Mobile technologies are much more than a trend, and are no longer something that organizations and enterprises can overlook or pretend to ignore.
Mobile is already a significant market platform that generates substantial revenues, driven by the ever-growing use of smartphones and mobile applications. However, alongside these exciting business opportunities, mobile technologies and applications also introduce new types of risks that were not an issue in the desktop application world.
As mobile grows, the accompanying pains and risks require (even dictate) the adoption of a robust mobile strategy built upon a centralized organizational solution. Such a strategic solution should be based on an appropriate set of tools that can be used by management, development and testing teams wherever they may be located around the globe.
Mobile applications require enterprises to take into account several mobile-specific components that are not relevant to the desktop space:
- Governance and availability of devices (smartphones and tablets). The extremely dynamic and fragmented mobile market requires continuous testing of mobile products. To ensure timely delivery to market, you must have access to an up-to-date set of mobile devices at all times.
- Global solution which enables offshoring, testing and collaboration among diverse and distributed teams
- Robust manual testing solution to handle user interface and other “look & feel” issues
- Cross-device test automation solution in order to accelerate TTM and to enable QA to efficiently perform continuous regression testing while moving from one version of the product to the next
- The ability to plug a dedicated, mobile-specific testing platform into your existing ALM tools, processes and organizational skill sets (i.e., seamlessly integrate with existing ALM quality suites)
- Mobile Application Performance & Monitoring (APM) must be taken into account. Availability and response time for your mobile application are critical for business success. Studies show that mobile users are less tolerant than desktop users to performance and availability shortcomings.
When formulating your mobile strategy, do not take the risk of overlooking these important aspects of mobile testing. In addition, the latest World Quality Report (as illustrated above) stresses the importance of using a cloud-based, centralized organizational resource to enhance agility, competitiveness and cost-effectiveness.
Using this blueprint, Perfecto Mobile has deployed mobile testing solutions for leading enterprises and mobile carriers worldwide. Our experience shows that addressing these key pillars assures ongoing mobile quality while cost-effectively streamlining the entire mobile lifecycle for the various mobility groups (Development, Testing, Performance and Operations).
So here’s the takeaway:
Mobile is a serious business platform which is getting more complex and fragmented every day. New devices will continue to pop up and new mobile OS versions will be released with increasing frequency, making mobile testing that much more difficult.
To thrive in such an environment, enterprises ought to focus their time, energy and resources on developing high quality mobile products that serve their customers’ needs. Integrating the right mobile solution with your existing tools and processes will allow your team to focus on developing real mobile testing scenarios, automation, etc., rather than dealing with organizational issues. By supporting the pillars listed above, your mobile testing solution can serve as a central strategic resource across the enterprise IT environment.
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