Hi,
This is the first blog in a long series of blogs which i intend on writing in the near future.
As we all know, the world is mobilizing its business in a constant way, and we are now facing an IT world in which we have more Smartphones and Tablets than regular PC’s. This trend will only increase in the near future.
The penetration of mobile into our lives, mandates a change of perspective in the way we develop, test and deploy our apps.
We do not know (Yet) about a new SWDLC (Software development life cycle) for mobile, such as waterfall or Agile, but we do know that a long life cycle of more than 6 months is not acceptable and cannot be effective since this world is dynamic and things we test on today, might not be as relevant as we think in 6-9 months from the time we finished testing.
So, what do we need to care about before rushing into a new mobile project:
– Top leading platforms today and in the next 6-12 months (As of now we are looking into iOS, Android, and soon Windows Phone 7, while RIM is in a constant slow down so it is hard to tell what will be the value of our investment in this platform)
– Top leading mobiles which represent a family in the platform it belongs to (e.g. Samsung Glaxy SII/III, Motorola Razr, HTC One series can be great representatives for the Android platform)
– Mobile development discipline (Native, Hybrid ?)
– Mobile testing tools (Simulators, test automation , cloud services and more)
– Market needs, are there similar apps available?
– Target consumers (Might be relevant for an app which is location based, to offer other services etc.)
Once we are a bit more clear on the above fundamental aspects, i think we can start moving forward (within reasonable time boundaries as i noted above).
Since this is a preliminary post, i will leave this post as is.
In the future blogs, you should expect more details on existing testing tools, services, simulators, complexities in mobile testign and ways to overcome them, guidelines and many more
Thanks,
Eran Kinsbruner
About me:
I have more than 10 years of experience in the mobile land, in which i managed porting activities, testing, pre-certification, automation activities and many other mobile related activities in all various platforms such as J2ME, Symbian, iOS, Android, RIM, Windows Phone.
I worked for 7 years at Sun Microsystems in the J2ME line of business products (Mainly around testing activities), than i moved to NeuStar NGM in which i ran the Client testing and porting for mobile (~3 years). Currently i am the Mobile testing CTO at TACT/Matrix which is one of the largest IT company in Israel.
I often present in conferences around mobile testing, methodologies, tools and other topics related to mobile.
Regards,
Eran Kinsbruner
Continuous Testing and DevOps Blog 