Mobile apps bring a new set of challenges to testing—fast-paced development cycles with multiple releases per week, multiple app technologies and development platforms to support, dozens of devices and form factors, and additional pressure from enterprise and consumers who are less than patient with low quality apps. And with these new challenges comes a new set of mistakes testers can make! Fred Beringer works with dozens of mobile test teams to help them avoid common traps when building test automation for mobile apps. Fred shares some useful best practices, starting with mobile test automation. He explains what and where to automate, how to build testability into a mobile app, how to handle unreliable back-end calls and different device performance, and how to automate the automation. Fred shares real customer stories and shows how small changes in process can make mobile apps ten times more reliable.

1. T22
Mobile Testing
5/8/2014 3:00:00 PM
Top Practices for Successful
Mobile Test Automation
Presented by:
Fred Beringer
SOASTA
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-268-8770 ∙ 904-278-0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com

2. Fred Beringer
SOASTA
Fred Beringer is VP of products at SOASTA where he is helping customers get started with
mobile test automation. Previously, as software testing director for Experian, Fred built and led a
worldwide organization responsible for testing all products within the Experian Decision
Analytics portfolio. He introduced cloud-based testing at Experian while helping the
development organization transition to agile. Throughout his career with IBM and Experian, Fred
has driven strategic projects around data replication (for Big Data customers), business
intelligence, performance testing, cloud computing, cloud testing, and open source. Follow him
on Twitter @fredberinger, email him at fred@fredberinger.com, and learn more about Fred at
fredberinger.com.

3. TOP BEST PRACTICES FOR
SUCCESSFUL MOBILE TEST AUTOMATION
@fredberinger

4. SOMETHING FOR YOU TO TAKE BACK HOME

6. MOBILE TEST AUTOMATION IS HARD

7. EXPECTATION
• It is as difficult as developing a good mobile app
• It is a software project by itself
• It is not optional in mobile
• You will probably fail before you succeed

8. #1 - SET THE RIGHT GOALS

9. AUTOMATION OBJECTIVES
• Continuous feedback to fix bugs faster
• Enable new activities
• Increase test coverage
• Raise confidence
• Better customer support

10. #2 – TRACK YOUR OBJECTIVES
IF IT IS NOT MEASURED, IT DOESN’T EXIST

11. SET YOUR OWN METRICS
• Turnaround time for fixes
• Customer satisfaction on app store
• Customer onboarding time
• Lower number of bugs on production
• EMTE (Equivalent Manual Test Effort)

12. ACTIONABLE TEST INTELLIGENCE
• Part of the automation framework
• Available and highly visible to everyone
• Establish a baseline and track ROI
• Take costs into account (Value=Benefit-cost)
• Too many metrics can hurt
• Rinse and repeat until you get it right

13. #4
BUT NOT ALL THE TESTS!

14. MISTER JENKINS IN YOUR FRIEND
• Automate your build
• Automate your app deployment
• Automate your environment deployment
• Automate your tear down
• Automate your test execution
• Automate your reporting
• Automate your metrics tracking
• Automate your communication

15. #5 – AUTOMATE ASAP
BUT BUILD THE FOUNDATION FIRST

16. Careful planning
• Plan your Automation infrastructure
• Cloud, on-premise, devices connectivity, app deployment, data
aggregation, reporting, etc.
• Pick your automation tool wisely
• Start small and grow
• Don’t hesitate to pause tests building activity

17. #6 – PICK THE RIGHT TESTS TO AUTOMATE
AND I CLEARLY DON’T HAVE A GOOD PICTURE FOR THIS SLIDE

18. ANALYZE THE RISK OF FAILURE
R(c)=P(c) * I(c)
Probability
• Code Complexity
• Changed Areas
• Affected Interfaces
• New Technology
• Component Maturity
Impact
• Financial
• Reputation
• Legal
• Security
• Loss of Customers

19. #7 – WHERE TO RUN TESTS
HINT: 0% USERS RUN YOUR APP ON A SIMULATOR

20. SIMULATOR VS REAL DEVICES
• Pros
• Cheap
• Integrated with IDE
• Cons
• Not testing on actual platform.
What if the test pass? What’s
next?
• Network is different
• OS is different (stock)
• Can’t simulate real hardware
(CPU, Memory, etc.) Not fit for
mobile performance
• Pros
• Reproduce real gestures
• Real results, no false negative
• Can test under OEM
customization
• Fit for mobile performance
• Cons
• Need to be managed (device
Cloud helps!)

21. UNDERSTAND YOUR MARKET
74% iOS7

22. HAVING TROUBLE WITH ANDROID

23. #8 – BUILD EFFICIENT TESTS
SIZE MATTERS!!

24. S.F.I.R.S.T.R
• Small – Easier to understand & Fix
• Fast – Parallel execution for faster feedback
• Independent – Can run any subsets in any order
• Repeatable – Tests get the same result every time
• Self-Checking – No human checking
• Timely – Should be written in parallel with dev
• Reusable – To avoid maintenance nightmares

25. ASK KINDLY …
#8 – BUILD TESTABILITY

26. WHICH IS BETTER?
• Build more reliable tests with unique IDs
• Lower maintenance cost
• Test early
• A non-optional investment
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signOn_securityPhraseWindow_ScrollView']/
TiUIScrollViewImpl/UIView/TiUIView[.//UILabel[@text='If
you don't recognize your personalized security image,
don't enter your password.']]/TiUITextField/TiTextField
classname=TiTextField[1]
id=mfaSiteKey-siteKey_Password_Input
XPATH
INDEXED OBJECT
UNIQUE ID
text=blah
TEXT

27. # 9 - DATA IS YOUR FRIEND

28. BE DATA-DRIVEN
• Increase test coverage FAST
• Easy to add, remove and configure tests
• Reduce the number of tests to maintain
• Separation of Tests and Datas

29. FORGET ABOUT TIME DELAYS!
#10 – USE RELIABLE WAITS

30. USE RELIABLE AND INTELLIGENT WAITS
• Use object visibility to manage the flow of the test
• Never use time delays to manage back-end variability
• Never use time delays to account for device
performance
• Spend time finding the right locator to wait on
• Run your test 100 times before claiming success

31. YOU GET THE PICTURE
#11 – LEVERAGE FUNCTIONAL TESTS FOR PERFORMANCE

32. COVER ALL YOUR BASES
CPU
Battery
Memory
Transaction timing
Native Apps
No backend connection
Stress tests
Endurance tests
Load test
Mobile Web Apps
App
Server
Database
App
Server
Web
Server
Cache
Load
Balancer
Web
Server
Data traffic
HTTP(S)
UDP
WebSocket
Shared web &
mobile infrastructure
Web
browser
users
Mobile
browser
users
Native app
users
CPU
Battery
Memory
Transaction timing
Response time

33. #12 – BUILD THE RIGHT TEAM

34. LEAN AND EFFICIENT
• Quality Software Engineers
• Automation Framework ie. CI, Cloud, Pyton, Perl, Web, everything
• Automation Architect
• What tests to automate? Identify reusable components,
Metrics, ROI, everything
• Automation Engineer
• Build automated tests, everything
• Expert in automation and knowledge of mobile apps dev
• Test Engineer
• Build tests, everything

35. TOP BEST PRACTICES FOR
SUCCESSFUL MOBILE TEST AUTOMATION
fberinger@soasta.com
twitter.com/fredberinger
http://www.fredberinger.com
QUESTIONS?