Mobile Testing

Novature Tech’s Mobile Testing Center of Excellence provides specialized solutions for Testing Applications across various Mobile Platforms. Mobile application usage is exploding across the world today. All told, there are several hundred thousand mobile applications available to consumers today across platforms such as Android, RIM, Windows Mobile, and Apple’s iPhone. Many of these applications are becoming centers of efficiency as well as new and sustainable profit for software delivery organizations. Many consumers of web applications via desktops and laptops now expect, at minimum, a basic continuance of the same web services while away from their computers and on their mobile devices.

Today Android and IOS are the most successful mobile platforms. Most companies are preparing enterprise applications for various mobile handset manufacturers with various flavors of the operating system on different screen sizes and hardware configuration like keypad, trackballs, etc. Many vendors are operating in the enterprise mobility market to ensure that any given application is isolated, secure and performs well. This allows users and administrators to focus on preventing virus attacks, security issues, device theft, and managing personal data and administration work.

A comprehensive mobile testing strategy that includes device and network infrastructure, optimized selection of target devices, and an effective combination of manual and automated testing tools to cover both functional and non-functional testing is essential for getting your mobile applications to market on time and within budget. Novature Tech has established Mobile Testing CoE to focus on various elements of an effective mobile testing strategy and suggest ways to optimize testing of mobile applications.

Mobile Testing Approach

In addition to Functional Testing, Mobile Testing focuses on other areas of Testing such as Usability, Performance and Compatibility Testing across Mobile Platforms. Our Mobile Testing Approach covers all aspects in a structured and phase wise manner as shown below

Mobile Testing Types

The different Mobile Testing Types carried out as part of Mobile Testing are mentioned in the below table.

Testing Types	Description
Installation and Uninstallation Testing	Certain mobile applications come pre-installed on the device whereas others have to be installed from the store. Installation testing verifies that the installation process goes smoothly without the user having to face any difficulty. This testing process covers installation, updating and uninstalling of an application.
Network Testing	Performed in a geographically distributed environment to account for a variety of network types.
Interruption Testing	An application while functioning may face several interruptions like incoming calls or network coverage outage and recovery.
Compatibility Testing	Is validating the application for different mobile devices, OS versions, Screen sizes and resolution as per the requirement, checking if integration server changes,checking for the app isolation with other apps in the device.
Security Testing	Is a process intended to reveal flaws in the security mechanisms of an information system that protect data and maintain functionality as intended. Due to the logical limitations of security testing, passing security testing is not an indication that no flaws exist or that the system adequately satisfies the security requirements
Interface Testing	With diverse features and gestures of touch supported in smart phones, response time to user actions should be considerable point. Thus testing each screen, button, text inputs, navigation flows such as bookmarks, Face book is critical.
Performance Testing	It is in general testing performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.
Localization Testing	Is performed to verify the quality of a product’s localization for a particular target culture/locale and is executed only on the localized version of the product.
Usability Testing	This include text visibility in the selected language, navigate between screens, verification of functionality online / offline, feedback from interaction with the system.

Emulation Vs Devices Testing

When it comes to testing mobile devices, there are two fundamental ways to approach the testing process.
EmulatorReal Devices
The first way is to use an emulator, which is a software application that allows you to reasonably simulate the behaviour of a mobile application on a given mobile device configured in a certain way. While emulators are quite useful, they are not to be relied upon solely due to limitations in the emulation software.
The second way is to use the actual devices you are targeting in the mobile marketplace. Our Mobile Testing Centre of Excellence recommends a test strategy approach that includes actual mobile device testing, so as not to rely on emulators exclusively. This can be a daunting task (as well as an expensive task) as there are typically hundreds of active target market devices across the most popular mobile platforms (Apple, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android, etc.).
Novature Tech Mobile Testing Centre of Excellence can help devise a targeted approach to managing the proper mix of both emulator and actual device testing. It provides the best opportunity to test your enterprise mobile applications on the largest set of mobile devices possible. This thorough testing strategy provides the best possible certification process for mobile applications on target market device

Testing Types	Testing Types	Manual Testing		Automate Testing
Testing Types	Testing Types	Real Device	Emulation	Automate Testing
Functional Testing	Unit Testing	No	Yes	No
	Integration Testing	No	Yes	No
	System Testing	Yes	May be	May be
	Regression Testing	Yes	May be	Yes
	Sanity Testing	Yes	May be	No
	Smoke Testing	Yes	May be	Yes
	Exploratory Testing	Yes	May be	No
Non Functional Testing	Compatibility Testing	Yes	No	Yes
	GUI Testing	Yes	No	No
	Reliability Testing	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Recovery Testing	Yes	No	No
	Installation Testing	Yes	No	May be
	Performance Testing	Yes	No	Yes
	Security Testing	Yes	No	Yes
	Synchronization Testing	Yes	No	No

Tools – We use wide variety of tools based on Business Requirements such as Appium, Robotium, Monkey Talk, Selenium, Perfecto, Device Anywhere and Experitest.

Mobile Test Automation Methodology

Our Mobile Testing Center of Excellence have a well proven Mobile Test Automation Methodology. Mobile Test Automation Methodology has defined different phases and the key activities performed are mentioned below

Test Automation Phases	Key Activities	Deliverables
Automation Requirement Study and Analysis	Determine Automation ObjectivesIdeal Candidates for automationCreation of Automation Traceability Matrix	Test cases for automationAutomation traceability matrix.
Automation Test Planning	Tool SelectionConduct Proof of Concept – Formulate Automation ApproachPreparation of Automation Test Plan	Automation Approach Automation Plan
Automation Test Design	Develop Scripting standardsFinalize Automation Approach and Framework	Scripting StandardsAutomation Framework
Test Script Development	Converting Requirements into Automated ScriptsCreating Reusable / Module Specific FunctionsTest Script GenerationDry Runs	Test Automation Suite
Test Execution and Report Preparation	ExecutionReportingAutomation Metrics Collection	Test ResultsTest ReportsTest Metrics

Mobile Test Automation Home Grown Framework – RAFT-M

New Mobile applications are being created to cater to various platforms as growing demand. Hence, it becomes imperative to have a robust automation framework that can help automate applications on any platform.

Novature’s Resources has created a robust RAFT-M ( Re-usable Automation Framework for Testing Mobile Applications) for applications specifically developed on Android and iOS.

We have leveraged our expertise on creating test automation frameworks and working on open source software to build RAFT-M. It is an in-house hybrid automation framework which leverages on a variety of open source tools and utilities coupled with several reusable components.

RAFT-M Features

Highly effective in UI testing and testing of standard applications such as calling, messaging, Bluetooth, multimedia, browser, SMS, email, etc., that needs synchronization with other phones.

Robust and extensible framework to support test automation on diverse sets of native, web applications across different platforms (Android, iOS)
Supports Data Driven Testing (DDT) and reusable functions
Enables users to perform functional, acceptance and compatibility testing for most web applications
Reduces overall costs for customers as it is built on open source tools / libraries / frameworks
Works both on emulator / simulator and device
Multi-device testing – it can simultaneously test on two or more devices
Highly scalable
Demands less maintenance of test scripts
Increases test automation coverage and reduces testing costs
Allows selective test script execution
Contains ﬂexible test suite / test case conﬁguration, command line execution and out-of-the-box test case execution support
Supports execution of test scripts on the device without any connectivity to the machine
Offers user deﬁned exception logging along with custom exceptions
Provides detailed reporting with screenshots, passed, failed, skipped, and error logs
Delivers higher ROI through automation
Higher productivityLower maintenance cost

Mobile Testing Tools

Monkey Talk, HP UFT Mobile, Appium, Robotium, Meux-QTP