communication and computing techniques have broken down the conformity, giving more flexibility, choice and freedom in daily tasks. Automated computing has made the repetitive and tedious paperwork obsolete, making the processes smoother. This is keeping the workers happier and more productive, making them less inclined to leave jobs.

Computing everywhere is similar to IoT (Internet of Things), however the emphasis is not only on online connection, but also on the working interface on the regular objects. Essentially, users can manage the content on different interconnected devices. Apple watch and Google Glass can both be considered as the latest additions to the ever growing number of varied computing devices. Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Alexa have been listening to us, and the conversation is continuously evolving, blurring the perception of the experience with our devices. These devices can sense our environments, feel our emotions and personalize our experiences. Gauging and notifying about road rage, analysing health from facial recognition, and notifying about binge shopping are becoming a reality, taking our interactions with machines to the next level. Personal assistants are learning our preferences and behaviours, reminding us to take our pills, monitoring our sleep, reminding us to shop, or to brush our teeth. Washing machines to thermostats to dog collars, everything is being increasingly connected to the Internet, and taking advantage of this connectivity. Recognition and gesture computing is helping our smart devices to understand the voices, movements and photos, enabling them to have perception of the world around them, learn from this perception and increasingly become more intelligent. These devices are becoming an integral part of our families and offices, guiding us in our personal and professional lives by sensing our emotions and take actions accordingly. The huge volume of generated data is processed to define human intelligence. Computing everywhere is crumbling the barrier between man and machine as there are efforts to replicate intelligence.

Gartner coined the term ‘Computing Everywhere’ for this change where the computing devices have penetrated every aspect of our lives. We start our day with swiping the mobile screen for mails, continuing work on the laptop in the office, and work on the tablet at home in the night: this is computing everywhere, and is considered one of the most strategic technology trends for 2015-16. As compared to 14 million internet users in 1993, there are over 3.5 billion users today, and the trend continues to grow. The number of connected devices is expected to be 50 billion by 2020. It is estimated that the employee-owned tablets and smart phones as a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy will be more than one billion devices globally by 2018.

This is the result of gradual increase in the mobile adoption, and the fact that mobile devices are helping employees maintain a good work-life balance. However, there are several challenges involved in this.

For IT departments, there are huge implications from security, as well as productivity point of view. Employees demand access to the core business data and applications using any device they own. Each employee needs to have access to the information, however, it is essential that the critical and sensitive information reaches only the right people, while complying with the relevant regulations. There is no more perimeter over which a security blanket can be easily thrown. The big challenge for the companies is that either the business applications are not available for mobile device, or they do not have a device-optimized UX due to a wide array of disparate applications on different hardware and platform.

To maintain competitiveness and profitability in this ever-evolving dynamically computing everywhere world, companies need an in-depth understanding of the processes, making up this information flow, and then automating the ones that can be automated. The processes that cannot be automated need to be streamlined, else information sharing can become insecure, inefficient and chaotic. This requires a whole new thinking paradigm on how the businesses operate, and how information is flowing within and across these business units, without compromising on the data security.

Information computing is all around us, we can compute everywhere: on our smartphones, desktops, tablets, laptop- as long as there is internet connectivity. With computing everywhere, we need to get ready for the future where the interaction boundary between computing devices and humans is gradually blurring out. Success of computing anywhere depends on the solid integration strategy for the core enterprise data and applications, keeping in mind the emerging endpoint devices such as Microsoft HoloLens and Apple Watch.

Testing Wearables: The Human Experience – Testing Roundup

1. Testing Wearables: The Human Experience

When a networked device is physically attached to us and works with us and through us, the more personal, even emotional, the interaction is. With wearables, the user becomes a part of the Internet of Things. Gerie Owen realized that consequently, a human user must be an integral part of testing wearables. Here, she details this human experience testing.

In the 2011 Boston Marathon, everyone running had a wearable attached to their clothing. In the race bib with their name and registration number, there was also an RFID, or radio-frequency identification, chip, which recorded the runner’s exact race time by detecting when the runner crossed the start and finish lines.

The first time this system was tried, there was only one glitch: not all the RFID chips registered with the readers. As a tester I found this fascinating, but the Boston situation was personal—I was in the race. [Continue Reading…]

2. Where Are All the Great Software Testers?

Due to the critical nature of software in our lives, we’re all aware of the need for more software testing expertise. The good news is that the IT industry continues to need skilled software testing roles; the downside for hiring managers is that those with deep experience in software testing are becoming more difficult to find.

A few people have inquired about how to find great software testers—in particular, more senior software engineers who can effectively carry out roles such as test architect, senior test automator, or senior test designer. [Continue Reading…]

3. It’s Time We Get Our Dues!

When a software product is a success – the developers get the glory and when it fails – the testers get the blame! That’s the unfair story of a test professional’s life. It’s kind of weird that even when from an end user perspective quality of the product matters the most, software quality professionals are so many times referred to as the “poorer cousins” of developers. I have been at the brunt of this discrimination from some of my “coding genius” friends as well colleagues, even if it was in the form of humour. But on a serious note this really is the mentality that exists across the industry. [Continue Reading…]

4. Discussion: Things Testers Say or Hear a Lot?

Just a bit of fun…what do testers hear or say alot?

So far, I’ve had:

‘Hmmm, strange’

‘I hadn’t looked at it that way’

‘If the business is going to do that, I can’t provide assurance of the quality of your code’

‘whoa’ (Keanu Reeves finds a bug)

Have anything to contribute? [Respond here!]