In today’s organizational environment, ‘DevOps’ is the most used buzzword and has become a part of its agile software culture. Organization’s DevOps success is not a single goal approach; it requires deeper involvement for making a switch to DevOps. Broadly, it requires adoption of new DevOps automation tools, contemporary processes and cultural shift, especially in case of Mobile DevOps tools selection. A business has to be equipped with ever-evolving principles and DevOps automation tools in order to embrace these steps to successful DevOps test automation.
There are multiple Mobile DevOps Tools with different strengths contributing to a reliable Mobile DevOps process. Today, the businesses and the development teams are investing in intelligent systems that are capable of monitoring the production and development metrics in real-time. This acts as great deal for the development firms unless it covers all important aspects of the process allowing perfect optimization of the resources based on the reports.
The journey from planning, development, deployment and beyond, generally called ‘shift left’ process which is a part of continuous testing. In this approach, the testing is mostly focused on earlier stage of production life cycle aiming at delivering applications faster and with much lesser time and money. When it comes to mobile apps testing, the shift left approach works well because the application has to be tested well in order to perform well in the real-environment. In case of Mobile DevOps, using production environment to test the mobile application on real physical devices would help highlight and fix issues in the earlier phases of SDLC, reducing costs and time.
Gone are the days when testing was only executed as a final step of the processes where as nowadays, it has to be performed after every build, at every stage of the process. It is with the help of multi-step testing and maximum data capture after each test cycle, that the status of development and testing hasn’t been compromised enabling early bug-fixing and building more strong applications especially when this process is simplified with the help of DevOps automation tools. DevOps and Automation go hand in hand. Despite many challenges, it carries a much strategic role to bring the whole business making faster and better applications. A developer has to have a combination of agile development methods along with Mobile DevOps to win in mobile application; this can be achieved with the help of right DevOps automated testing tools.
Below are the 7 most common Process Steps with Mobile DevOps Tools:
CODE
Anything related to real development is related to continuous integration whether it is code development or code reviews. The way developers work today by collaborating; integrating all the things together is all a gift of the agile approach which is responsible for making continuous integration popular. With the adoption of continuous integration early stage issues are detected which ultimately reveals any integration glitches, faults in the code commits, etc. It generates a lot of data required for making right choices to be made by the developer as it showcases a lot of data about the mobile application that the developers can use to make the code better. This thus ultimately helps in estimating the scheduling and time consumption more accurately.
BUILD
Build is nothing but application components that are collected repeatedly and compiles for the purpose of testing to produce a reliable final software product. This is not a one-time job, instead it is a developer’s everyday task of creating various builds of applications. In Mobile DevOps scenario, in order to notify the status of the build, the developers use various version controls and source code management techniques. Software Engineers normally follow branching techniques in case of Mobile DevOps like no branching, release branching, maintenance branching and branching for features.
TEST
Testing is something that acts as a backbone of building a quality product. It is the QA team that is responsible of maintaining the sanity of the software, detecting errors early and quick bug fixing. Testing is the most integral aspect of SDLC. Considering the Continuous integration principles, automation testing needs to be automated in order to enjoy the seamless results i.e rich and flawless application. Testing in Mobile DevOps for a production environment should always be performed on real mobile devices and not on Simulators.
PACKAGE
Packaging in Mobile DevOps is already known. It is all about tools for package repositories and storage mechanisms for the binaries created during the software build. Binaries like scripts, configuration files and other files facilitate deployments; these are contained in the asset repositories. Continuous deployment eases the application testing and production with the help of automation, flawlessly. Packaging enables the releases of new versions and features of applications to the end-users.
RELEASE
In Mobile DevOps process, there are myriad of tools that are used in aiding in the process of CI/CD and continuous release. As a part of this, there are application release tools as well that help in packaging and deployment of an application right from the development to production, to be available to the final users using automation. Release management is a critical expertise which involves planning of every release and deployment by easy collaboration with the stakeholders. This is accomplished with the usage of release management tools that help stakeholders to plan and execute and trace the releases from a single platform.
CONFIGURE
Configuration is a second name to Infrastructure as a Service. Configuration tools enhance the cost-effectiveness and create applications with better flexibility and performance. The aim of this process step is to remove any unwanted manual configuration. In DevOps , the focus is on automation and collaboration, so configuration being a part of the ecosystem is also automated across various development flows.
MONITOR
Without valid data, no corrections and improvements can happen. Thus, monitoring becomes a very important aspect of the Mobile DevOps ensuring that the organizations get the right metrics about the processes, stage wise results and final outcome. Continuous monitoring allows stakeholders, developers, testers and other people involved, the access to right information for evaluation and decision making. This step is guide to all teams involved and has an impact on all the other steps. Thus making it a critical process step with Mobile DevOps tools.
Traditionally, the Process Steps involved planning, developing, testing and deploying but this is not it, there are many more aspects to it that are the key deciders in selecting the tools and how they fit together to enable tool flow in SDLC. DevOps test automation helps in achieving integrated development and delivery using the right combination of DevOps automated testing tools.
Since pCloudy is committed to provide to you with the newest the fastest, here is another one. The newly released device Apple iOS 14 Beta is now available on pCloudy for you to test your app.
As the world battles with turbulent, uncertain times, most of the workforce across the globe is working remotely. Organizations have acknowledged the importance of remote working as it helps in maintaining business continuity. But in some scenarios, it is difficult to maintain business continuity or distribute resources within the teams while the team is working remotely.
For instance, if you have some physical device infrastructure to test your app on multiple mobile devices, how would you do it? How would you share the devices with other testers and developers in your team working from different locations? Most importantly, how will you make sure that the app works smoothly on all the popular devices? We will address these issues in this blog, so buckle up for some interesting insights into the remote testing advantages that can ensure a better app experience for your users.
1. Abate device fragmentation and ensure better app compatibility with remote testing
Device fragmentation is any testers Achilles heel as it limits their potential of extensive testing. Testing from a physical device lab at this global lockdown situation is not feasible, and testing on a few devices won’t yield good results. But this issue can be rectified by testing on a device cloud. In pCloudy, users can test on multiple devices based on the popularity of devices in a particular region and its penetration to get the optimum device coverage.
Both manual and automation testing can be performed with unlimited parallel test runs remotely on hundreds of real devices. This is also convenient for globally distributed teams, as the users won’t have to wait for the devices to be available for testing.
2. Deliver Better Quality App with Rapid Automation
Enterprises can ensure better quality apps without missing out on any deliveries by leveraging remote devices for automation testing. pCloudy helps in speeding up automation testing with codeless scripting and test orchestration using integrated tools like Jenkins. Capability configurator is a feature in pCloudy that generates the desired capability based on a set of filters, which saves time and effort while performing test automation. Integration with popular automation and collaboration tools like Appium, Espresso, Jira, etc., makes it convenient for users to perform automated testing on remote devices.
3. Better collaboration and continuous feedback
In pCloudy, users can manage teams and distribute credits among themselves. The user management feature allows managers to become the system administrator and create teams to allocate the credits to the members according to the task assigned. This helps in user and task as the hierarchy is maintained to distribute workload systematically.
Once the tests are complete, detailed test reports are generated automatically, which can be easily shared across the team. The progressive reports also show the tests failed, passed, and those with errors. This helps in focusing only on the tests that failed and doing a root cause analysis to rectify the issues. Continuous access to a range of devices available for remote testing will provide stability to your CI/CD pipeline.
4. Assured data privacy and security
Enterprise-grade security gives assurance to our users that their data is safe on the cloud platform. Our data centers comply with internationally recognized security standards like ISO27001, SOC2, and SSAE-16. Keeping your security issues in concern, we have another useful feature called Wildnet. This feature enables you to test your internal sites or apps on your local network, keeping all your data and information secure.
5. Advanced features to improve manual testing
Take advantage of next-gen features like Certifaya, an AI-powered autonomous testing bot to save time and effort. FollowMe is another feature that enables the user to run a test on multiple devices in parallel. This will save your resources while reducing the testing time by multifold. Apart from this, there are many features in pCloudy, like taking screenshots, recording the test video, cross-browser testing, etc. that will make manual app testing a piece of cake.
In a Nutshell
Remote testing is convenient, and it will help you save big bucks while you deliver a better quality app in less time. Continuous access to numerous devices helps in accelerating automation testing, as the app can be tested on multiple devices in parallel. All these advantages of remote testing make it the optimum choice for enterprises.
Remote working is going to be a new normal and remote access tools and platforms will play a key role in maintaining productivity. Working from home has many advantages both for enterprises and teams. There are many tools that help teams to collaborate and share all the information conveniently over the net. pCloudy is one such tool that gives you remote access to hundreds of real devices to test your app.
So let’s look at the 10 ways how pCloudy could help in maintaining business continuity while working remotely.
1. Remote access to devices: Test your apps from home by accessing remote devices on pCloudy. You don’t have to worry about touching or managing the devices.
2. Device access to geographically distributed teams: Since testing professionals are working remotely, the problem is sharing the limited number of devices for app testing among the team members. With pCloudy offering a range of devices over cloud, members across different locations can access hundreds of real devices on the cloud for their app testing needs.
3. All in one: Manual and automation testing can be performed remotely on real devices. The platform is well suited for continuous testing and optimizes your DevOps process.
4. Autonomous testing bot: use our AI power autonomous testing bot to minimize the effort and time spent on testing.
5. Team management: Manage platform access to the team members and share detailed app test reports.
6. Parallel testing: Run automation tests in parallel on multiple devices to increase the testing efficiency.
7. Latest devices: No need to wait for the delayed shipments of the new devices as all the latest devices are available on pCloudy.
8. Fully integrated: pCloudy is integrated with most of the popular tools and frameworks used for task management, version control, test automation, etc.
9. Device tunnel: Developers can use features like Device tunnel to access devices in their Dev environments like Android Studio or Xcode
10. Quality support: Achieve quality@speed in mobile app testing while working from home. Our technical support team will be available to help you 24/7.
11. Device management: Hassle-free app testing for our users and our cloud infra team will take care of the continuous availability and maintenance of the devices.
It has been speculated that around 30% of the service sector workforce across the globe will be working from home by 2030. You can stay ahead of others in this initiative and adopt flexible work preferences. Contact us if you need more information on how pCloudy could help in enhancing productivity while working from home.
Automation testing forms the core of any CI/CD pipeline and enterprises are keen to practice test automation to enhance the efficiency of the development process. Test automation saves resources and reduces the cost of any project in the long run. But there are some important points to keep in mind while testing to avoid automation failure. Let’s have a look at these salient points.
Leverage Parallel Execution
Once you are done automating the test cases, the challenge will be the complex test suites taking a long time to get executed. It affects the quality of the test queue in the test automation framework or IDE. This leads to queue timeout issues and test cases being halted abruptly due to the sequential execution of the test cases.
Parallel execution in different test environments is preferred over sequential execution as it saves a lot of time. Although in automated testing, unintended code interactions could happen. This is why you need a thorough reporting mechanism to debug the causes of test failure.
Pick The Right Tools
Choosing the right tool for test automation is critical to the success of automation testing. There has to be a set of clear requirements/parameters on the basis of which the tools have to be selected. Some important points that are to be kept in mind while selecting the tool are:
The team should be clear about the test tool requirements.
The testing requirements of the application under test (AUT) should be analyzed thoroughly.
The team’s skill set should be accessed accurately.
The cost-benefit analysis should be performed to calculate the return on investment.
Tool vendor and capability should be evaluated as technical support might be required while using the tools.
One tool might not be enough to meet any organization’s automation needs. Also, test automation engineers have to be a part of the tool evaluation process so that they can help in selecting the right set of tools. For example, you can use Appium for test automation but you need pCloudy to perform automation testing on multiple real devices in parallel.
Analyze The Test Reports
Test reports provide insights into the underlying issues that are to be resolved. A detailed test report gives an idea of the efficiency of the test automation and the automation team can analyze the report to look for the scope of improvement. While selecting an automation tool you need to make sure that the tool generates test reports to be analyzed by the test automation engineer. There will always be some tests that will fail to execute and it is necessary to analyze the test report to get an understanding of the scenario.
Test Automation Metrics
Test automation metrics will help you gauge the quality of the tests performed based on some essential parameters like test duration, unit test coverage, path coverage, number of defects found, percentage of broken builds, etc. The test metrics will give you a clear picture of how well the code is tested. In an agile process, there are frequent iterations to the builds and it becomes important to track the quality of each build. With test automation metrics you can figure out what is the percentage of your tests that passed and what was the reason behind the failed tests.
Optimum Device Coverage
Test automation is effective when the tests are executed on multiple devices in parallel. Device coverage is the most prevalent challenge as we have witnessed growing device fragmentation across the world. To ensure the smooth functioning of mobile apps on all the devices, you need to perform automation testing on hundreds of device-OS combinations.
Test automation should be designed to make the app compatible with most of the popular devices. The frequent release of new versions of OS from both Android and iOS is a major factor that drives device fragmentation. The only way to overcome this challenge is by testing the app on a cloud-based testing platform. In pCloudy, you will get the benefit of testing the app on more than 5000 device browser combinations in parallel ensuring optimum device coverage.
Summing It Up
Test automation has many benefits like better test coverage, faster feedback, and accelerated results which reduces the time to market of any application. Using the practices mentioned above you can ensure coherent test automation and increased productivity. Apart from these points, there are many other things you can do like writing original code and not copying it as the code taken from other sources might not work in your test environment. But you will always find new roadblocks which you will have to deal with spontaneously.
By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed, we are going somewhere. This quote by Michael Korda signifies the importance of organizing our efforts to gain better efficiency at work. In mobile app testing, efficiency can be achieved by using a multifunctional tool like Jira and pCloudy. pCloudy is integrated with the Jira bug tracking tool to make it easier for testers to log bugs in Jira from pCloudy. Let’s get an overview of Jira and how it can be used for multiple purposes.
An Overview of Jira Bug Tracking
Jira is an open-source tool used for project management, bug tracking, and issue tracking. Jira has many features and functions that make issue handling easy. Customizable reporting allows you to monitor the progress of your issues with detailed graphs and charts. Jira has four major functionalities, project, issue, component, and workflow.
A Jira project is a collection of issues and it is identified by a name and a key. The project key is added to each issue associated with the project. Workflow helps in mapping your business process. So now let’s understand how to use the Jira bug tracking tool and its components.
Jira Workflow
Jira has a function called workflow which is used to make a blueprint of the procedure in any organization. The workflow can be customized to suit the project, issue or any subtask. The Jira defect workflow comprises of colored blocks that represent the status of the task and lines that represent transitions.
Users can build their own workflows from scratch or download the prebuilt workflows and then customize them. Approval requests can be set for users to make changes in the tasks and task status can be set to change with transitions automatically.
Status shows the position of an issue within a workflow and transitions are the bridges between the status to represent how an issue moves from one status to another. Resolution tells why an issue changed from open to close and condition control who can perform the transition. The assignee commands the responsible member for any particular issue. Validator ensures that the transition can happen given the status of the issue and Jira can recognize some properties on transitions.
Creating an Issue in Jira
An issue is the building block of the project and components are subsections of a project used to group issues in smaller parts in a project. To create an issue you need to click on the plus sign located on the left side of the screen. A new window will pop up where you need to fill in the details about the issue that you are creating.
The first step would be to choose the project that the issue is associated with. Just below that is the issue type where you need to select if it is a task, an epic or a story.
Then add a summary about the issue and assign the issue to your team members. Next, you need to choose the priority and add a label to the issue. Once that is done, You can now add a detailed description of the issue to make sure that you and your team members are on the same page.
Below the description, you will find Components dropdown and the Environment where you need to fill in the details appropriate for the issue like Hardware specifications, OS, software platform, etc.
You can also attach files related to that particular issue by clicking on the attachment section and then click on Create to create the issue.
Jira Reports
Jira generates various types of reports on the basis of workflows, issues, task status, and other data fed in by the team. You can track the total work remaining in the burndown chart and manage the progress accordingly. A burnup chart will help in tracking the total scope independently from the total work done. In the sprint report, you get an idea about the tasks that are completed and pushed backed to the backlog in each sprint. Apart from this, there is a cumulative flow diagram, velocity chart, version report, etc.
Users will also get an issue analysis report for a better understanding of the resolved and unresolved issues.
pCloudy integrated with Jira Bug Tracking
pCloudy has the option to log bugs, save screenshots and videos of the test actions. But if you want to use the Jira bug tracking system to log bugs then you can to that though pCloudy as well. Just click on the profile ID and the top right corner of the pCloudy screen and select the user setting from the dropdown list.
In the user setting page click on the JIRA Logs tab. Enter the URL, Email, API Token and login to log bugs in Jira.
This way you can maintain a separate bug log to share with the team apart from the one in pCloudy. pCloudy also generates reports like Jira and those reports can be shared across your team.
Jira supports both Kanban and Scrum agile methodologies. As a matter of fact, scrum is much more popular these days as it gives the project team to plan their work in detail prior to starting the project. When the scrum board is created, a list of items is added and then sprints and versions are created to move the issues from backlogs to sprints. With Kanban, users can start without having a detailed plan and in these issues can be created but that cannot be moved to sprints as we do in the scrum.
Conclusion
There are many uses of Jira in mobile app testing. It’s not just about handling issues or creating workflows, Jira project management is helping the world’s most known brands in the world. If you understand the Jira bug life cycle and follow the Jira bug tracking best practices, it becomes much easier to scale up your testing efforts. Jira bug tracking, when combined with pCloudy, can save your time and resources.
Flutter has been creating waves in the app development space since its launch. The reason is simple, it solves the problem of creating two different codebases for a single app to run on Android and iOS devices. Some experts say that Flutter which was launched by Google is to counter React Native which is used by Facebook. Nevertheless, this is a much-needed relief for enterprises as Flutter will help them save a lot of their time and resources. So let’s first understand what is Flutter.
What is Flutter
Flutter is an opensource mobile UI framework that can create Android and iOS apps from a single codebase. The Flutter framework includes the Flutter engine, Dart platform, the Foundation library, and design-specific widgets. Flutter apps are written in Dart programming language and runs on dart virtual machine.
How to Create a Flutter App
Before we start the process of app development it is important to know that there are two types of widgets, stateless and stateful. A stateless widget describes part of the UI by building a structure of other widgets that describe the UI more definitive. Stateful widgets are the widgets that can change their state multiple times and can be redrawn on to the screen any number of times while the app is in action.
To create a Flutter app you need to install Flutter SDK and other tools required to support the framework. We will create the app in Intelli J IDE and for that, you need to install two plugins. The first one is Dart and the second plugin is Flutter. You can install the plugins by clicking on File in the menu bar of the IDE and then click on Settings.
Then you need to create a new project and you will get a basic code layout to start with your app development. In the first line, we have the main method where we will enable the flutter driver extension and there is a run app method with MyApp class instance, to run the app.
In this sample code, we have used the title as the stateless widget and we have set the title as the key and for the home screen, we are using one more instance which is MyStatefulWidget(). So in this class, we have a small piece of code, where we have set values for elements like appBar, background color, and in the body, we have placed a floating action button for a counter.
After adding the code you can run the program and you will be able to see the changed state of the counter with every click on the action button.
Appium Flutter Driver
Appium Flutter driver is a test automation tool for flutter apps on multiple platforms. It is a part of the Appium mobile test automation tool. But how does the Appium Flutter driver work? It uses webSocket communication to carry WDIO script to instantiate the flutter driver and the request will be sent to the particular application. Then the AUT will send the response to the script through the Appium Flutter driver. Appium Flutter driver
You can also build Appium in your machine through the source code. Once you have cloned the source code, run npm install then npm run built and type a command node to start the Appium server. You can download the package from GitHub. The package contains Appium Flutter Driver and Appium Flutter Finder. You can clone the sample project to get the WDIO code.
In the terminal, you can see that to automate flutter application we have used Flutter as an automation name for both Android and iOS apps. You can see that port is 4723 and in the capabilities, we have mentioned osSpecificOps, automation name: ‘Flutter’. We have mentioned the app path at the top with the device name and platform name and we created an object.
Appium==OS environment is ‘android’ which will pick all the information and specify in the capabilities and it will pass a post request to the server.
Now here we are trying to find the element using CounterTestFinder and a ButtonFinder to click on the button. In the next line, we have created a driver using a remote method.
Then we have switched the Native App context to Flutter. You can switch this if you are using the Flutter app. Once the app is launched, we are validating that the counter text finder has value as zero by calling Flutter APIs internally. So here we are using two actions, one is clicking and the other is touch.
The button is to be clicked two times and thus we have used strictEqual function. In the last line of code, we are deleting the session.
Now to run the test we need to pass the environment variable to connect the device.
Then we will check if our Appium server is running.
Then once you run the code you will be able to see the actions performed on the device and the counter will change to two.
This is how you can automate your Android and iOS app testing using Appium Flutter driver. Although there are many benefits of using Flutter, there are some limitations as well. The first thing is that you need to learn Dart language to develop and automate the Flutter app.
Suppose you need to run automated tests on multiple devices, then you will have to fire multiple commands in the terminal. Appium flutter driver depends on Flutter Driver APIs and as it’s still not matured enough, some actions cannot be performed.
Espresso is a testing framework for Android which automatically synchronizes your test actions with the UI of your app. It also lets the test wait until all the background activities have finished.
The pCloudy utility uploads your Application APK, test APK and other APK files to pCloudy. It will then acquire a device to run your test on, execute those tests and report back the status and test report.
In pCloudy you don’t have to set up the environment. Just follow these simple steps.
After the test cases are run you can see the detailed reports. Once automation ends, the device under test will be released automatically so that you or other users can use it later.
There are two ways you can execute espresso test cases. Here are the steps for both
1. pCloudy UI Dashboard a. In pCloudy UI there is a section called Automation where you will find multiple automation frameworks integrated to the platform. b.Select the Espresso automation and to fill in the required details.
c. pCloudy Support two TestRunners.
i. AndroidJUnitRunner (android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner)
ii. AndroidXJUnitRunner (androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner)
d. Select your Application and Test Application.
e. Select the required devices.
f. Click on Next button and Schedule the automation by clicking on the Schedule button.
g. You will get a dialog box. Click on Ok.
h. You will get the active session details on the Dashboard and you will also be able to see the Live view.
i. Liveview will help you to see the live execution on your test cases. Click on the Liveview icon
2.pCloudy Utility
a. Download the espresso starter pack from here and Unzip it b. You will find two files,
i. pCloudy_Espresso.jar
ii.Config.properties c. Place the config.properties file and pCloudy_Espresso.js file into the same directory. d. Update the config.properties file as guided in the comments in the file. e. In your workspace, run the command by typing the java -jar pCloudy_Espresso.jar
f. This will upload the required files which you have mentioned inside the config.properties files.
g. You will get the status of the Automation in pCloudy Dashboard ActiveSession.
h. Even on the pCloudy dashboard, you can use the Liveview by which you can see the running test cases.
i. Once the test execution is over, You will get a URL of the test execution report on the terminal.
j. You can open the report from the dashboard Report section also. In the report, all the test details will be there as shown in the screenshots below.
k. You will also get individual device reports. Inside the test case level details, you will find performance details, test case logs, device logs, and video files.
Studies have indicated that after installing a new app, only a quarter of the users return to the app on the second day. The retention rate is eminently low and the majority of the users uninstall the app after the first use. You might have guessed the reason for this. If you think the reason is scanty testing then you are correct. A lot of times testers show little interest when testing is repetitive. Although regression testing is crucial to the success of the project, it is often overlooked to some extent. So let’s understand the concept of regression testing.
What is Regression Testing
In simple terms, regression testing can be defined as retesting a computer program after some changes are made to it to ensure that the changes do not adversely affect the existing code. Regression testing increases the chance of detecting bugs caused by changes to the application. It can help catch defects early and thus reduce the cost to resolve them.
Regression testing ensures the proper functioning of the software so that the best version of the product is released to the market. Although, creating and maintaining a near-infinite set of regression tests is not feasible at all. This is why enterprises are focusing on automating most of the regression tests to save time and effort.
Types of Regression Testing
There are different types of regression testing for different phases of testing. Let’s understand the types of regression testing.
Unit Testing: It is done when coding changes are made for a single unit and a tester re-runs all previously-passed unit tests. Often automated unit tests are built into the code to make unit testing efficient.
Progressive Testing: This type of testing works effectively when there are changes done in the software/application specifications as well as new test cases are designed.
Selective Testing: In this to cut down the retesting cost and effort, testers use a subset of the current test cases. A test unit must be rerun when there are changes in the program entities it covers.
Retest-All Testing: In this, we reuse all test cases even where the changes have not been made. It shouldn’t be done where there is a small change in the application as it is very time-consuming.
Complete Testing: Complete testing is effective when multiple changes have been done in the existing code. It is done to identify unexpected bugs and the final system can be made available to the user once complete testing is done.
How to Derive a Regression Testing Plan
Whenever there is a change in the app or a new version is released the developer carries out these tests as a part of the regression testing process.
First, the developer executes unit-level regression tests to validate the code that they have modified along with any new test that is created to cover any new functionality. Then the changed code is merged and integrated to create a new build of AUT. After that smoke tests are performed to assure that the build that we have created in the previous step is good before any additional testing is performed.
These tests can be executed automatically by continuous integration services such as Jenkins. Once we get the assurance that the build is perfect then we do the sanity testing to confirm that the functionality works as expected and known defects are resolved before conducting integration testing.
Integration testing is performed to verify that the units of the apps interact with each other and with backend services such as databases. The next step is to schedule regression tests depending on the size and the scope of the code either a partial or a full regression test may take place.
Defects are reported back to the development team and many require additional runs of regression testing to confirm the resolution. So based on the test reports you can analyze and figure out what test cases can be added for the next checking process as well and you create your report on that.
Regression Testing Challenges
Automation is always a smart move but there will be some challenges that would need your attention. Let’s have a look at the challenges that you might face in automation testing.
Cost is High
In terms of business expenses, the company will have to invest a lot of time and money in repetitive testing. Also, there’s no specific return on investment that is attached to regression testing. It is a complicated process and to explain the importance of regression testing in terms of business benefits to the management is really difficult. But this has to be done to draw the budget for the testing even though it is expensive from a management point of view.
Unstructured Information
If new testers are recruited during the ongoing software testing project, either to speed up the process or to release some of the tasks. The existing testers in the organization might not have time to give complete details about the functionalities and features of the app, existing bugs, delivery time, etc. The new testers might have to initiate testing with inadequate data about the ongoing testing project. Challenges like these need an appropriate test strategy for efficient collaboration.
Time Restrictions
The focus of enterprises is on developing quality apps and delivering them faster. This is why regression testing is always time-bound. Testers always get a deadline to complete the process of regression testing. To keep pace with time, The testers might have to take chances to give more importance to the critical regression tests and skip a few tests. It is a serious challenge as it is critical to decide which tests can be skipped.
Maintenance and Optimization
A major challenge is to maintain and optimize the existing regression test suites. The existing regression test suites might need modification like adding, removing or editing the existing test cases, whenever there are new changes. All this need to be done before the deadline fixed for the regression testing. Therefore, optimization and maintenance is another challenge that needs attention.
Best Practices to Perform Regression Testing
Now that we are aware of the challenges in regression testing. Let’s have a look at the key changes we can do to enhance it.
Focus on the Frequently Used Paths
Frequently used paths also make the most frequent use cases for your app. They must include the most popular features and the basic functionality of your app. You should be aware of the core group of users and their usual interaction with the app features. The regression test cases must ensure that this core functionality is working as expected.
Update the Regression Pack Regularly
A regression pack is a collection of test cases that are performed when a new app version is released or if there are any new updates. The tests in a regression pack are created keeping in mind the app’s older version requirement specifications. Ad-hoc tests should be included in the regression pack to keep it up to date. You wouldn’t want to waste your time on tests to validate an old feature that is not included in the latest version of the app.
Create an Entry/Exit Criteria
The entry/exit criteria that we usually follow in the software development lifecycle can be implemented in regression testing as well.
As entry criteria, a fixed set of conditions need to be met like reviewing bugs and performing regression testing to fix those bugs. Exit criteria can be applied with a fixed set of conditions like making sure that all the tests are executed and no bugs remain unfixed.
Automate Regression Tests
Automating regression tests makes the process much more efficient and saves time and effort. Repetitive testing can make testers lethargic and testers might lose motivation. It also affects the quality of their work as the testing is repetitive. Automated regression testing will free up resources to work on the more complicated tests. When we use automation, the test cases along with the software can also be reused which increases the return on investment.
In a Nutshell
Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end. This quote by Robin Sharma suits the importance of regression testing in delivering a smooth functioning app. As mentioned earlier in this blog, different types of regression testing can be performed at all stages of the testing life cycle. And there are ways to overcome the challenges in regression testing too.
One option is to use a cloud-based app testing platform which will enhance the effectiveness of regression testing by many folds. There will be hundreds of devices to perform testing in parallel and features which complement regression testing automation.
In the past couple of years, there has been a tremendous increase in voice-enabled apps in the market. This is because business is looking to make its app more user-friendly and easy to use. If the same function can be performed using just your voice then why would you waste your time entering text? Voice recognition is being used by many apps from all sectors like food delivery, eCommerce, gaming, weather, navigation, social media, etc.
The Rise of Voice-Enabled Apps and Intelligent Virtual Assistant
Voice-enabled apps are quite common these days as enterprises are trying to make it easier for users to control the app. Google was the first widely used app that utilized voice reorganization to make it simple for users to look for anything on the search engine. But when it comes to Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA), Apple does lead the way with Siri.
The idea of IVAs is not new and we have seen it in many Sci-Fi movies too. Take the example of Weebo from the movie Flubber. It was a flying robot assistant who recognized voice commands and helps perform daily tasks. It’s quite possible that we will see something like that soon in the market leveraging AI and drone technology.
Graphical User Interface Vs Voice User Interface
Apart from GUI, a new trend is shaping up and it’s called VUI. In the world of voice apps, the primary interaction between human and machine is done through the Voice User Interface (VUI). It is a natural form of interaction where the user can speak to the device and the device will reply or perform the task that it is asked to do. For instance, If you ask the Google assistant “How is the weather in Palo Alto?” the app will convert the analog command into binary and using AI it will reply with an audio output. Here the testers need to make sure that the app is generating the correct reply to the questions. Exploratory testing plays a key role in identifying the bugs in audio-based testing.
When it comes to GUI, it is designed in a way to make it easier for the user to navigate through the business process. The graphical interface has controls such as checkboxes, dropdown lists, radio buttons, etc, through which all the features are controlled. Therefore the tester needs to test if all the control elements are working fine in all the pages.
The fundamental difference between testing the GUI and the VUI is the input type. There is limited data input in GUI testing but in VUI testing, it can create an indefinite number of test cases. When it comes to voice apps, pairwise testing can help to get better test coverage with fewer test cases.
The Easiest way to do Audio Interaction Testing
The best way to test your app for audio functions is by using pCloudy. To perform audio testing, users need to upload their app on the platform and install it on any device of their choice. Once the device is booked and the app is installed on the device, click on the “More” option at the bottom left corner of the screen. Then you will get the audio in and audio out options in the device interaction page to do audio testing. Users can also use their voice as an input for testing using the “Audio In” feature.
This feature can be used for audio out testing as well and it is available only for devices on which audio icon is present. To perform audio output testing, just book a device on the pCloudy platform, click on the “Audio Out” icon and play any audio/video file to get the sound output on your system.
The audio testing feature is not available on any other cloud-based testing platform and this gives a big advantage to pCloudy. Testers will be able to use this feature to test their apps with voice commands. They will also be able to check if the app is responding with sound output for a particular function.
Conclusion
Looking at the popularity of voice apps, It is estimated that in the US, 111.8 million people will use a voice assistant at least once in a month in 2019. This makes up about 39.4% of internet users and 33.8% of the total population. Voice apps and assistants are gaining popularity due to its ease of use.
A lot of organizations are working on using AI and ML to make customer support automated. This means that there will be no more humans answering the phones or replying to chats. A basic version is already in practice which is the IVR. In the near future, there will be smart voice support applications that will listen to the customers and resolve their issues without human interference. This will also reduce the waiting time to talk to a support executive from the organizations. Again a great example of efficiency and speed.
