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Criticality and elevated performance standards associated with mobile applications demand not only robust testing, but also efficient and unswerving Quality Assurance (QA). In fact, it is the QA process that holds greater significance since stakes are high in introducing user friendly, highly competitive, and cost-effective mobile applications with multiplatform usability and strong functional credentials.

The QA team assures full support to the development team at every step, from conceptualization and delineating test specifications to validating subsequent version and post-development review.

QA Role in Device Targeting

The preparatory phase commencing soon after the app development process is commissioned requires the QA to ensure that target devices are identified effectively and specifically by the developer. To determine the target devices, it is essential to check the following points.
  •           Finding the devices the application is intended for, use, and support. Communication devices vary in their character, size, usability, and functions though with broad similar cantors.
  •          Figure out what function the mobile application is to offer and if an earlier version or similar application is there.
  •          Determining the best possible model that is most suitable for the end users.
  •          Examining if the mobile application is scalable enough to fit different device size or screen resolutions.
While assessing all these essential parameters, the QA engineer is also identifies restrictions, both upper end and lower level, if any inhibiting seamless integration with an operating system.

QA Helps Defining Functional Requirements

Development proceeds based on given functional specifications. QA team is called upon to check if the application development goes on the right functional direction set forth. A mobile app can be installed or operated from the browser. QA is to fix parameters on whether it is self-contained or interacts with other apps, if it communicates with the database or websites, and whether its functional requirements are in sync with cellular networks or apps on the device.

QA Role in Test documentation, User Feedback

The expertise and experience enables QA personnel to document the test process without difficulty and effectively. Documentation demands the ability to understand and capture complex testing tasks with high-level of precision. Proficiency allows QA engineers to create detailed testing instructions in simple and easy-to-follow language. They can partition the process and divide the exact functions when multiple developers are around without impacting overall mobile app testing plan.
QA enables to examine each phase in the light of end-user perspectives and review application functionalities accordingly. It get user feedbacks on different features with similar mobile apps on social media and supply feedback to the development team that helps overcome possible shortcomings or errors or concerns at the earliest and fixed them instantly during the DA phase.
Thus, with QA at the side, end-user concerns are taken care of in the most plausible way.

QA Sets Tone for Test Environment

Test environment has become fast paced, highly innovative, complex, interactive, and technology oriented with simultaneous development and testing of mobile apps. Now a day, QA engineers are required to put themselves in to the shoe of developers and carry the dual task – development monitoring and validation.
This requires installation of all mechanism and configured apps that are on developer’s computer on the system of QA engineers. As soon as the developer ends a phase or assembly line, the QA team tests and validates it. In addition, the QA is required to repeat the process and validate multiple assemblies at intervals so that each unit succeeds the other in a logical way without integration blues.
It is prudence of QA engineers that is mainly responsible for success of such parallel validation. Their profound knowledge of setting sets the tone and pace of the test environment. It influences the way of interactive communication and the final product quality. Developers depend on QA engineer’s knowledge of devices, similar applications, potential feature behavior with different OS, and end-user perspective.

QA During Control phase

Once the product development comes to an end, the QA is required to oversee the complete testing process in detail. Units must be tested in integration, regression tests may be performed, or a complete validation is carried on. A complete testing is an essential feature of this control phase to uncover any defect hidden during iterative phases and certify mobile app stability without auxiliary modules added to cut down testing time.

QA for Acceptance Testing

Mobile app testing process enters the final phase with acceptance testing. A significant corollary, it examines whether the mobile application fits the criteria set and reflect proper concern of end users. The test team acts in a scenario and with test cases specific to the mobile app developed to assure that “all application labels and functions fully correspond to the rules of the target language.”
This is the stage where QA takes upon the ultimate responsibility to ensure that the development result is perfect to bring end-user satisfaction.

General Checklist

ü  Network (2G/3G/4G/CDMA/GSM/WIFI)
ü  Stability
ü  GPS
ü  Device form and screen factors
ü  Crash potential
ü  Compatibility with social and other apps
ü  Access and support format
ü  Data integration and use
ü  Energy parameters
ü  Scalability and acceleration ability
ü  Interface validation
ü  Time gap analysis
ü  Potential external factors for enhanced utilization, disk space, interruptions

OS/ Device Specific Checklist

 

Apple/iOS
ü  Apple UI Guideline compliance
ü  Setting, multitasking, and storage
ü  User transition from one to another application
ü  USB compliance
ü  USB debugging and alternative to rebooting
ü  Backward compatibility of mobile apps

Google Android
ü  No confrontation between background and foreground apps
ü  USB debugging
ü  Ability to operate seamlessly with multiple software
ü  Back function and minimization without rebooting

Windows OS
ü  Ability to support apps running in the background
ü  Scalability and seamlessly operation with multiple apps
ü  Task Manger compatibility
ü  USB debugging